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Event strategy is fairly easy to execute once you understand the three major stages of the event life cycle: building, measuring and learning. As an event host or planner, it’s critical to take pride in your events because they are an opportunity to impress your audience members and conquer your KPI goals. Although the process of event planning is pretty standard, it’s a must to familiarize yourself with the latest trends and technology because those are components that can contribute to the success of your event.
The pre-planning stages of your event lifecycle mainly consist of setting the foundation and outlining the goals you want to accomplish. Creating an event brief is a great way to get started with the event life cycle because you are able to brainstorm ideas, keep track of deadlines and adhere to your budget. During stage one of the event life cycle, there are six major steps that must be completed to ensure you are on the right track of creating a memorable event.
Before the official launch, you’ll want to run through your event at least once or twice to ensure things will be running smoothly. The “operational readiness cycle” is also a good time to develop contingency scenarios, finalizing operations and training your staff in preparation for the event.
During the very first step of your event planning process, you will want to identify the primary purpose of your event. This step is designed to give you a better direction of how you want your event to flow with both minor and major details.
Also referred to as the “strategic planning” stage, you’ll want to determine your main objectives, mission statements, and vision statements. Your overall event plan will be your key deliverable to serve as an outline for the rest of the planning process.
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If you have thrown an event in the past, you can start off this step by referring back to the budget you used before. If you are new to throwing an event, a great way to get started is by making educated guesses and using an event budget template. During this process, you’ll also want to decide on an admission fee or ticket price for the event.
When setting a date for your upcoming event, you’ll want to select two different days; one date that you know for sure your stakeholders and sponsors will be available to attend and the other date to serve as a backup.
The type of event you’ll be hosting will determine the type of venue you’ll need to secure. Be sure to scout out different venues early in advance so that once you find the one that you like, you can reserve it without any hassle. You’ll also want to make sure that you review the venue contract before signing so that you are aware of all rules, regulations and requirements.
The types of performers, speakers or sponsors you would like to be a part of your event also depends on the occasion. You’ll first want to create a list of the types of guest attendees you want to invite and then decide on how many. At this time, you’ll also want to reach out and inquire about any booking fees or costs. Next, you’ll want to create and send out invitations with important information so that the entertainers and sponsors are aware and put it in their schedules.
Keeping an eye on your sales lifecycle is beneficial because you can determine if you’ll need a platform such as Hubilo to manage your ticket sales, what promotion channels you’ll need for advertisement and if you would want to create a landing page for event registration. If you have thrown an event in the past, you can refer back to your prior sales as a guide for your upcoming event.
Offering pre-sale tickets to your loyal consumer base is an exclusive way to establish hype and make your attendees feel special. With “early bird specials”, you could either offer the tickets at a discounted price or allow a certain number of people to secure their tickets much earlier than everyone else.
Creating an event website with all of the information regarding your event is going to be the best course of action to ensure your guests receive all the information they need! On the event website, you can add any special dates and times regarding your event! Links to buy tickets or registration pages can also be on your website, bringing your guests right to the event information page!
To conclude your pre-planning process, brainstorm ways on how you would like to promote your event. First, you will want to decide if you want to utilize traditional, digital marketing or a combination of both. Then you’ll want to think about what digital marketing platforms you want to use to get the word out. After conducting research on your audience, choose a platform that best suits the message you want to promote.
A tactic to try: To help market your event and engage with potential audience members, try hosting a social media contest or trivia game. This will give some audience members a chance to win an event ticket before having to purchase one. In addition to engagement, you can also take this as an opportunity to collect contact information from attendees to later keep in touch.
When running an engagement based contest, create digital ads to reach more people who may be interested in your brand and/or event. You can also use this as an opportunity to collect data for when you want to retarget individuals for later events. Make sure to use a welcoming tone in your messaging so that the opportunity to purchase tickets is still promising. For example you could say, “Still interested in attending? Purchase your tickets here!”
