Top 5 Event Planning Challenges…Solved

The best part of being an event planner can also be the worst. The variety, excitement and increasing responsibility of your job is what you love, but it also can keep you up at night.

It’s very likely that these 5 event planning challenges have led to a few sleepless nights – but read on and learn how to master some of your most difficult event marketing obstacles. 

Challenge #1 – Selling those tickets

What if no one shows up? All the event planning you do is for nothing without an audience, so how about a few things to to boost attendance?

1. Generate social media buzz from those who already get it. Encourage registrants to share your event using prominent social buttons or pop-ups on registration pages. Leading up to the event, send out exciting, sharable speaker and networking updates.
2. Ask for referrals – and make it worth their while. Incentivize your attendees to share your event, or better yet sign-up a colleague through contests, two-for-one offers, VIP benefits and swag.
3. Pick up dropped registrations, and bring them all the way home. With thoughtful target marketing and a series of strategic emails, reach out and convert those who stalled midway through registration.    

Challenge #2 – Shrinking event budgets

Feeling the pressure to provide increasingly sophisticated events for lower budgets? Most event planners are in the same boat, so what if you could do more with less?

1. Realize that inexpensive event websites and registration pages are possible. You don’t need a web design team to do it either. Look for an event tech solution with flexible registration forms, and beautiful customizable website templates.
2. Recruit creative sponsorship. Support doesn’t have to be in the form of cash, although that works too. Event sponsorship can be services, refreshments or giveaways. Treat sponsors well with lots of recognition, and they’ll be asking to be back next year.
3. Negotiate effectively. Do your research to understand what is a fair price for similar products or services and bring that to your preferred suppliers. Discounts are rarely offered to those who don’t ask.

Challenge #3 – Doing it all yourself

Event marketers are often expected to be designer, team lead, marketer, sales and finance experts. Ready to avoid a sure-fire way to overwhelm?

1. Delegate what you can. It’s an often-repeated, but not often followed piece of advice. As an event planner, you’re probably a bit of a Type A perfectionist, but doing it all yourself leads to burnout.
2. Eliminate unnecessary work. From re-creating recurring events from scratch each year to tedious data entry while using tools that aren’t integrated, great event automation technology can become your best friend.
3. Know when to bring in the experts. As events grow, some resources need to grow as well. For example, what aspects of your work would be best given to a financial expert or speakers liaison?

Challenge #4 – Juggling your software, digital channels and apps

You’ve probably got a bucket load of lead generation, web design, project planning, social media, and team collaboration tools as part of your worklife. How about coordinating them easily all in one place using event planning software?

1. Integrate lead management sales and marketing software. Are you already using tools like Hubspot or Salesforce? Seamless integration is essential for your whole marketing team, filling up your pipeline with robust details about attendees.
2. Generate automated emails and notifications. You need to be able to instantly reach out to attendees before, during after the event. Sharing interesting, insider content is a sure fire way to keep them engaged.
3. Deliver real-time, secure and engaging online attendee surveys. For recurring events, make sure the survey questions are very similar year-after-year for comparison’s sake.

Challenge #5 – Tracking and measuring event ROI

Wondering how much pipeline was actually created from your last event? Others in your organization likely are too. Here’s how to measure some of that impact.

1. Develop KPIs that make sense for your business. Measuring for measurements sake is not effective. Instead ensure the whole team knows what the primary and secondary goals are for each event. Revenue, sales leads, membership?
2. Get the right tools to understand the whole story. Did you know you can easily track, measure and analyze your events using an integrated event management software?
3. Review, refresh and refine your events plan. So many event planners are responsible for 3 or more repeatable events each year. Use your ROI analysis to make changes that will have the most impact next time.

Event professionals can have it all. Get some balance (and sleep) back in your life by embracing and mastering these event planning challenges.    

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Attendease is a cloud-based marketing automation solution for corporate event managers and teams. A modern, feature-rich event management software that enables the management of an entire range of events of all types and sizes.