Event planning: our dos and don’ts

There’s nothing worse than a poorly planned event. Master event planning and management with our tips below.

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 15 seconds

For any event to be successful, it is essential to exercise proper event management and planning - otherwise your guests will likely leave dissatisfied and disenchanted with your brand, and this in turn reflects badly on your organisational and cooperative capabilities.

According to HubSpot, “Event marketing is a highly valuable strategy for all kinds of businesses, from technology and education, to non-profit, medicine, and retail. Not only do events benefit their hosts and sponsors, but they also enrich the lives of their attendees. Events inspire, teach, intrigue, entertain, and bring people together in a way unlike most other marketing efforts.”

Factors to consider when planning an event

Your target market or buyer personas are key components in event planning. Keep them in mind to avoid your event feeling irrelevant. 

• Searching for a suitable venue.
• Arranging a caterer and checking everyone’s dietary requirements.
• Creating a communication plan.
• Setting up a date and time.
• Arranging relevant speaker opportunities or speakers.
• Confirming the amount of attendees.
• Organising entertainment for the guests.
• Creating a risk plan.
• Finalising your budget

Keep in mind that if you're a business, you would like to see an ROI in the long run.

Take note of the following to improve your ROI:

• Event registrations shouldn’t give you endless headaches, and should encourage user behaviour. Use HubSpot to create pre-populated trackable forms, and look at the value of the registries you’re getting and set up a prospecting list.
• Prospecting allows you to build trustworthy relationships, to secure future meetings and build brand awareness, through thought leadership.
• Always keep your customers happy by delighting them, make them feel competent and inspired to engage with you in the future. Make sure you have a robust communication plan so that they have good follow up communication and reminders for the event. Make use of this opportunity to provide them with some extra information to establish yourself as a thought leader.

As an Inbound Marketing Strategist and Event Specialist, I really feel it’s crucial to plan your events in a systematic way. HubSpot is a powerful tool when it comes to inbound marketing and content management, but it is so much more than that!

Use the below tools for effective event management and planning purposes:

• HubSpot Marketing and Sales Software and automation.
• Project timelines.
• Trackable link builders like bit.ly, if you’re not using HubSpot.
• Mailchimp for email blasts if you're not using HubSpot.
• Zoom, if you need to communicate with people living far away.

The Balance, a small online business, says, “Organisational tools for event planners abound, from software that tracks registration to templates for forms and spreadsheets. An event planning checklist that is customised for each event is one of the most valuable event planning tools regardless of your natural organisational ability. So figure out an organisational system that works for you because this is one of the most important event planning skills you can have.”

What I’ve learned from implementing event management at Spitfire Inbound

You can set up multiple automated features and lists, but if you don’t take responsibility for your tasks, nothing will work the way you want it to. Sales and marketing alignment are important. Each department should take responsibility for their actions and make use of the tools available to forecast, set up deals, create and send out good content and nurture and close prospects.

Don’t just communicate before and after the event, but keep communication lines open during the periods in between. This will not only help with the decline in sessions between events, but it will also allow for nurturing and delight strategies.

Make sure you are planning your events ahead, download our marketing calendar below: