Planning a festival as an event is a tedious process with so many moving parts. One wrong step can turn the entire process into a complete disaster — like the Fyre Festival debacle.
To avoid such colossal embarrassments, every facet of your event must go through a meticulous planning and execution process.
If you are hosting a campus rave, your publicity campaign should make students go: “This rave is about to be lit! I better find someone from a college essay writing service to save time”. And if you are focusing on tech geeks, the event planning should factor in their interests.
With that in mind, we have gathered 11 essential tips on how to plan an event with maximum success.
1.) Define the event’s objectives
The first step when planning an event is to determine the goal. Is it a birthday party or a corporate event? Will the participants gain from the event or spend money?
Understanding and establishing an objective narrows down the planning requirements to specifics. And answering the questions above will help you develop a framework for your event. After all, the event master plan for a music festival and a religious event differ significantly.
2.) Create an event plan
With an objective in mind, facilitate a plan of action. Your event plan must contain a venue and date. Spread out all the activities leading up to the event to make sure everything is set before the deadline. In essence, give yourself enough time to execute the plan and start an outreach campaign. Check the calendar and note national holidays. The weather report might also be a necessity for outdoor events.
Moreover, if you want to hire artists, speakers, or performers, reach out to their agents to confirm their availability. Consider hiring backup performers in case one of the main acts flakes out at the last minute.
3.) Focus on a specific audience
Who are the participants? What is the estimated number of attendees?
You need to find out the demographics of people attending the event. For example, most partygoers will drink alcoholic beverages, which means frequent visits to the bathroom. So, you must factor that in and provide enough alcohol and toilets.
Also, the number of participants will help you choose a venue with enough capacity. For outdoor events, you can select an area with access roads and enough room for mobility.
4.) Plan a budget
A budget will help you figure out if your plans can materialize with the financial backing available. Now that you know the audience and you have a date, you can start working on a budget.
The main contents of your budget should be location, promotion, performers, and miscellaneous services. Don’t be afraid to revise the budget as new information and ideas come to light.
Bear in mind that you will need a detailed account of every expense when presenting the budget to a sponsor. Factor in every dime and include miscellaneous expenses for unforeseen circumstances.
5.) Contact sponsors
If you are planning a corporate event, you won’t need to contact sponsors since the company covers the expenses. But if you are hosting your own event, sponsorship will help you cover the initial costs.
With your highly detailed budget, reach out to different potential sponsors for assistance. Also, don’t forget to highlight the amount of exposure the event will give to their product. Essentially, any potential sponsor can only back your event if they are convinced that you are the real deal.
Moreover, financial backing from a well-known sponsor gives your event some legitimacy and invaluable clout.
6.) Organize your team
You cannot do everything on your own. Surround yourself with enough professionals in different fields, like marketing and event planning. You need designers, social media marketing specialists, and sales experts.
These professionals often serve as sounding boards for your ideas. Moreover, their specialization and experience give them valuable contacts that often decrease the cost of production.
7.) Hire enough human resources
Apart from your immediate team, you need independent crews working on realizing the final objective. Any event needs the input of people of different specializations — caterers, movers, media crews, etc.
Refer to your budget when hiring event caterers and movers. Use recommended companies to avoid disappointments. Moreover, these companies often provide multiple services as a package, which will help you reduce expenses. Most importantly, don’t forget about security during the event planning process.
8.) Start a marketing campaign
Creating awareness for your event is an essential part of planning. With that in mind, you must ensure that everything else is in perfect shape before you start marketing.
The best way to advertise your event is through online platforms. Event promotion should focus on social media rather than traditional advertising. Your event can garner more attention across social media platforms with the right strategy.
Here are some reliable promotional campaigns:
- Come up with a catchy name and include a theme. Publish a list of potential speakers and performers. You know the event sounds way more appealing if Beyonce will take the stage.
- Create a page for the event and allow users to indicate interest and share with friends. For example, apps like Facebook Events are useful for creating awareness.
- Hire social media influencers to promote the event. Choose only influencers with a massive audience in the event niche. Nobody wants to see PewDiePie promoting a religious event (even though that would be top content).
- Use banners, clips, promotional videos, and images to promote your event. A graphics team should take care of all media content.
- Create event merch for people interested in buying souvenirs. Selling merch can also help you recoup some money spent on planning.
9.) Keep the registration process stress-free
Nobody wants to go through stress to get tickets. The last thing you need is for the website to crash from traffic due to online ticket sales. Therefore, hire tech experts to provide high-end servers for incoming traffic. And always test the site before publishing it to the rest of the world.
10.) Go Live
Regardless of the nature of the event, you need a live stream. Distance, emergencies, and other reasons can prevent users from participating in the event physically. So, you need to provide a virtual experience for those absentees. Take a poll of participants to get an estimate of interested virtual attendees.
Moreover, live streams and broadcasts also serve as awareness creation tools for future events. You can limit participation to the paying attendees or the general public.
11.) Hire an excellent post-production crew
Post-production involves videos and photo reportage of the event. The participants might want clips and highlights from the event for their social media. So, hire a professional crew to capture the entire event in pictures and videos. They should also be responsible for editing the final images from the event.
Before you start planning an event, you must have a clear picture of the attendees and objectives. Create a budget and look for sponsors if necessary. Also, organize a marketing campaign to create awareness for your event. Use popular tastemakers and influencers to reach a broader audience. More so, hire a production crew to cover the event — from ticket sales to media coverage.
And most importantly, don’t forget about the virtual audience. You must follow these guidelines for your event to be a resounding success. Don’t play with Fyre!
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