How to Plan an Event

Whether organizing a small meeting or orchestrating a large conference, event planning is a huge task!
Every event, no matter how simple or complex, requires detailed planning and organization. From
establishing an accurate budget to promoting your event, there are a number of components you should
start to consider early on to make the process as stress-free as possible. While no two events are the
same, and every event has varying goals, budgets, and audiences; there are several steps you can take
to jump-start the planning process, keep on track, and maximize your event’s success.

Table of contents:
 Define goals and objectives

 Establish a budget

 Build your team

 Pick your venue and date

 Develop event branding

 Plan your program

 Confirm sponsors, exhibitors, and speakers

 Identify and select tech tools

 Create a marketing and promotional plan

 Determine your measurement

1. Define goals and objectives:

Before jumping right into the logistics like venue or speakers, you should spend time identifying
the purpose and reason for planning this event. You should answer this question:

What the ultimate goal for this event?

This is the why that spurred you to plan an event in the first place. Are you looking to:

Drive new sales? Support a product launch? Increase brand awareness? Or maybe, you have a
combination of multiple goals? Determine what you are looking to accomplish and how this
event will help you do that.

Next, what are the objectives?

In planning any event, you should identify a set of objectives that will support your ultimate
goal. Here are a few examples of event objectives:

Increase registration 10% from the last event

Increase revenue by 25% from the last event

Receive 100 preorders for upcoming product

Increase social media mentions/follows/reposts during the event

With your goals and objectives in place, you can create a preliminary scope of the event. Your
scope should offer key details and point to how you will achieve your outlined goals. While not
set in stone, you should lay out preliminary event details including:

Dates. Your time frame for the event, i.e. in 9 months.

Attendees. Will this be a 100 person event, a 1,000 person, or 10,000 person event? You should
begin to think about size. Are your attendees coming from around the country or is this a local
event? You’ll also want to keep your attendees’ demographics in mind as you plan.

Location. Is your event local? Or, will it be hosted in a destination? Start to create a
shortlist of cities and venues that make sense for your event.

Type of event. Are you driving awareness of a new product? A one-day event with
keynote may make sense. Bringing together thousands of customers? A two-day user
 conference may be right for you. Hosting an internal or association meeting? A day of small
sessions could be a fit.

Building out your goals and preliminary project scope enables you to frame your event and get
buy-in from leadership. If your organization is already on board with the event, your goals and
scope help move you along into the next stages of planning.

2. Establish an event budget:

Creating a budget is an essential early step in event planning that helps to clarify other aspects
of your plan. Additionally, establishing a budget helps to avoid unwanted surprises (like running
out of money for decor, etc.). You will be more successful if you map out your entire budget in
advance, continue to update as you finalize variables, and stay very close to the process. Based
on your high-level budget and initial scope of needs. You should begin to map out your line item
costs to gain an understanding of how your budget will be dispersed across your needs.
According to Eventbrite, “Budget is broken down by marketing and promotion (43%), speakers
and talent (32%), printed materials (29%), venues (18%).” As your plan solidifies, you’ll have to
revisit the budget. Line items will undoubtedly change, just remember to keep an accurate
budget that reflects any changes or updates you make, too. And because you never want to
exceed your budget, it’s common for planners to make adjustments to ensure you are
maintaining your budget.

3. Build your events team:

For small events, you may personally be handling many or all of the tasks discussed in this
section. However, for large events, it takes an organized team to execute the production. If you
are building a team from the ground up, it’s important to designate roles early on to ensure
accountability. All members of the team should report into a project manager who has visibility
across all of the moving pieces.

Building the ultimate event team:

According to Eventbrite, only 12% of events have teams of ten or more people and the most
common number is 2 to 5 employees (45% of events), so often individuals wear multiple hats. If
you’re among the few that have 5+ team members, here’s a look at how roles are typically
distributed:
*Project Manager:
Oversees all of the moving pieces described below, this person is ultimately responsible for the
execution of the event. Manages the budget. Drives strategy. Makes top-level purchasing
decisions.

*Venue/show floor:
This person is the main contact for the venue, the vendors, the sponsors while on-site, and the
onsite volunteers and staff: security, photography and food/beverage. They remember
everyone’s name, and they know where all the outlets are.

*Scheduling:
This person leads agenda development, work with speakers, and makes sure the schedule is up-
to-date and communicated to the right parties. Your scheduling guy coordinates meetings at the
event, and he lives to make attendees into successful networkers.

*Creative design:
Creative designers put together all visual design for printed and web materials like schedules,
collateral, registration and signage, and anything needed for the mobile event app. To break it
down: they make you look good. You may want to work with an event design agency.

*Marketing and Communications:

This person or team makes the right people aware of the event, create offers and timing
strategy to boost registration, oversee branding, communicate with registrants, coordinate
social media amplification and media relations, and send and measure follow-up materials. Oh,
and they’re just nuts for measurable performance.

This team makes sure a guest has everything he needs to get the most out of the event, from
maps, schedules, speaker info, and how to network. They build out and update the mobile event
app.

*Registration and Check-In:

These folks own registration setup, work with a software provider, produce and manage badges,
generate reports, and make sure the registration process (pre-event and during the event) is
running smoothly.

*Sponsorships:
This team member works to map out booth spaces, sell sponsorship opportunities, maintain
relationships with sponsors, and explore community organization relationships. They have killer
timing and great people skills.

*Keeping your team organized:

With a team in place, you’re ready to create an event project plan. A project plan is more than
just a to-do list. It’s a detailed breakdown of every single action item that identifies owners,
dependencies, due dates, and completion status. You should be able to justify every action item
by mapping it to your top-level event goals.

*Event management tools :

Project management tools streamline event management and organization. Utilize these tools
to keep all of the moving pieces accounted for. With the ability to assign and monitor projects, a
project manager can maintain an accurate view of progress and timelines with these tools:

 Asana

 Trello

 Smartsheet

4. Pick your venue and date :

Choosing your venue and date for your event are two major considerations that
will shape the rest of your project plan. Start researching venues as early as
possible. The event marketplace is crowded, so finding a time when there will
be venue availability is important. When deciding on a venue, you’ll also have to
consider dates for your location based on seasonal factors like travel and costs.
“In January it’s very challenging to find large spaces,” says Romy and events
industry veteran at PRIME, a full-service events agency in Vancouver. “January
and February are heavy on sales conferences, and it happens again in
September and October.” She says that during these times it’s tricky to find
traditional locations with show floor space. As you research and begin talking to
the representatives of various venues, ask as many questions as possible to
ensure it’s a good fit. Look for budget, thematic fit, location (is it central, easy
for transportation?), facilities, on-site staff. Are there restrooms conveniently
located throughout the venue? What’s the situation with fire control and
emergency response?
5. Develop event branding:
From the event name and theme to the event website design and on-site look and feel –
your event’s branding sets the tone for your event. When people think of your event,
you want a strong personality to shine. Additionally, a strong event brand provides a
vision and helps to steer the direction of your event. When choosing your event
branding, consider that an event brand should reflect your organizations brand but it
should have a brand of its own. Additionally, think about how your brand will come
across online and in real life. Lastly, consider how you will weave your event brand into
the individual elements of your event.

When thinking of event branding, it typically includes:

 Event name. The first crucial step, your event’s name is the first thing
attendees will see, so you want it to reflect your vision for the event.

 Theme. A name alone can’t tell the whole story. Often events will create a
theme to tie the event together.

 Logo, colors, typography. There should be consistency across all

marketing touchpoints.

 On-site decor, email, signage, and more. While every touchpoint

doesn’t need to be hyper-branded. Individual elements should come together to
support the story you are telling.

With these branding elements solidified, you should use them across all platforms
including, your event website, social media, emails, tickets and registration, and your
event app.

