COURSE: EVENT MANAGEMENT

Module 1: PROMOTION, FINANCES AND TICKETING

I. Promoting The Event

Promoting your event is almost as important as creating a great event. Without effective
promotion, you can put on a fantastic event but no one will come because they do not know
about it. Event promotion is often labelled as a marketing effort. Most of these efforts are
related to marketing events, charity events, concerts or any other type of event that you are
actively trying to draw the general public to. However, event promotion does not begin and
end with public events. Even private events need to have some type of promotion so that
people know about it. With a private event, you will not be buying up ad space. However,
you might still choose to use the Internet to help ensure that the invited guests know about the
event and to help drive engagement and interest in your event. In this module, you will learn
more about the different steps that you can take to promote an event.

A. When to Start Promoting Your Event

The best time to promote your event is now. As soon as you have a date and a place, you
should begin to drive public awareness and engagement with your event. This is especially
true if you are using social media to promote your event. When you begin promotion early,
you have more time to reach a larger audience and create momentum. Your event should be
firmly scheduled before you begin marketing the event. A day or a time can change in a
pinch. However, it is not good to begin talking about your event if there is a significant
chance that it may be cancelled in the near future. Private events have their own timelines
when it comes to promotion. You will often send out invitations to weddings or parties a few
weeks to a few months before the event depending on the clients’ needs. However, sending
out invitations and setting up an event website are still technically acts of promotion. This is
because they drive awareness among your invited guests. Your invitations and website will
also play a hand in convincing other guests to make time to come to the party. Thus, you
want to treat these with the same care that you would a media blast. There are three different
stages of events promotion. These stages include activities you do before your event, during
your event and after your event. As noted, the activities will vary depending on the type and
the needs of the event. In the next section, you will learn more about specific promotional
activities that you can use when trying to drive customer awareness.

B. Before Your Event

The tactics you use before your event are some of the most crucial because these are the ones
that will ensure that people actually come to the event. These tactics can begin at any time but
they should begin to ramp up as the event draws nearer in order to gain momentum.

1. Creating an Event Website

An event website will be one of the first things that you create. In most cases, this website
does not need to be complicated. It merely needs to convey all the relevant information that
event attendees would be interested in. You also need to include a tool that allows customers
to provide their details to receive more information.

You can choose to build your own event website or to use a website hosting system. You
should be sure to put up a landing page as soon as you begin promoting the event. For
example, if you are planning a wedding, using a wedding website hosting system is
completely acceptable. It will be used to distribute basic information. However, if you are
planning a large technology conference that needs to support heavy traffic, large amounts of
data and several applications, you need to create a custom website.

Creating a custom website can be done by the client in house. For larger clients and larger
events, this will often be the case. In the event that coding is not your forte or you are too
busy to work on websites, it is often useful to get in touch with a web designer and a
programmer to do this part of the job for you.

2. Using Email

Email is a great form of communication for sending updates about the event. These updates
might include crucial information about the event or they may help drive interest and
engagement with the event on other platforms like social media. You can use your event
website to collect email addresses of potential attendees. A good method to use is to store
them within a campaign on a service like MailChimp. MailChimp is a newsletter service that
lets you send out marketing campaign emails to a list of contacts.
The most important email that you will send will be the emails that are sent directly before
the event. This email should include or reiterate all of the most important information that
attendees of the event need. A good rule of thumb for using email is not to send emails unless
you have something new to say. For example, if you are hosting a conference and you have
confirmed a few new speakers, you could send out one email announcing all of the new
information. Avoiding sending out too many emails or sending out emails without a purpose.
These feel more like spam and can alienate customers.

3. Using Social Media

Social media is the ultimate tool for garnering event interest when it is used correctly. A great
way to utilise the social aspect of social media is to create a hashtag for your event. A hashtag
will make your event easy to find on social media, and it will allow other attendees to connect
with each other. Your hashtag can be used on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You should
aim to keep the same hashtag across every platform. When creating a hashtag, keep it short
and relevant. You also want it to be easy to spell and easy to remember so that event
attendees do not end up making up their own hashtags for the event.

Once you have created a hashtag, make sure that you use it. Include it on every marketing
tool that you use including your website, your newsletters, social media posts and any
physical marketing materials. Other ways that you can use social media include setting up
dedicated accounts or pages for customers to flock to. However, you should make sure that
this page is used regularly. The only thing worse than not using social media is having a page
and letting it sit idle. An inactive Facebook or Twitter account can have detrimental effect on
your event because from the outside, it won’t look like very much fun.

4. Writing a Blog

You should avoid using it as a way to disseminate essential information and instead use it to
tell attendees about the things they have to look forward to at the event.

A blog is also a great place to work with partners. For example, if you have booked a speaker
for an event, you might consider negotiating a contract that includes the speaker writing a
blog post.

This blog post might be for entertainment value but it can also serve to introduce the speaker
and make people more excited to see them.
 5. Using Traditional Media

Do not forget about traditional media when you are promoting your event. Unless you are
promoting a private family affair like a wedding or a private party, you will want to use
traditional media to continue to drive interest about your event. Using traditional media and
the Internet is a good tactic because they reinforce each other by providing legitimacy to your
event.

