Have you ever wondered as an event professional whether you are planning or managing an event? Is there even a difference between the two? If so, what is the difference?
Well, first of all, the answer to all of the above questions is, YES!. Event planning and event management are 2 different things. By understanding the processes that are involved in the two is how we’ll understand the difference between both the concepts.
“ Plan before you can manage”.
In simple words, planning comes before managing, events.”
So, what is Event Planning?
Event planning is a pre-event planning process within overall event management activities that includes budgeting, establishing timelines, selecting and reserving the event sites, acquiring permits, planning food, coordinating transportation, developing a theme, arranging for activities, selecting speakers and keynotes, arranging for equipment and facilities, managing risk, and developing contingency plans.
What is Event Management?
Event management, within the scope of MICE events, is a process of organizing and executing meetings with a planned agenda where people or professionals interact with each other and successfully exchange, knowledge, experience or a solution for any particular challenge.
Let’s first understand what is it to plan an event?
- Decide Event Theme & Objective:
This is the heart of your event, event profs cannot afford a lack of clarity on this. To get this started event marketers or event organizers must try this. Take a pen & paper and write down answers to the questions below.
- Who is this event for?
- What is/ are objective/s of this event?
- How much investment is needed for successfully conducting the event?
- What will be the form of this investment? Time, money, talent or others.
- What KPI will you track for measuring the event’s RoI?
2. Plan & allocate budget:
Different events have different needs and hence budget allocation is a function of the type/purpose of your event. Planning this is the second big step.
However, if you still need to generalize this for most event types, one must consider these areas to set aside a certain amount.
- Venue Cost
- Software & Tech
- Catering & Food budget
- Transportation & Logistics
- Marketing budget
- A/V budget
- Production costs
3. Set Timelines:
Plan the timing of your event is imperative. A simple analogy would be that of releasing a feature film. Any delay in the process could cost a bomb.
Try to get answers to these questions to keep it simple.
- When should the event be held? (You don’t want to coincide it with a major festival or other significant events to divide your visitorship)
- When should you start your marketing campaigns? ( Too early or too late both will result in more spends and fewer returns)
- When should your registration start and when should it end?
- What should be your vendor delivery timelines and SLAs?
A lapse in timing can lead to a significant impact on the success of your event.
4. Finding event sponsors & partners
Sponsors and partners are important to plan, most events where the goal of the event and that of sponsors find strong synergy are instantly funded, additionally, they have a strong association demand.
The next step is to manage the six aspects of an event; awareness, promotion, ground operations, attendee management, engagement & experience and finally the event success parameters.
Managing an Event:
Let us take a look at the six core aspects of managing every conference, business meet or any other.
Event Awareness
We have an event coming up, come join us. Well, not exactly how you’d spread awareness about your event.
We all know that the world is now more active online, so having an SEO optimized event website is a no brainer.
A good event website works as a trailer to your actual events, with feature videos, image gallery, session information, attendee profile, and speaker list. In an event website, you have a medium to showcase the value your event has to offer.
Take inspiration from these amazing event websites if you are working on one.
Next comes, working on your Event SEO. Yes, if you want Google to rank your event at the top and let people know about it, you need to work on optimizing the event website for better search results. Here is a comprehensive article explaining how to execute event SEO, by SEJ.
Promotion & Marketing
You need a full house and for that, you must market your event’s value and sell out all the seats and so, this is exactly how you must work your marketing & promotions game.
To Market, your Event’s value, work on:
a. Communication: In-line with the event’s objective, clear Call-to-Actions (Register, Refer, Buy, Book or RSVP).
b. Choose Marketing Channels as per your attendees’ demographics.
Example:
LinkedIn Ads might be a better option to promote a technology conference than Instagram Ads.
Having Billboard and Newspaper ads might just suit the best when you expect most of your audience to be from the same city or region.
c. Ticketing & Registration strategy: Ever bought those tickets that are on an “early bird” sale? Well, that is the best example of a promotional strategy. There are a plethora of schemes that one might plan to sell out their event tickets. Some trending promotional ideas are Group discounts, Coupons vouchers, affiliation discounts, and membership privileges, etc.