Now that you are done with stage one of your event, it is now time to execute your plans and goals. Although you have things pretty much mapped out, it’s crucial to prepare for the unexpected and potential emergencies. Follow these steps to ensure your event is still on track to be implemented the way you would like.
Important documents play a major role during this stage because some of them may be required to solidify components or circumstances of your event. Some of the paperwork you may be responsible for as the host of your event could be permits, contracts, agreements or licenses. The key takeaway for this step is to be organized and keep track of what the documents are needed for.
During stage two of the event project life cycle, you should take into account the logistics of what all it would take to make your event come to life. During this step, you’ll want to think about how much time set up will take, if you’ll need staff and volunteers for additional help and if you’ll need signage to help direct attendees to their designated place.
Tangible takeaways, snacks and breakout sessions are a great way to subtly value the audience members at your event. Tangible takeaways could include items such as USB flash drives, headphones or phone card holder cases that can be included in a swag bag to show appreciation for your attendees participation and attendance. Another inexpensive tactic to add to your seamless event experience is passing out essential items such as tissue, hand sanitizer and sunscreen upon the guest’s arrival. Lastly breakout and Q&A sessions are both good ways to further connect and support your audience while they are in attendance.
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At the beginning of your event, you will need to get everyone checked in as quickly as possible. While this can become overwhelming, checking in people as they arrive, try to keep your energy upbeat and greet every guest with a smile! The check-in experience can set the tone for the whole event! This experience can also be made easier by the use of an event app! Your guest can download the app, and their ticket and information will be handy right in the app! Once the check-in experience is over, you are free to have a fun and smooth event!
Digital badges are becoming popular for employees in the workplace. A digital badge is the digital credential, housing all of the skills and professional achievements of your employees! These skills and achievements can have completion dates, and any other credentials that need to be renewed or completed. With these digital badges, employees as well as management are able to see which employees have certain credentials, pertaining to their event!
Networking is such an important part of event hosting! The opportunities that can come from networking can be pivotal to the growth of your employees! Networking can provide opportunities both professionally and personally! Networking also helps employees build a better relationship with one another!
Now that your event has wrapped up, you’ll want to take time to evaluate and reflect the successes and mishaps. This part of the event lifecycle is critical because you are able to learn from your mistakes and make improvements for the next event you plan to host. Follow the post-event steps below as a guide on what to do during stage three of the event lifecycle.
Once your event has concluded, take some time out to collect feedback and data from everyone (including staff if you’d like) who attended. This can be done by sending out post-event questionnaires that ask about their experience, what parts of the event they liked, didn’t like and any recommendations they may have for next time.
A benefit of curating a list of relevant information from your attendees and interests during the registration process is because now you can take that data and use it to keep in touch and remain memorable. Tactics you can apply to retarget people could include sending out newsletters, being active on social media or hosting monthly webinars. Engaging with your audience will give you an advantage because you will be able to capitalize off of your audience’s interests and build a loyal consumer base.
Analyzing your ticket sales will be helpful because you are able to gain insight and recognize any popular patterns that may have occurred during registration. Trends and patterns you may be able to identify in your data could be the most common day of the week people purchased tickets or recognizing a common demographic amongst the results. Seeing how these insights correlate to your event marketing campaign will give you a better idea on how to form your budget and utilize the correct promotion channels.
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Once you’ve collected enough relevant data, now it’s time to calculate your return on investment and compare it to your yearly profit. A simple formula to refer to once you get to this step of the final stage is:
“(Total Sales Revenue – Total Cost of the Event) ÷ Total Cost of Event] X 100 = ROI.”
Refer back to the goals you created during the pre-planning stage and compare them to your real time event results. Then, you’ll want to take notes of the successes and any improvements that need to be made for the next go round.
Learning and ensuring you are building, measuring and learning throughout each event lifecycle stage are the keys to hosting the ultimate event. You’ll also want to take advantage of utilizing advanced technology, like Hubilo, so that you can optimize and enhance the lifecycle of your event. By aligning your event goals with your audience’s feedback, you are able to get a general idea of what to do next time, strengthening your conversions and maximizing your budget.
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