Whether you’re planning an event for the first time – or have been doing it for years, creating an event strategy for the year ahead is an important exercise.
Creating an event strategy can be helpful in many ways, particularly it will help you:
Identify opportunities – Where are the new opportunities to create an event? What opportunities are there to grow existing events?
Evaluate your resources – What resources including time, staff and budget are available? How can these be allocated? (More on this below)
Clarify your goals – What are your goals for the organization? For a specific event?
Keep you on track – having a strategy in place provides a roadmap so you can stay focused and not waste time or spin your wheels.
Mapping out your event strategy can be done any time of year. Below is a simple outline that can be used to plan the next 90-days, six months or year ahead.
Begin by reviewing your goals.
What are your company goals and objectives? Are you looking to increase your brand awareness, engage clients and/or employees or fundraise?
Identifying your company goals will help guide you in developing your event strategy. It’s a resource that can shape your planning to make sure your events align with and support the company objectives.
For example, if an organization’s goal is to build brand awareness, launching a thought leadership conference may be the best event format to help achieve that goal.
If a company wants to shorten their sales cycle, a workshop training or retreat for the sales team could help achieve that goal.
Every organization has different goals and those goals will change from year to year. Spending a few minutes to map out the goals, and identify how events can support the organization, is
Audience
Once you’ve mapped out the company goals, and identified a events strategy, it’s time to check in with your audience.
Who is your key audience for your event? Will it be designed for customers and clients? All employees or a specific department such as IT or the Sales team? Maybe you’re hosting an event for Board members or donors who support your nonprofit organization.
Determining the audience for each event helps to confirm your events are in line with company goals and can also identify new opportunities to connect with different audiences.
Review Your Resources
Now that you have a plan mapped out, it’s time to evaluate the resources available to help execute your strategy.
Resources can include budget, staffing, time, marketing and more. Reviewing these items provides a clear picture of potential gaps and how to adapt your strategy or resources to meet those shortfalls.
A few questions to review:
Budget – What is your overall budget? What are the potential costs of hosting an event?
Staffing – Do you have a team in place to accomplish your event strategy? Do you need to hire any vendors to support your team?
Timing – When are you planning to host your event? How much lead time do you need to market the event?
Community Building – Now that you’ve identified your audience, how will you connect with them? How can you grow your community? Social media presence?
Sponsorship opportunities – What are the opportunities for you to partner with individuals or companies who can support your event?
Measure Success
No event strategy is complete without identifying how you will measure success. Number of new qualified leads generated? Gross revenue? Increasing registrations by X percent?
Success looks different for every organization. Determine what success looks like for you so you can refer back to it as you develop your event.
Need help creating 2021 your event strategy? I’d love to help! Begin by scheduling a time for us to meet. Whether I give you a few quick tips, or you need more in-depth help, you’ll walk away with valuable ideas.