Great Events Don’t Just Happen! They Are Carefully Planned.

Learn Everything You Need to Know About Event Planning Here!

Organizing a successful event requires proper event planning. Whether it’s a conference, concert, award ceremony, fundraiser, or fashion show, you need to take all of the necessary steps to plan your event.

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To set up your event for success we’ll walk you step-by-step through the process of event planning and share some actionable tips and checklists along the way. We’ll also explain how you can use Event Smart, an online event registration and ticket sales platform, to carefully plan your next event.

By the time you’re done reading, you’ll be in a better position to host an event that ticks every box!

Here are all the topics we’ll cover: [include links]

Initial Planning
Budgeting
Choosing a Venue and Setting a Price
AV Equipment and Technology
Marketing and Promotion
Last Minute and Post-Event Planning

Step #1: Initial Planning

The first step to organizing a successful event is initial event planning. Event planning sets the stage for how your event will succeed and helps everyone get on the same page.

Start by defining your goals. Write down what you’re trying to achieve by planning this event. For example, if you are a charity or non-profit organization, you might be planning a fundraising event to raise money for your cause. And if you’re a business, you might be organizing a product launch to raise brand awareness. By writing down your goal, you’ll be able to keep the rest of your event plan and your team focused around the goal of your event.

Next, set a tentative date for the event while making sure you give yourself plenty of time to plan the event. It’s also important to consider which day and season works best for your attendees. For example, if you’re organizing a charity event, it’s best to host it on the weekend when most of your attendees will be available rather than on a workday; do you want to attract people who are going on vacation or business customers; because different customers will be ready to attend your events at different seasons of the year.

Once you’ve decided on a date, ask yourself these types of questions:

How many people you’re expecting will attend the event. Is it a small event or a large-scale event?
What will it cost to host this event?
How much revenue would you like to generate from the event?
What kind of event experience can I provide with that revenue and projected costs?
Can I provide more or less benefits at the event if revenue is higher or lower than expected?

Finally, it’s important to define success metrics. Depending on the type of event you’re organizing, this might be:

How much revenue you generate from ticket sales.
How much profit was generated.
How many people engage with your brand.
The number of social media followers you get after the event.
The number of donors and the amount donated.
Etc.

Event Smart has several features that will help you with the planning process. Keep track of incoming revenue from your events dashboard, easily see how many people have registered for your event so that you can prepare your vendors and keep them informed of quantities of food and beverage, and venue setup.

Additionally, you can also use Event Smart to set up a waitlist for the event. Then if someone cancels another person can automatically get promoted and added as an attendee. This helps you to maximize your event revenue goals by ensuring you stay full and you can get an idea of (1) how many people are interested in attending the event and (2) know early on how much you will earn.

Step #2: Budgeting

The next step in the event planning process is budgeting. This gives you an idea of how much it’ll cost to organize the event.

Start by setting a budget for:

Food and drinks
Venue
Vendors
Staff
Printed materials
Event branding
Event marketing and advertising
Travel
Payment processing fees

Once that’s done, calculate your expected return on investment (ROI) using the formula:

ROI = [(Total Sales Revenue – Total Cost of the Event) / Total Cost of the Event] * 100

For example, a typical event budget might look something like this:

Marketing and promotion – 43%
Speakers and talent – 32%
Printed materials – 29%
Venues – 18%

How Event Smart Can Help You With Budgeting

You can use Event Smart to sell multiple ticket types and know exactly how much you’ll earn per ticket sale. Event Smart does not charge ticket commission fees like Eventbrite and other online event registration and ticket sales websites do. This means you’ll make more money and keep more revenue because your ticket fees are lower.. Optionally, you can add taxes or surcharges to tickets. This is particularly useful when you need to pass the ticket fees on to attendees.

Step #3: Choosing a Venue and Setting a Price

Now that you have a better idea of how much your event budget you can put aside for the venue, it’s time to pick out a suitable venue and set a ticket price.

Here are some factors to keep in mind when choosing a venue for your event:

Cost
Location
AV capabilities
Size of the venue
Accessible facilities
Catering

Once that’s done, you should be in a better position to create a pricing strategy for your event. Consider researching competitor events to see how much they sell each ticket for and what they offer. For example, a competitor might be selling a $125 General Admission ticket which includes a swag bag. It’s important to have realistic expectations of how many tickets you’ll sell to your target audience and what it will cost them to attend your event (not just buy a ticket) and base your ticket price off of that.

How Event Smart Can Help You Choose a Venue and Set a Price

With Event Smart, you can create multiple ticket options for your events. This way, you can execute different marketing strategies easily. For example, you might consider offering early bird ticket pricing or selling ticket bundles with add-ons.

Step #4: AV Equipment and Event Technology

Most events require some sort of AV equipment and technology which is why it’s important to factor it into event planning.

Here are some questions that can help you get started:

Does your event take place indoors or outdoors?
How many people are attending the event?
Does the event venue have AV capabilities
What’s your AV equipment budget?

Here are some different types of event technology you might need for your event:

Event apps can help you manage event registration and check-ins.
A ticketing solution can be used to create and manage different types of tickets and ticket bundles along with a payment processor to help you accept payments.
Live streaming your event is a great way to boost online engagement and generate interest.

How Event Smart Can Help You With AV Equipment and Technology

Event Smart can help you create multiple ticket types and email event tickets with QR codes and barcodes to attendees. It’s also worth mentioning that Event Smart offers an event app for scanning tickets with a phone.

Step #5: Marketing and Promotion

Planning to market and promote your event is just as important as planning the actual event.

The good news is that there are tons of different ways you can promote your event including:

Event branding helps you gain credibility and recognition.
Email marketing is great for driving conversions.
Social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook are great for virtual events.
Posters and flyers help get the word out about local events.
Sponsors should be selected based on their target audience.
Press Releases can be used to spread the word about your event.

How Event Smart Can Help You With Marketing and Promotion

One of the neat features on offer with Event Smart is that it lets you sync attendee registration information to a Mailchimp list after registration. In addition to this, you can create promotion and discount codes to incentivize prospective attendees to purchase tickets. It also lets you transfer attendee information to Infusionsoft to better manage attendees.

Step #6: Last Minute and Post-Event Planning

No matter how far in advance you plan your event, you’ll likely need to do some last minute event planning to make sure everyone’s on the same page.

One week before the event check in with your caterer, speakers, and AV specialist to confirm timings and day-of responsibilities.
On the day of the event, create an hour-to-hour event agenda.
After the event, send out a feedback form to attendees, staff, and volunteers to see how you can improve future events.

How Event Smart Can Help You With Last-Minute Event Planning and Post-Event Planning

One of the key benefits of using an event registration and ticketing tool, like Event Smart, is that it comes with built-in reports and analytics capabilities. This can help you learn more about your event and what you can do to plan better future events.

With Event Smart, you always have access to download your data for your long-term records, marketing to attendees for future event and further analysis.

Plan Successful Events

In short, the key to organizing a successful event is proper event planning. Typically, this involves some initial planning, budgeting, venue selection, equipment and technology, marketing and promotion, and last minute planning.

Ready to plan better events? Start your free Event Smart trial today!

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Infographic images provided by: http://avinstallations.co.uk