Invisible to the participants, you as the organizer have to keep an eye on many things in advance in order to guarantee a great event: The location, the invitations, the engagement of speakers and the budget are only some of these points.
The more things you have to think about, the more confusing everything becomes. A good event strategy is the most valuable help to keep an eye on everything.
The event strategy is the heart of your work
Your event can only be as good as your strategy allows. If decisive goals have not been defined or the appropriate participants are not known, you are giving away valuable potential. In the worst case not only for this one event, but also for future events, because you could not convince your visitors to visit further events.
Even software solutions that are very valuable through the automation of processes do not replace a strategy. Because if you don’t know exactly which goals you want to achieve, even the best tools can’t help you.
A great first idea or a vague concept can tempt you to start right away. Nevertheless, you should first be poured into a strategy. Collect ideas that you can’t implement directly to use at a later time or for another event.
What does such a strategy look like?
In the event strategy you determine who and what you want to achieve with your event.
You define the primary target group and formulate the goals. For example, whether you want to raise your profile or launch a product. In order to plan your event correctly, you must also record the necessary marketing measures: An event website, appearances on the social networks, an e-mail marketing campaign, etc.
Many organizers make the mistake of ignoring the time before the actual event. An event begins long before the gates open for visitors.
In addition to planning and preparation, it must also be announced so that your target group knows about it at all. The participants have to be contacted specifically and individually and after registration you have to make sure that they don’t forget your event after all.
Therefore, it makes sense to gather all relevant information and present it clearly. Every team member involved in the planning must be familiar with the goal and the target group.
In a calendar, determine at which times you want to start which marketing measure. Thus, three months have not elapsed at the end without you having completed an important intermediate step.
What are the goals?
An event serves a specific purpose. The spectrum is wide: Opening up a new target group, launching a new product, establishing yourself as an industry leader or increasing your profile are just some of the possibilities.
Regardless of what you want to achieve, you should formulate it clearly. This allows you to focus entirely on that goal. Strike out rigorously all ideas that would have a nice effect, but do not contribute to your goal. They are a bonus that you can add when the basic structure of your event is in place.
What points do you need to keep in mind?
Each and every section of your event strategy and marketing activities is accompanied by points that need to be considered. This starts with the selection of the location: In addition to location and availability, equipment and conditions are also decisive.
It is a great challenge to combine your own goals with the positive experience of the participants. Arrange the participant journey in such a way that your guests never feel left alone and actually find what they are looking for.
Find possibilities to collect and evaluate data without deterring the participants with long questionnaires. Platforms such as doo help you to combine your own goals and the wishes of your guests and to enable individual participant trips through an automated evaluation of data.
The more you know what you want, the better you can prepare and plan. Anything you can solve in advance will not cause you any difficulties at the event itself.
Create responsibilities in your team for certain sections of the event planning and check in good time with very reliable employees whether they have considered everything. In this way, you can prevent important details from being overlooked.
What is the optimal procedure?
The ideal process before the event can be roughly divided into four phases. The length of the individual phases also depends on the size of the planned event.
First phase: First announcements
In the first phase, you publish some announcements, but don’t go into detail yet. These are appetizers to make your target audience curious. Offer the opportunity to be informed about news by e-mail. An active, large-scale promotion of the event is not yet taking place.
Second phase: Announcement
In the second phase you make your event as well known as possible. Use paid ads on social networks, press releases and email marketing campaigns.
Third phase: The day-to-day business
The large-scale announcement of your event flows smoothly into day-to-day business with recurring tasks: Regularly update the information on the event’s website and also email us to let us know which speakers are expected. Guest articles from well-known participants on your website are a valuable contribution to arousing the curiosity of other participants. Keep an eye on your social media campaigns and, if necessary, follow them up by adjusting advertised contributions.
Fourth phase: The hot phase directly before the event
This time begins shortly before the event. With a last e-mail campaign you convince the last participants to register. Contact known participants from previous events who have not yet purchased a ticket and invite them personally. Remind participants who have already registered so that they will appear safe. A sense of urgency is now conveyed on the website and on social networks, as there is not much time left for potential participants to register.
The event itself
The optimal course of the event itself depends on the type of event. After the arrival of the participants an official greeting takes place, which is followed by the program. With an official farewell at the end of the event, the welcoming arc is drawn and a framework is defined which offers orientation.
What are the differences between different events?
No two events are the same. This is obvious for fundamentally different events, but it also applies to the individual events in the same series. These are largely similar.
But it would still be a mistake to copy an old event strategy without checking it. You can do a lot of things, but you should still make adjustments and set specific priorities. In particular the experiences of earlier events from a row offer the ideal possibility to improve an event further and to arrange so also the experience of the participants still more positively.
If you have created a basic structure for an event strategy, you can use it again and again for different events. This will save you a lot of time in the long run and will enable you to make the best possible use of your experience for improvements.