It’s the start of the new year and a new decade and you should definitely be thinking about what to include in your event strategy this year! Having an event strategy is extremely important, as events can help you build your brand, your reputation, and more importantly, your business relationships! A clear strategy allows you to focus on the desired outcomes of your events and how to go about achieving them. It’s no secret that planning events doesn’t happen overnight; it takes a lot of thinking time, development time and lead time to bring everything together and they require valuable planning for them to be successful and worthwhile. So, here’s The Secret Event Service’s 5 tips to creating a well-defined events strategy:
1. Focus on the attendees first
Who do you want to be attending your events? And why? Is it your dream clients? The best way to get the most out of your events is to identify who you’re targeting and create the event visions surrounding the attendees needs. This will help you figure out what you want to achieve from your events.
2. Now you need to think about what you want the event to be to your attendees
Whether you want it to be a learning opportunity for your attendees. Or whether you would like to position yourselves as thought leaders by focusing the event around a problem that your attendees are facing. You can then solve this problem through bringing in an experienced speaker or discussion panel. Once you have the ‘what’ nailed, you can start to think about why…
3. It’s really important to understand why you’re holding this event, otherwise the vision can get lost
The last thing you want is your attendees leaving feeling as though they didn’t gain anything from attending. Ask yourself how you want to be positioned: As experts? As a trusted, reliable organization? Or as a sought-after partner? This will really help you define what your attendees are going to get from attending the event, and make you feel as though you’re holding the event for a reason!
4. Following this, you need to visualize the wider picture
Can this be developed into a recurring event? A recognized brand in its own right and something that people look forward to attending? One piece of advice that we’ll give you is to always think about the wider picture. Where does your event fit within your wider marketing strategy? Think about how you want to be represented to the public and potential clients by holding these events, and what you want them to talk about when they leave. Once these questions are answered, you will have a clearer understanding of whether you’d like to hold your events quarterly, annually, or more frequently than this. Recurring events can create communities which in turn can truly benefit your business and profits.
5. How do I do all of this?
You may be thinking “I would love to create an events strategy to build our brand and position our organization as thought-leaders, but I have no idea how to actually pull the events off?” Well, this is why The Secret Event Service exists: to help you with your events! We are experts in the field and can support you from the simplest of things such as finding the perfect venues, to starting from scratch to help you turn your ideas into reality! The result of hosting events can be pivotal to organizations, and once you become a recognized events host, the return in investment can be completely worth it.
I hope these 5 tips given you a greater understanding of what it takes to create a well-defined events strategy. If there’s one thing to take away from this extensive guide: your event goals are crucial to your event strategy. Having concrete goals will provide you with the direction you need to proceed with your event strategy timeline, in 2020 and beyond. If you’d like us to help you with your events strategy in 2020, you can get in touch with me at natalia@secreteventservice.com.
Don’t forget follow us;