I can still remember the first conversation I had with one of my company’s vendors after I took over event planning (way back when). I was on a call with a managing partner of our conference booth provider and she said:
“Welcome to the CRAZY world of conferences!” – Anonymous Sage
I didn’t take that insight as seriously as I probably should have. Sometimes I get to feeling like I’m an insane person as I juggle the 8 million aspects of event planning. But it’s not all stress and craziness.
When your event comes around, and you’re reflecting on all of the little details that you agonized over, it’s going to be exponentially more satisfying to be able to enjoy all of your hard work instead of panicking through the event.
Over the years, I’ve collected a handful of event planning commandments that I think will help anyone who’s just getting started with corporate or personal planning.
Event Budget Hacking
Always start by identifying the maximum budget. The trick to successfully budgeting; however, is NOT to work within that maximum budget. A trick that has helped to save me from a lot of heartache has been to chop off 22% of my overall budget and put it to the side.
There are a lot of hidden costs that creep up whenever you’re working with events.
Whether it’s:
- Tax
- Gratuity
- Service fees
- Unexpected increase in attendees (impacts catering, furniture, and other #’s)
- Delivery/shipping charges
- Last minute “must-have” additions
Having a good amount of wiggle room throughout your planning is going to be helpful no matter what.
You’ll also be able to keep more of your budget in your pocket by planning events far in advance. The closer you get to the date of your event, the more likely you will be to overspend where you could’ve saved.
There’s early bird pricing for conference registration. Any travel (hotels, flights, etc.) will be less expensive the further out your book. Often, venues for dinners or parties will offer a discount for reserving the space months prior to the target date. These are among some of the sneakiest charges that are perceived as “set in stone”. Unless you’ve observed the fluctuations in pricing over time, like I have over the course of years of planning and budgeting, it’s easy to lose huge chunks of your money to these avoidable overcharges.
Mark Your Calendars!
I know that you’re going to be planning the most kick ass events. Who wouldn’t want to come to amazing conferences, riveting presentations, exquisite dinners, fun parties, etc.?! But the truth is that without ample notice, even your besties might miss out on all of your hard work.
With technology, communicating events has become so easy that calendars tend to fill up fast. You can use this to your advantage though. You don’t have to wait for all of the intricate details of your event to be finalized to communicate dates/locations to your guests.
Save-the-Dates aren’t just for weddings anymore. If you know the date, then so should your guests/attendees.
Most times, picking a date & finding a venue can go hand in hand. However, in the off chance that you are pigeon-holed into a date without a venue in mind you can STILL communicate to your list of people to reserve that date for your event. Just throw a good ol’ “TBA/TBD” in the location field of your Save-the-Date!
If you communicate a main value prop with your correspondence, then people will still put it on their calendars sans location.
What’s the “WOW” Factor?
Every event needs something memorable. Don’t get caught up trying to make every single aspect of your event “the absolute best thing that no one has ever seen before!” You will undoubtedly lose your mind, and you risk putting your guests into sensory overload (actually making your event LESS memorable).
Being unique is great, but if everything’s one-of-a-kind then it’s difficult to foster congruity across the event as a whole.
Start with the purpose of your event. Why are you planning this thing in the first place? Then try to pull out what makes you and your company interesting to people outside of your company? THEN start to brainstorm on ways to make your event special to your guests that will be meaningful to them and bring value to your company.
Example:
I struggle with selecting swag (aka trade show giveaways) for our conference booths. To me… it’s almost impossible for us to draw a solid line between the handfuls of pens that people grab during “walk-bys”, to any added value to reaching revenue goals.
So, in 2017 I didn’t spend any of our budget on refilling our trade show trinkets.
Instead, I figured out a badass promotion to get attendees engaged with our software in a fun and meaningful way. Then I communicated the main value prop correlation talk track to all booth staff to lead the conversation back to our programs.
The cherry on top was that we were giving away a 3D printer, and the only way to enter to win was to engage with the promotion in our software. Inevitably everyone who stopped by the booth was willingly talked through the value of the software in a non-threatening way.
No one was harassing passersby. No one was doing the “bait and switch”. No one was just running by to quickly grab knickknacks.
All around there were exclusively conversations of value. I feel like that’s a super win. I’m not going to call someone to sell them software when all they wanted was the branded lip balm from the show. But the person who has been hands-on with the program and who’s been exposed to the value of partnering with our company. Yeah. I’m for sure sending them to sales to follow-up with.
Giving away a sweet piece of technology was our unique factor, and then everything else was congruent with our messaging and our values. Everything was cohesive from the event, to the booth, to the promotion, to the conversations that we were having.
For more event and marketing tips, follow me on Twitter @NichelleBrooke where you can like, comment, or retweet any information that strikes your fancy.
As always, best of luck in your journey. If you found value in this piece, please feel free to share with your event planning friends!
nichelle brooke 