Create a Buzz
For people to attend your event you need to get them excited
enough about it to entice them out of their offices and into your venue. You
can do this by providing event content that they feel they simply should not
miss. You can also do it by making your event so exciting or prestigious that
they’ll attend simply to be part of the spectacle. The best events, of course,
combine both elements.
Timing
All areas of an event require extensive planning but one of
your most basic considerations should be the timing of your event. Research
dates that are important to the industry you are working within. Are there any
other events or exhibitions coming up that might conflict with yours? Might
your attendees be suffering from event overload?
Pick dates and times that are convenient to your attendees.
Staging an event at 5.00pm one Friday during the school holidays is unlikely to
result in a full house.
Invitations & Registration
Don’t skimp on your invitations. Invitations are an
important part of creating a buzz about your event. They should make people
feel that they will miss something important to their business lives if they
don’t attend.
And if people do accept your invitation, you need an
effective way of keeping track of them. Make sure you have an adequate
registration process in place. Increasingly, for larger events, this can be
web-based.
Delegate
Given the complexity of today’s events it is impossible to
do everything yourself. Make sure you have the right sort of people available
with the right sort of skills, and then delegate the implementation of the
various aspects of the event to them.
Rehearse
You want your event to look professional. You want it to go
like clockwork. The only way to do this is to rehearse the major components of
the show, particularly key speakers, performers, and your audiovisual
presentations.
Creativity
In the business world, the content of your event may well be
ground that has been covered before to some extent. But if, in your process of
event management, you think outside the square, if you apply your creativity
and present that content in a way no one has seen before, your attendees will
be talking about your event for weeks afterwards.
Risk Management
No matter how good your skills at event management,
disasters sometimes strike. Make sure you have procedures in place to deal with
them. It may be nothing more threatening than a speaker who doesn’t show up, or
it may a fire in the auditorium…
Measure Your Results
The success of your event will depend on how close you have
come to achieving the goals you identified when you defined your objectives. To
determine your level of success you’ll need to implement some sort of
measurement process. Consider things like questionnaires and email surveys
after the event.
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