Here is a 12-point event planner template to make your life easier. Download here
February 18, 2011
Guide to Marketing Your Event
There’s more to marketing then just telling people about your event. Your message needs to be simple yet compelling – and it needs to reach your target audience. You must also keep it cost effective. Here are some key issues you need to think about when preparing to market your event.
Identify the Amount of Marketing Required
If you’re putting on a training course with a dozen places and you know plenty of people are interested in coming, there’s virtually no marketing required. Just make sure they know where and when it is and the job’s done.
If you’re arranging an event where lots of children will be performing you’ll have a ready-made audience from their families – so again, you might not need to do any marketing.
However, your might be hosting a concert. This time you’ll need lots of marketing, because if you don’t tell people it’s happening there’ll be no one there.
Plan Your Marketing Well in Advance
You need to start your marketing effort well before the event. Diaries fill up so give your audience lots of notice. For many events give at least 2-3 months notice, and more if the event spans multiple days or is going involve several hundred people. You also need to plan the timing of your marketing. For example – if you want to put posters up three months before the event, allow time for the artwork to be designed, agreed and the posters printed. If you’re going to include a link to a website on the marketing material, the website needs to be ready before the material goes out.
Plan Your Marketing Content
Your marketing needs to convey a number of different messages. It needs to tell people:
What the event is.
Why they should be there.
Where it’s being held.
When it’s happening.
How much it will cost.
How to book, if booking is required.
August 22, 2010
Holding a Post Event Review
A key part of planning a successful event is learning from previous experience. The best way to do this is to review an event soon after it’s over. As part of this review you record what went well and what didn’t, what can be improved on and what should be changed. A post-event review might involve meeting with others involved and having a discussion, or it may be that you just make a note of how it went and file it away. What’s important is that you do it, and that you can find it again when you need it.
How to Conduct a Post Event Review
If a number of people were involved in organising and running the event you should arrange a meeting to discuss how it went.
This doesn’t need to be very formal – just gather for coffee and share your experiences. It’s essential that someone records the issues discussed. If you come to run another event a few months later you’ll find the feedback invaluable. It would be great if you could get some input from someone who attended the event. They can tell you how it went from their perspective and that might reveal good and bad points that you weren’t aware of. If the event was small and you were the only organiser you can still make a note of how it went and of the lessons that you learned.
Suggested Approach
Here’s a one way of looking at your event; it’s called a SWOT analysis. This stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.