Executing this could at times seem intimidating but there are tech solutions available in the market that does this for you. Hubilo’s Event ticketing & registrations do this for some of the world’s biggest events.
d. Get your event listed:
Portals like 10times allow event lists for free and have one of the largest subscribers bases. Listing events on such a global or regional portal works best for any open event as they provide larger visibility to the event.
e. Email & SMS:
Email and SMS are perhaps the oldest promotional tactic, yet most effective unless underused. Here is how event professionals must use Email & SMS for event management.
– Set-up Promotional Emails & SMS campaign
– Make separate marketing campaigns by attendee categories
– Draft multiple email copies. Keep your message crisp and clear
- Email & SMS with event information and why to buy tickets
- Email & SMS about the previous event experience
- Email on visitors & speaker profile
- An email with special promotional offers, if any
f. Keep your attendees well informed about the venue, how to reach, reporting time & schedule, etc.
On-Ground Operations
The most challenging part about managing an event is ground operations. Let us see, what are some challenging on-site event operations?
1. Event Production:
The most stressful coordination for any event is the production part. It is imperative that your team has people who are great with project management. Managing event production is clearly how good a project manager you have.
Here is a sample track sheet to manage your event’s production.
2. Queue Management/ Attendee Management:
The second most stressful job is to manage live attendees as they start to show up at your event.
One of the best practices we’ve seen so far was by one of our enterprise clients. Here is what they did:
- Created Multi-category registrations and provided in-App destination guidance to the registration/ entry booth.
- They utilized multiple venue gates for their entry to avoid congestion
- Used QR-code based Mobile Check-in via a Mobile Check-in App
- The venue had clear direction signages separated by color codes.
3. Badge-printing:
Ahh! By far the most vulnerable part of ground operations in an event. Badge printing in most events these days makes us of 2 things; first — a badge printing software and second — badge printer.
Why not get them printed in advance? Well, for smaller or close group events this is the best part. However, for events where registrations are open till a day before the event or have on-spot registrations, having badge-printing solutions can ease a lot of your struggles.
Make sure to get your software and printing device their prerequisites i.e. stable electricity and good internet speed.
4. Event Engagement and Networking
Your event’s attendees come to your event for a reason, that is, the find value in attending it. So, why then their physical presence is required? You could have hosted a webinar, Web-meet or a Web-ference instead?
Your attendees are after all humans who value interactions, networking or engagement. People often visit events to explore the unknown opportunities they might discover upon visiting. Whatever the case might be as an event professional you must focus on the event’s Engagement & Networking” part.
So, how to ensure the best event engagement & networking experience? Such that it elevates the overall experience of your event attendees?
As an event planner, you must ask yourself these questions and answer to those will be how exactly can you manage the most important aspect of any event.
- How do you encourage networking at events?
In order to encourage networking at your event, you must facilitate the below points to your event attendees.
- Send out Emails campaigns with relevant attendees profiles and book a meeting link.
- Make the list of fellow attendees accessible to either all or selected people.
- Let the attendees send and receive meeting requests, chat online without sharing their numbers.
- Set-up meeting booths for attendees to meet and have a conversation
- Create section/categories filters both on the venue as well as online, making it easy for event attendees to search for relevant people to network.
- Build a strong membership community and offer them a good quality of match-making concierge services.
A large part of these facilities can be provided by using a networking platform or by having an Event App made especially for your event attendees or for the members of the association.
- How do you engage attendees at your event?
Engage the crowd to make them a loyal audience, to do so event planners must give the power in the hands of the visitors. Let them decide what to consume, all as an event professional you must do is to arrange the progression and set-up so that your attendee stays informed. This is how most of our associates, partners, and clients do it.
- Inform attendees about Sessions & Speakers via social media, Event App or through on-site concierge services
- Stream live videos of influencers on KIOSK or on the Event app.
- Create a twitter chat for live events and publish them on your event app
- Conduct live polls on your mobile application or on social media platforms
- Host Q&A sessions with industry influencers.
- Use mobile push notification to keep attendees aware of sessions they have sign-up for.
- Develop on-site or on-line games for attendees to participants. Example: EWC hosted by the MISK Global forum.
It is imperative to plan for any or all of the above engagement and networking practices in order to give your events an experience. Attendees remember events via the experience they had, hence, a great experience means great attendee retention and this translates to a successful event.