6. Plan your program:

Set your agenda as early as possible! Is there a keynote speaker? Will there be an extra day
or evening planned just for your sponsors? Will there be a single “track” of workshops and
talks, or will attendees have the choice to choose between multiple sessions at a given
 time? As you answer these preliminary questions, you can begin to build a high-level view of
your event program.

Don’t fret: it’s not crucial to have the schedule finalized before you start promoting the
event. You can make changes to the schedule after you have begun to market your event
and registration begins to grow. Technology makes this easy to quickly make updates to the
schedule on your website and mobile app. Your attendees will want to know what to
expect, so it is best if you have the basic framework confirmed as early as possible.
Additionally, the schedule is an important selling point for sponsors as well!

Other Considerations:
In addition to the core event program, there are a number of other program aspects to
think about. If your event is a full day or multiple day event, you should also think about
planning:

 Food and Beverage. Will you be providing lunch or snacks?

 Ancillary events like happy hours, networking opportunities, or wellness activities?

 Entertainment. Will the event conclude in a celebration or party?

7. Confirm sponsors, exhibitors, and speakers:

If you’re hosting a large scale event, you’ll most likely want to get others involved to offset costs
and showcase multiple voices from the industry. Speakers, sponsors, and exhibitors are
common ways to add value for your attendees and can offset costs.

*Speakers:
If your event is session-based, you’ll need to identify speakers for each session. Here are two
ways to add speakers:

*CALL FOR SESSION SUBMISSIONS:

If you have an engaged community, hosting an open call for session submissions is a great way
to utilize your partners and customers as speakers. Typically an open call will require individuals
to submit a session abstract that outlines the session topic and value proposition. With this,
your team will review submitted abstracts, select speakers, and communicate with those who
have been selected and those who were not.

*PERSONALLY INVITE SPEAKERS:

Reversely, if you have individuals in mind, you can invite them to speak at your event. In
reaching out to a prospective speaker, provide a compelling snapshot of the event and
audience, and also convey your enthusiasm for them participating in the event. Keep in mind,
invited speakers often expect compensation as well as travel and lodging provided.

*MANAGING SPEAKERS:
Once your speakers are identified, don’t forget to maintain an open line of communication.
Create a speaker agreement that includes necessary information like presentation expectations,
content deadlines, available technology onsite, and compensation. Be clear about your
expectations upfront, so there are no surprises the day before the event!

Continue communicating beyond sending initial confirmation communication and speaker

agreement. Want your speakers’ presentations to align with the event theme? Make sure to
provide materials as you develop them. Requiring speakers to submit their final presentations,
send a reminder to ensure each speaker gets it to you on time.

*Sponsors:
Build a list of sponsors you want to participate in your event. Before reaching out to them,
conduct research to understand how they would benefit from participating in your event. Do
they have mutual customers? Complimentary services? You should also ensure every potential
sponsor brings value to your attendees. Take the time to create tailored proposals that highlight
those unique benefits and be sure to emphasize them when reaching out.

Additionally, before reaching out to potential sponsors, take the time to create sponsorship
packages. Your packages should offer varying levels of cost and benefit. In addition to standard
sponsor packages, don’t be afraid to get creative and offer unique sponsorships like:

 A sponsored lounge

 A wifi and phone charging station

 Event App sponsorship

 Or wellness activity sponsorship

Think about the activities and tools your attendees are eager for and bring value to the event.

*Exhibitors:
Another common way to bring in sponsors is with an exhibitor package. With this, you’ll typically
have space at your event dedicated to your exhibitors. Each exhibitor sponsorship agreement
comes with a specific amount of allotted space for your exhibitors to occupy, brand, and engage
with your attendees.

8. Identify and select tech tools:

Technology is improving the event space for both organizers and event-goers. When mapping
out your next event, you’ll want to identify your technology needs and implementation
timelines. Certain technologies will need to be implemented far before the event, while others
can hold off until closer to the big day(s).

*Registration and Ticketing:

Managing attendee registration is more seamless than ever! Eventbrite and other online
platforms make it possible to start selling tickets in minutes. You’ll want to select your platform
early so you can promote registration and send your audience to the registration website.

