How to Plan the Best Event

04 Dec, 11:20 AM

“Planning without action is futile, Action without Planning is fatal”
- Cornelius Fichtner

Organizing an event requires perfect planning in order to execute it in a seamless manner. Event planning seems like a job that would be a lot of fun to do. Whether it’s a small scale or a major event, the process followed to plan and manage the event will directly influence the success of an event. So let’s talk about how to create a better one.

Let’s dive into What, Who, When, Where and How of an Event Planning?

What are the Goals & Objectives of your Event?

Got confused about the difference between goals and objectives. You are not the only one. Let’s get clarified.

Event goals define the purpose of your event and are the measurable smaller steps that will help you achieve your objectives. Objectives are the large scale vision for what you want to accomplish.

Define Goals of your Event

Firstly, try to answer the following questions to define the goals in a crystal clear way and plan the event accordingly.

Why are you hosting the event? Why do you invite the attendees? What do you want to convey to the audience? What outcomes do you expect from the event?

Set SMART Objectives for your event

A list of objectives with the SMART Acronym makes it easy for you to plan and prioritize them. Let’s have a look at it.

Specific: Specify and limit your objectives to a specific niche and target audience with a focus on the outcomes of your event.

Measurable: Measure your event success like the number of registrations, the number of attendees you expect to attend the event, Return on Investment (ROI) estimation.

Attainable: Set realistic goals that are feasible and that can be accomplished.

Relevant: You need to figure out the relevant objectives to be able to easily spot what is important and what can be left out.

Time-based: Create a detailed timeline and prioritize the objectives from the beginning to the end of the event period. Goals aligned with the deadlines are easy to measure and control the outcomes.

Who will Your Target Market Be?

In event planning, you need to know who your target audience is. Your event’s success depends on how well you pinpointed a specific group that will react positively to your event.

Beware that failure to target the right group may result in wasting time and resources that may damage your brand name.

Whether it’s a business conference, or a promotional event or a celebration, focusing on one niche will ensure you to give full attention and develop the necessary skills to plan and execute a successful event.

When Where and How?

Create your own Event Budget

The first step to creating your event budget is to figure out each part of your event that could potentially incur a cost. For this, you need to define the focus areas of your event. This will help you prioritize your spending and invest in what really matters.

Use a spreadsheet to list out all the specific items and add expected and the actual expenses in your event budget so that, you can see if you are over-budget and make informed decisions.

Set the Date

Picking a date for your event requires your special attention. You need to consider a lot of factors like season, date of other events and lot many.

Seasonality is not just about the weather but several other factors that can impact event attendance like Holidays, Sports schedules etc. Depending on the type of event you are hosting, these factors may narrow down your ideal dates from your shortlist. For example, if you are hosting an event to raise awareness of environmental pollution among students, you need to choose a date when the school is in session instead of a summer break.

It’s better to eliminate the dates with high competition and pay attention to significant dates based on the availability of the key participants to your event like speakers, guests, stakeholders and ensure the availability of the dates of attendees.

Book the Venue

Once you have a good understanding of your budget and estimated event size, it’s time to begin your search for a venue. The date of the event, logistics, and attendees’ pleasant experiences … all are partly affected by the venue you select.

The main factors you need to consider while searching for a venue are location and capacity of the venue, services and amenities you need for your event, ambience, accessibility, cost and flexibility on the event date.

Organise a Right Event Team

Teamwork makes the dream work. A great team is not only a pleasure to work with but it is equally motivating, fun and incredibly rewarding when you’re surrounded by a dream-team.

Does your event has the right team?

Great teams don’t just happen. You need to put strong efforts into finding the right combination of skills and personalities. The approach of one-size-fits-all doesn’t work in event planning teams i.e., what works for one event might not work for another event.

Choose a team where everyone understands the scope of the event, has a role to play and eagerly contributes to the success of your event.

Identify and Establish Sponsors

Do you have enough budget and credibility to organize an event and make it a grand success? If not, finding the potential sponsors would make it happen specifically when your event is brand new or your brand needs to build its image.

How can a sponsor help you?

A right sponsor supports your event, usually by providing funds, in exchange for something valuable in the form of increased brand exposure, access to attendee data, speaking opportunities at the event, or discounted event tickets.

Having sponsorships from established companies adds credibility to your event. It shows they support what you’re doing which really helps influence people to register.

For instance, all the things being equal like the same theme and had the same speakers, would you rather attend an event with no sponsors or the one that's sponsored by Amazon? Definitely, most of us attend the event sponsored by Amazon.

Why? Because Amazon is one of the biggest companies in the world and if they decide to sponsor an event, the general consensus is that they believe in it.

Brand your Event

Do you know how people get to know about your event? It’s Branding.

Yes, Brand awareness is what makes your event recognizable and sets you apart from the crowd. Social Media can make this happen in a short span. Choose a compelling theme that generates buzz for your event, create a hashtag, grapple the opportunity and leave no option that promotes your event.

Is just the success of your event is what you want? You need to make it even more memorable right? Create a short and good tagline and design a logo that describes your event’s message crystal clear in explicit terms.

Engage your Audience

Last but not least, don’t forget the main motive of your event, i.e., Attendee Engagement Plan. Now that, you have planned a perfect event, but if you don’t engage the audience, what’s the point in organizing an event?

Inviting motivational speakers, Exhibitions and other event activities that connects the audience enhances the purpose and success of your event. Plan the content and the requirements of the event activities you would organise during the event.

To sum up, the Planning process is one of the most important aspects of successful event management. The more robust is your plan, the smoother is the journey to success.

Staying calm, focused, and flexible are the principal attributes that make your dream into reality.