Written by Chris Richardson
If we had to name a single factor that’s responsible for an event’s success, it would have to be the process of management. That’s a broad concept that involves planning for all stages of the events, making announcements, handling the finances, promoting the event on social media and providing high-quality website content, arranging everything with the tickets, inviting speakers, booking the catering… It’s a lot on the manager’s plate.
Without a proper strategy, you’ll be a hot mess right before the deadlines, and you won’t even be able to evaluate how much work you’re left with before the big day.
Let’s explore the top five event management strategies that work, so you can focus and stay calm while making arrangements.
1. Make a Plan and Delegate the Responsibilities
The first thing you need to do is make an actual plan. Give yourself deadlines for securing the venue, arranging the details for catering, printing out the tickets, and everything else that matters. Use your Google Calendar or any other app you prefer!
It’s not just about setting deadlines. It’s also about delegating responsibilities. An event manager cannot take care of everything without support, no matter what level of commitment and talent we’re talking about.
- First, list the things you’re going to need help with. Who’s going to print the tickets? Can you delegate that responsibility to someone from your team? Who’s going to write the website content and take care of social media marketing? If you don’t have a talented writer to count on, you can always rely on an assignment service.
- Each task in your calendar should have a person assigned to it. Of course; this plan will be transparent and you’ll take every person’s confirmation that they can handle the workload. If somebody has a problem, you’ll reassign the task to someone else.
2. Manage the Team Along the Way
So you assigned the tasks and everyone seems okay with the responsibilities they got. Now what? Will you relax knowing that things are taken care of? Of course not! You’re the manager, so you have to manage.
You can use a task management tool like Asana to keep everyone coordinated or Conference Harvester to assign staff to rooms.
These are great for setting up task reminders, so you’ll make sure everyone is on track. You’ll also get notifications on the progress of the tasks, so you’ll practically eliminate tons of stress throughout the process.
3. Get Updates on the Metrics
“How are the ticket sales going?” “Great!”
That’s not the type of conversation you want to have with your team. Until you get a precise answer that involves numbers, you can never know exactly how things are going.
These are the main metrics you should track:
- The budget – how much are you spending and how much are you saving?
- The number of people who signed up and the number of people who bought the tickets.
- The revenue from ticket sales.
- The number of visits to the web page that promotes the events.
- The engagement on social media – likes and shares.
Check these details daily, so you’ll see how you’re making progress. It’s important to know your numbers, so you’ll know how much food to order and how many more people to invite. These numbers will also show the effectiveness of your campaign. If things are not going well, it means your strategy needs a boost.
4. Stay Flexible
So you plan selling 100 tickets during the first week of the promotional campaign. All your marketing efforts are focused on achieving that goal. But surprisingly, you find out that your target audience is split between two similar events in the same week: yours and a competitive event that just got announced.
What do you do? You can either invite a better guest speaker to attract more attention, or change the date of your event.
Whatever you decide to do, you have to change something. You must stay flexible, so you’ll meet the changing demands of your strategy.
5. Have a Meeting Agenda
Of course you’ll look to online tools like Asana and Conference Harvester to discuss the progress of the strategy with your team, but will that be enough? Actual meetings may lead to more productivity and creative proposals.
Have an agenda for each meeting and share it with everyone, so they will come prepared. Let them know what the next steps are, and discuss the progress of the event planning process. Use the time you have together with your team to collaborate. Allow everyone to share their struggles and offer assistance whenever necessary.
You’ll handle the planning process much more gracefully when you follow a proper strategy. So make sure to prepare your plan and start going through all steps as soon as possible.
About Chris
Chris Richardson has been working as an editor at a publishing agency in London, UK for 5 years. He is also a professional content writing expert in such topics as career growth, self-improvement, blogging, and technology innovations. Feel free to connect with him on Google+.