HOW TO PLAN EVENTS FOR YOUR BUSINESS GROWTH

Are you looking to Master Events For Your Business Growth? If you are then you have hit the right article! Mastering Events For Your Business Growth is a 6-step formula that starts with Clarity. If you are looking on how to gain Clarity then check out our article on Clarity HERE:

Today, it's all about planning. So once we've got clarity around our event, we are ready to plan what's going to be happening next. In this planning step we're covering planning the event logistics, the event marketing, and the event content. This step is how to roll out the event.

Event Logistics

Let’s start planning our event logistics. How are we going to roll out this event?

Venue

What type of venue do we need in order to deliver the best type of event? Venue’s play a very important role and can make or break your event. To understand the best type of venue, we need to think about what type of event we are running and the impact we need it to have on our audience. Here are a few options when considering venues:

• Are we looking for a small boutique hub?

• Are we looking for a big room in a conference centre?

• Are we looking for a free or low cost room at a pub or a hotel where we can really engage our audience?

Understanding what type of event we're running will enable us to be able to plan the best type of venue. 

Catering

Many people instantly assume that they must cater he event, however, do we cater, do we not?  Is a legitimate question to ask yourself. Things to think about when making a decision to cater or not are: How much time does the event for?

If you have decided to cater, there are also options: Are we able to self cater? Are we going to invest in catering or are we going to just enable people to be able to buy the food at the venue? What impression do I want to make on my audience with the food? 

Seating

How we want our audience to sit is really important and really is reflective based on the type of event we are delivering.

How do we want our audience to be seated? Theater style seating, which means they're just in rows of seats. Behind desks, in a U shape, boardroom style, classroom style seating or even cocktail seating around individual round tables can be a great choice. The right seating chart creates the right atmosphere so think about the number of people and how you want them to feel.

AV

Now another thing that people forget to think about is the Audio Visual - A.V. What are we going to be using for AV? Are we going to have a microphone? Are we going to have a head set or a lapel microphone? Do we even need a microphone?

Is there going to be a projector or is there going to be a television? How is the sound connected in the room and to the visual aid? How are you going to connect your piece of equipment; laptop, tablet or your phone directly to the TV or projector?

Answering these questions is a MUST because when A.V. goes wrong, it can totally ruin your event. 

Team

Who is going to be on our team to support us; Volunteers, event partners, event sponsors and an event manager? These people are vital to our event success so lets choose wisely!

Event Marketing

Next, let's talk about planning our event marketing strategy.

Website

The first thing to decide is whether or not to create a website for our event or even a landing page on our website for our event. This really depends on how important events are in your business growth cycle, how often you hold them and how many people you are looking to host. The bigger the vent, the more important it is to have a website for it. If it is a early fundraising Gala or a conference then yes, have a dedicated website for the event. If it is a monthly networking event or meet up then a landing page on your website will be sufficient.

Ticketing

How will people purchase the tickets? Is there a link on your website or landing page to the ticketing platform? Sometimes, we may decided to forego the website or landing page and only host our event on a ticketing platform such as Humanitix or Eventbrite or TryBooking.

Really thinking about how we're going to sell our tickets, where the event and ticketing information can be found and how easy it is to be able to share. 

Social Media

The other thing is social media. This is a big, big part of getting people to our events and I believe we should be using all of the social media platforms that our audience is on with a primary focusing on Facebook and Linked in and Instagram.

Now, many people in the business world tend to just think about LinkedIn because that's where most of the “B-B” business happens. However, Facebook enables us to have a platform for an event that gives us a pipeline of how “hot” our prospects and leads are. It's the only platform that enables people to be able to let you know if they're interested or if they're going. It gives you an opportunity to invite them. You can communicate with them directly through the Facebook events platform. So utilising the Facebook events platform an have a big impact on our event success.  

Email Marketing

A pre and post event email marketing sequence is very important. Pre event we can use email marketing to engage our potential audience by letting them the interesting details of our events. Venue, speakers, topics, catering. Once they have purchased the ticket we can keep them engaged with important information such as dates, times, agenda and parking. Post event we can gain feedback and testimonials and start marketing for the next event. 

Call/Text Scripts

The telephone is second best conversion tool after face-to-face marketing. Getting in touch with people who have expressed interest or who have already booked via a call or an SMS helps convert prospects and helps communicate vital information that secures attendance. To make this easier we can create calling a scripts or SMS scripts that enable us to powerfully communicate and not waste time stressing over what to say or message 

Presentation Content

What are we going to be presenting and what presentation and visual presentation aids wil we use? 

Slide Presentation

What's it going look like? What visual aids will we be creating our presentation on? This is a choose your poison type of situation: PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Slides or a Prezi No matter what we choose, our presentation must be ready to go. Other options include using a white board or butchers paper.

Presentation copy

What content are we delivering to deliver value? This step is probably the longest step in the making. We have been learning our content our whole lives so planning the copy that we're going to be delivering and the value we're going to be delivering is of the upmost importance. Getting this right will ensure ongoing success.  

So this has been a step two in the proven formula for rolling out your successful events, all about planning, planning your logistics, planning your marketing and planning your presentation content.