*Productivity Technology :
We covered this above, but we’re going to say it again to hammer in on how critical it is for
event organizers to utilize project management tools. Events are complex, but project
management software helps to alleviate some of the stress. Trello can get you started on the
right foot with a number of event planning templates.

*Mobile App:
Streamline your communications and create a single information hub. A mobile app, like
Guidebook, enables attendees to access schedules, build a custom agenda, interact with other
attendees, and more. You’ll want to get your app ready ahead of your event so you can promote
it and encourage adoption, so that once onsite your attendees will have everything they need in
their pocket.

*Live Streaming or Recording:

Have a large community spread out across regions or countries? Live streaming sessions is a
great way to connect and extend the reach of your event. Recording sessions is another way to
extend your event’s reach and encourage the conversation to continue far beyond the physical
event.

*Engagement Tools:
Technology is changing the way audiences expect to be engaged and events are always evolving
to meet those expectations. If you’re looking to take your engagement a step further, think
about incorporating onsite technologies like a social media wall or digital swag bags, and event
gamification tools which encourage attendees to get involved in the event.

9. Create a marketing and promotional plan:

How are you going to attract audiences to attend your well-planned event?

Every successful event has a marketing and promotion plan to spread the word and
drum up excitement. But where do you start? There are many different ways to go
about marketing your event – social media and blogging to online advertising and even
billboards – but whatever you do choose, each tactic should a strategic element of your
marketing plan.

Components of an event marketing plan:

Goals and Objectives:

When creating a marketing plan, it is a must to set out marketing-specific goals and
objectives. Similar to your event’s overarching goals, setting specific marketing goals is a
way to ensure every effort is working towards measurable results.

Common marketing goals include:

 Increase online registration 15% over last year

 Drive x amount of traffic to event website

 Drive x amount of event app downloads

 Increase social media engagement 20% over last year

Tactics:
Your tactics are what you will use to achieve your goals. This includes everything that
you will be using for your marketing efforts such as online advertisements, video
 marketing, social media, email marketing, public relations, etc. In deciding which tactics
to use, you need to have an understanding of your target audience. Is your event geared
toward young professionals? Instagram ads may be a tactic you choose. Are you gearing
your event exclusively towards a local audience, geo-targeted ads are something to
think about.

Timeline and Cadence:

As you identify tactics, you should start building out a marketing timeline that provides a
view of your marketing activities. For example, if you decide to use email marketing, you
should plot out each email you plan to send:

EMAIL MARKETING TIMELINE

Date Email topic

 4.13 Save the date

 5.27 Early bird pricing open

 6.15 Keynote speaker announcement

 6.26 Exciting session topic announcement

 7.1 Last chance for early bird pricing

 8.1 Registration closing

10. Determine your measurement :

How will you measure the success of your event? You should begin to think of the ways
you’ll evaluate your event far before it takes place. A good place to start is with the
goals and objectives you identified in step one.

Data and analytics:

How many tickets did you sell, and through what sources? What was the cost per
attendee? And how many qualified leads did you gain? How many pre-orders did you
sell? Once the event is over, these are a few of the metrics you may measure. In
addition to quantifying the success of your event, you should also take a qualitative look
at the event. To understand the sentiment and attendee satisfaction, you can look at:

Event surveys:
In addition to the numbers, another way to measure success in feedback from your
attendees. With surveys, you can gain an understanding of attendees’ perception of the
event, which can help you identify strong and weak points from the event. Because let’s
face it, even if the event was sold out, can you really call it a success if attendees did not
find it valuable?

Social and online buzz:

Are your followers more active than usual on your company channel? Are registrants
posting about the event to their channels? Also, read the posts to know what attendees
are actually saying. Are the posts full of praise? Were there more than a few common
complaints? You should monitor before, during, and after your event to pick up trends
and insights.

Complete By

MD. MEHEDI HASAN RIFAT

ORGANIZOR

ELEGANT TOUCH LTD.