Before your event sees the light of day (or experiences the energy of the night) you face some important decisions. Once you have the offering down, it is time to book a venue (or find a suitable hosting software for virtual events). Venue booking is tricky because many factors come into play. From budget, capacity, stipulations from the venue or municipality, and sanitary facilities, to security, crowd control, catering options, weather, and technical setup, there is much to consider. Communications and branding can come into play during location management as well, because it may take some effort to convince venue operators, staff, and volunteers of supporting your event, especially if budgets are limited.

One factor that is often not given as much attention as it deserves is the event date(s). Even if you prepare and produce everything perfectly, poor scheduling will ruin it all. This decision requires stakeholder coordination. Venue, crew, speakers, and performers all have limited availability and varying preferences.

The most important stakeholders are of course the participants. Is your event on or around a holiday? Could a religious ceremony (such as Ramadan/Passover) or planned construction have an impact? Is there a competing offer on the same date or close to it? Are there enough public transport options there and back? These factors demand attention. For larger productions, it can be worth it to run a questionnaire among potential participants to learn their preferences. Eliminating barriers to purchase is a fundamental marketing activity. This also counts for event marketing.  

Often, event organizers wish to create a brand identity made specifically for an event or event series. You want to stand out and appeal to your target audience. At the same time, it might be necessary to adhere, or at least relate, to the (visual) identity of your organization. For event series, brand recognition and recall are additional factors.

It’s not only about design though. I recommend putting some effort into name development, as a great and memorable name can go a long way during promotion.

Large-scale events and event series usually have a website. Ideally one that serves as a promotion and booking tool, provides important information for (potential) attendants, and keeps everyone in the loop before and after the production.

The first question to consider when it comes to registration is if you can use one of the many ticketing services, such as Eventbrite, Ticketmaster, and Eventfrog, or if you need to acquire dedicated registration software. Ticketing services are convenient and easy to use but limited. If you need detailed and customized information about your participants, it will probably not be possible to collect those through a ticketing service. Privacy concerns and fees play a role here as well. So does communicating with participants.

Eventbrite, for example, allows you to send Emails to attendants, but in an awkward design and without many branding opportunities. Sure, it is possible to rely on other software, such as Mailchimp, to communicate with attendants, but those usually do not sync with registration software. An example of a common issue that arises without a sync is that participants who cancel still receive information intended only for attendants. This can irritate or scare them and lead to unnecessary queries. For events that require a lot of after-sales communication, dedicated registration software is likely needed. These always offer ticketing & Email solutions and sometimes even have a built-in event homepage creator.

Sounds straightforward, after all, the requirements are not that complex? Well, I wish it were. Although there is a plethora of event registration solutions, somewhat surprisingly, they are much more expensive than you would think and most of them kinda suck. Make a wise choice, because you will not be able to change the registration software halfway through the process…

A recommendation I have in this regard is Wild Apricot. I find this Canada-made cloud service to be a good and affordable all-in-one solution, especially in membership contexts.

Event promotion is the heart and soul of event management. As with all communications, channels and messaging depend on the target audience. I know that I preach all over this website that social media is a waste of time. For event promotion, however, social media is pretty rad (for the non-Gen Z: I’m saying it works and it is cool). Socials are not just great for finding participants and generating buzz, but they can also be used to share important info and build anticipation for confirmed participants. If you have existing social channels, it will likely be best to use them for event promotion instead of starting at zero followers with new pages. If you start at nil, paid ads can create traffic and awareness.

Other commonly used digital promo channels are newsletters or YouTube and banner ads. Encoding variability increases ad effectiveness. Therefore, target segments are ideally also exposed to some out-of-home print ads, through billboards, posters, magazines, flyers, etc. Many O.G. print channels are still widely used in event promotion. Across digital and print, consistency with the visual identity of the event and/or the brand is important for recognition and recall. Media placements, such as articles about the event, interviews with booked speakers/guests/artists, or editorials about topics related to the event can also be effective. However, you want to avoid wasting too much time chasing journalists, unless they have major clout.

Anticipation is fun but too much of it can backfire and actually reduce participant experience. We all have had things in our lives we were looking forward to so much, that the experience couldn't live up to expectations. Conversely, I dreaded leaving the house before going to some of the most fun and impactful concerts, parties, conventions, and talks I ever attended. The sweet spot is building enough anticipation to fill up all spots and create conversation but leave some room for positive surprises. Fyre Festival is an infamous example of what happens when the hype gets out of hand…

B2B takes up a big share of the events landscape. For B2B events, promotion looks different (as do many other parts of marketing and comms). You likely will have a smaller, more defined, and easier-to-reach target audience. But conversion will be trickier. Often, ticket prices are higher compared to B2C. Plus, B2B events can require time and travel commitments which need to be justified to jealous colleagues and stingy bosses.

The work context + the increased purchase risk = customers who process information cognitively.

This means, heuristics such as branding are less effective, and you need to craft longer, more meaningful messages that convey the utility of attendance beyond emotional benefits.