When someone sees an event in a news article that they have previously heard about online,
something clicks for them that the event is real and that a lot of people are interested in it.
This legitimacy can help drive attendance.

To enlist the help of the traditional media, you will need to create a press kit for your event.
The press kit should include a press release, photos, videos, flyers and anything else that is
useful for the type of event you are putting together.

Using journalists and other influencers to promote your event in their publications is a useful
way to encourage people to come to the event.

When contacting journalists, look for those who have an interest in the kind of event you are
putting together. You can then offer them an invitation to your event in exchange for
covering your event.

6. Use Industry Resources

Another effective way to promote your event before it happens is to cross promote using
industry resources.

If there are certain industries or industry associations who would have members with an
interest in your event, you can ask them if you can submit a press kit to them.

II. Promotion During and After the Event

A. Promotion During Event

Promotion does not end when your event begins. Now that you have your attendees in one
space, it is important to hold on to their interest all the way to the end of the event.
 1. Continue Using Social Media

Your hashtag is just as important during the event as it is before the event.

Continue to promote its use as the event continues so that people can interact with each other
while they are at the event.

Make sure that you interact with the hashtag, too. Leading by example is a good way to
encourage others to use these resources.

You should also be posting content while the event is running. Much of this content can be
created beforehand and put into a social media schedule like HootSuite.

However, if there are real time events that are not anticipated, be sure to respond to these as
well.

2. Host Contests

Contests are a great way to drive interaction and engagement during the event.

Once you have people captive, you can use a contest to help keep them engaged by asking for
small tasks in exchange for big prizes.

You can use contests at almost any type of event. For example, at a concert venue, you can
send out a trivia question by Twitter.

The person who first comes up with the right answer on Twitter might win a VIP table or
upgraded tickets.

B. Promotion After the Event

Once your event is over, you should take this opportunity to thank not only your team but
your attendees as well.
 1. Write a Wrap-Up Blog Post

A recap post is a creative way for you to reflect on all of the positive things that happened
during the event. A good wrap-up post should include a summary of the event or of the
presentations given.

If you have a speaker’s presentations, this is a good place to post them as well. Include
photos of the different activities that took place as well as a selection of photos of event
attendees. You can get these from your photographer if you hired one.

If you hired a videographer, this is also a good opportunity to include a wrap-up video. These
videos are emotive and will help drive attendees back to the event if it is run annually.

You can also re-use the hashtags and include the top posts from the event. Including
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts are useful because they show the event from the
attendees’ individual point of view.

Take the opportunity to formally thank your speakers, sponsors or anyone who gave their
time and expertise in a public manner.

2. Send Wrap-Up Emails

A recap post is a creative way for you to reflect on all of the positive things that happened
during the event. A good wrap-up post should include a summary of the event or of the
presentations given.

3. Use Social Media to Thank Everyone

By now, you have spent a lot of time thanking people. However, this is important and you
have a lot of people to thank for the success of your event.

You can also take to social media to say thank you to attendees, sponsors or anyone else who
made the event possible. Be sure to make some of these posts personalised, particularly on
Twitter.
You should also post some photos from the event on social media. Simply including your
best shots from the event is often enough.

You can use some of the same photos you used in the emails or blog posts but be sure to use
some different content to engage those who are actively following you.

Finally, just because the event is over does not mean that people will stop sharing. Continue
to respond to and share posts from other people in the days after the event. If your hashtag is
successful, this should be relatively easy to do.

III. Finances and Budgeting

Finances and budgeting are important parts of planning any event.

Creativity, design and leadership are also important; however, if you do not have the money
you need to pay your bills, a beautifully designed event just won’t happen.

One of the main reasons a person or company will hire you as an events planner is to make
sure their budget is managed properly. They will rely on you to be well connected in the
industry and know the best ways to spend money.

This is because budgeting is not about being cheap or trying to spend as little money as
possible. It is about value, or, getting the most from the money that you have.

Your ability to manage the event’s finances will directly impact your ability to get and keep
clients.

A healthy relationship with money is important, especially when you are dealing with
someone else’s cash.

A. Predicting the Financial Outcome of an Event

Not all events are organised with the objective of making money. Weddings, birthday parties,
corporate events and marketing launches are just a few of the events that you may not be
trying to profit from. In fact, some events, both personal and corporate, are designed to run
completely at a loss.

However, some events will want to profit. Tradeshows, sports events, fundraisers and galas
will all want to make more money than what is spent to achieve set financial goals.

If the event that you are planning is aiming to profit, you will need to create a budget that is
based on the predicted revenue that the event will bring in. While it is impossible to be
completely accurate, you should be treating figure not only as a prediction but as a goal that
you are actively working towards.

The amount of predicted revenue should complement the event’s budget. You want to be able
to walk away from the event with a revenue that did more than cover operational costs. The
goal of the budget is to help you find a way to profit and then make it happen.

You should be predicting financial outcomes from your very first meeting with your
client. You cannot begin to look at vendors or venues if you do not have a budget because
you will have no idea how much money you will have to spend.