What You Can Learn From Managing An Event
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Although I’ve managed a number of events during my marketing career, it’s clear that you never stop learning. I recently returned from a large event where I had the opportunity to contribute toward many aspects of the conference and coordinate teams at the actual event.
This effort required thousands of miles of travel and long days – but they were all well worth it. The knowledge I gained could only be acquired through actually rolling up my sleeves and working the event.
Here are a few of the lessons that I feel are paramount when planning or managing a large conference or event:
1. Begin with a theme. Regardless of your topic, coordinating all aspects of your program around a theme is paramount. Once you determine the message that should be communicated, you can weave it into all aspects of your program. Without a theme, your show will have less meaning and leave participants uncertain of expected outcomes.
2. Carefully evaluate and prepare your speakers. Once you invited someone to speak as a keynote or to lead a breakout session, what they say and do is out of your control. To effectively manage this, it’s always advisable to hold a mini-boot camp, preparing and coaching your speakers appropriately.
3. Think about branding. Focusing on your theme, and your company brand, utilize signage, tablecloths, backdrops, etc. to provide a constant reminder of your brand. This keeps your brand in front of both customers and prospects in a way that is largely in your control.
4. Make the next steps clear. Think through conference pre-work, conference activities, and post activities. It’s important to have a clear understanding of what you want participants to do after the conference. Attendance is an excellent goal but really only the beginning. Provide verbal instructions, handouts, and other materials that provide clear access to post-conference materials and resources.
By addressing the larger issues of theme, preparing speakers, and branding effectively, you can improve the quality of your trade show or event experience. Although many factors go into a memorable event, some of the largest initiatives may be overlooked.
If you are new to managing events or an experienced event manager, always document what you are doing and how you are doing it. At the conclusion of your event, have a team meeting with everyone who participated so that you can revise your documents with best practices – preparing you to enhance your events in the future. Constant growth and refinement are essential for world class events!
Marketing Blog founder and top-selling author Michael Fleischner has been featured on The TODAY Show, ABC World News, and Bloomerg Radio. 
15 comments :
Event marketing has always been of great interest to me, thanks so much for sharing this article. Your ideas on branding were very helpful.
Brandy
If you want your event to be a masterpiece, then you need to explore the art of event management.
Great pointers! Recording your presentation is always a good idea as well. You can go back over your film and see, more clearly, your weak and strong points. Its nice to be able to go back and watch yourself or your team in action.
For me, organizing an event is like starting up a business. You must think about theme of your business, make a plan for it, and be updated about the latest trends. Marketing also plays great role for the growth of your sales. Every time your business continues improving its sales, expect that there are lots of tasks that will come to your way, like expanding manpower. For example, to be able to manage the clients' concerns, you'll hire agents from call center. Some companies do same thing because they can save time and expenses. Like in managing events, networking plays great role to launch a campaign, too.
I love reading other people's tips on event management because mistakes are often high profile and expensive. And I've made a few!
Your list here is pretty comprehensive - I'd also add in about the importance of the right venue and the right date.
Thank you for sharing.
Thanks for the great tips. Holding a mini boot camp for the speakers is very best tips out of everything. As I have seen many great events becoming average all thanks to the speakers who speak about unwanted things, I think you have given a really good tip to have a control of the speakers.
This is definitely a valid approach for some industries and fields. I agree that it’s often a struggle to market yourself or a product in a field that is saturated with competition. The only way is to be unique, and do something different with a twist. It’s interesting how making small adjustments on how you view your business and yourself can make all the differnce in the world. A good example of what you’re talking about is a butcher close to where I live. Around twenty years ago he started losing trade to the supermarkets and decided to make a change.
Great points Michael . . . I'd like to add one more thing here regarding Trade-Shows where you could take advantage of such event to build an adequate DATABASE out of stand or booth visitors. This is a practical approach toward lead generation. Of course one could do that by asking visitors to fill out a very short form - they could be provided with a simple giveaway after handing the form.
I think that some of the techniques and procedures they have implemented into events has helped to ensure that you will at least get some ROI. I recently went to an event and they scanned my badge at each stand to get my details.
Event Marketing is also quite often referred to as Experiential marketing - which gives customers an opportunity to engage and interact with brands, products, and services in sensory ways that provide the icing on the cake of providing information. The term "Experiential Marketing" refers to actual customer experiences with the brand/product/service that drive sales and increase brand image and awareness. It's the difference between telling people about features of a product or service and letting them experience the benefits for themselves; which ultimately creates a consumer based that is 'vested' in the product and has an emotional attachment.
Brand Activation is another topic that is often discussed and a relatively new "term" in the industry. It's pretty simple really; it's all about bringing the spirit of brands to life. The objective of Brand Activation is to make brands active in their markets, building their reputations along with results. Most fundamentally brand activation contributes in creating trust between the customer, the society and the brand. Trust is one of the key factors to create loyalty between consumers and brands, while sampling and distribution is the act of introduction of the consumer to the brand.
The alternative term customer-experience marketing emphasizes the idea of communicating the essence of a brand through a personalized experience. In today's economic climate clients are really looking for results out of their OOH initiatives and it is sometimes hard to determine which components will truly make an event shine...
I am confident that every thing you may have stated will undoubtedly pierce the ears of the readers and make them think about a lot more deeply about it. You genuinely showed them!
So true, and what’s perhaps even more devastating is that there’s been so little support to help the community rebuild. Event Staffing
Hi, just a moment back I was searching for the information on the experiential marketing topic and now I am here. So much information, really well executed blog.
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