Events can be a stressful thing to manage, because there’s so very much that you need to think about. Pulling everything off is a challenge, especially when you’re trying to impress customers, clients or partners. The key is of course in the planning. If you can set everything out in advance, and stick to your strategy, then you’ll be fine. Here’s a quick guide to getting any event right in that crucial planning stage.
Step 1: What Do You Want to Achieve?
Too often people attend events for the sake of it. They don’t know exactly why they’re there other than to be seen, which is never a good thing. Whether you’re attending a trade show or holding your own event, set out from the very beginning what your business goals are. You can then build everything else around this. You’re unable to determine whether an event was successful or not if you never knew from the outset exactly what you wanted to get from it. You might not be able to pin down exact metrics and KPIs, but if you can then this is very valuable indeed.
Step 2: What is Your Budget?
We’d all love to throw extravagant events that customers remember for years, but the reality of business is that this isn’t always financially viable. Make sure you’ve got a clearly defined budget to work with from the outset, rather than having to go back each time you look at each component of the event to find out if you’re able to get the funds for it. One the one hand you may have the budget for a full-scale exhibition tent like the ones here, or you may need to find somewhere that can host you.
Step 3: Who is Your Target?
Knowing exactly who is at the event will be very useful, because tailoring everything to them will help ensure you get a strong return on your business’ investment. Every aspect of the event should be aimed towards them, whether this means having drinks and food on hand that you know a partner likes, to ensuring you bring any new products that your target market might want to see. If you’re at something like a trade show, then make sure that you have a good discussion from the organisers to find out exactly who is going to be attending, based on previous events and invites.
Step 4: Plan, Plan, Plan
Once you know all of the above, you can properly start to plan your event, whatever it may be. The more things that you can work out and set in stone in advance, the smoother things will run on the day or days of the event.
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