If “managing an event” is part of your to do list, most people don’t envy you! New York Event Planners know what a challenge running events can be.
Whatever your expertise level is, planning an event entails a high level of hesitation. Besides that, you have to always consider a wide range (innumerable!) of logistic fundamentals that, more times than not, are not in your control.
These two components combined (hesitation and difficulty) might cause New York Event Planners to make unforeseen mistakes when managing an event.
As a result, these errors could lead to undesirable results, like a decrease in attendance rate, adverse ROI, poor attendee satisfaction, and more.
To help decrease the hesitation level that usually comes with planning logistics, The Event Planner Expo team put together 10 mistakes for New York Event Planners to avoid when managing events.
1. No Strategy in Place
Even though New York Event Planners can pretty much plan an event just for the heck of planning one, you really must have a strategy in place. When you’re not sure what your main goal is or what the desired result ought to be, you’re moving yourself away from making your actions parallel to the brand’s or company’s objectives.
That will only become a waste of time, effort, and resources.
Planning an event can be costly. Besides financial resources, you’re also investing a lot of time and teamwork.
New York Event Planners can prevent these mistakes by recognizing the business goals and understand how the event will help drive that goal. Having this outline in mind, New York Event Planners will be able to implement actionable steps that will achieve those goals.
2. Manually Executing the Event
Even though it’s 2019 and digitizing event logistics seems like a must, there’s still a lot of brands, companies, and teams that are managing events the good old fashion way. Instead of buying event management software, they are running events manually.
From attendee registration to building the event website, to ensuring that fees transfer and badge designs, there is no shortage of to dos that can be automatized, which saves you a lot of time and money.
3. Disregarding Crucial Data
- How many attendees are registered?
- What is the present revenue?
- How many guests signed up for networking sessions?
- How are people responding to the event marketing efforts?
One of the mistakes people make when planning an event is to ignore the incoming data, causing them to miss the opportunity to make quick decisions that are better aligned with their goals.
To avoid that, New York Event Planners may need a good event planning platform that will provide then with an all-in-one admin panel that includes real-time information regarding the event logistics and attendees’ reactions.
4. Designing an Exhausting Agenda
One of the things that will definitely tire your attendees is an exhaustive event schedule. The more activities you include in your event agenda, the greater the chances they won’t enjoy the overall experience.
That’s why you may want to go the simple route and engage your audience in fewer activities, focusing on each dynamic’s quality and value.
This way, your attendees won’t feel overwhelmed by the intensity of the event program and will enjoy more their experience.
5. Contracting Unprofessional Vendors
Your event greatly depends on the performance and efficiency of your suppliers. Building long-term relationships with vendors you trust is crucial for your event’s success.
The challenge, however, is to understand which event suppliers will always deliver good results and which are not trustworthy.
To avoid working with unprofessional or unreliable providers, make sure you’re always evaluating their work to understand if they can generate the expected results and maintain a high level of professionalism.
6. Forgetting Your Guest’s Needs
Every attendee has a secret agenda. They’ll be attending your event, waiting to get something out of it, meaning they’ll be nurturing certain expectations.
However, when caught up in planning, New York Event Planners may run the risk of disregarding their needs and completely forgetting to align the event with their agenda. To keep that from happening, you’ll have to carefully evaluate what your event has to offer and work on delivering what’s expected from you.
7. Poor Time Management
No matter your level of efficiency, planning an event is a huge endeavor. So scheduling a conference or a product launch for the next week will lead you to total chaos and despair. You don’t have enough time to plan it.
Always remember that you’ll need enough time to manage the logistics and ensure a powerful marketing campaign.
8. Forgetting the Importance of Networking
What are your thoughts about networking? Do you think it’s a natural process that unfolds during the coffee breaks? Or do you know how much work and design a successful networking dynamic really needs?
In most cases, your attendees will be dreading the networking session, regardless of how many ice-breaking games you prepare for them.
What could you do instead is to give them total control over the networking experience, and schedule meetings with those people who are of greater interest to them.
You can do that by deploying a B2B matchmaking system to register your guests’ interests and achieve higher compatibility between the offer and demand.
9. No “I” in Team
Unfortunately, there are still lots of people out there who are in charge of planning an event for more than 500 people all alone.
Most of the time, these events are at risk of lower results. It’s just that dealing with the logistics involve a multiple number of variables and elements, making it almost impossible to manage something all alone.
If you find yourself managing a large conference or seminar by yourself, don’t hesitate to ask for help.
10. Starting the Marketing Too Late
Whether your intention is to increase brand awareness or attract new leads, promoting an event should be part of your long-term marketing strategy. You won’t be able to attract a large crowd if your company or business has no visibility or interacts poorly with its prospects.
Think about it: When you have a blog, but no readers, you can’t expect comments (except spam) or a lot of organic traffic.
The same thing happens when New York Event Planners are trying to promote an event without being active on social media or having an audience that follows you and is aware of your brand or company.
First, you need to make sure that your marketing efforts are giving you results in terms of generating demand and gathering a strong audience. Then, worry about planning the event.
Conclusion
Considering its difficulty, planning an event will always result in making a few mistakes. However, practice makes it better and helps you juggle with more elements in your mind, while skillfully navigating any uncertainties.
New York Event Planners are encouraged to get their tickets to go to the Event Planner Expo! We’ve packed the 2019 Expo with resourceful workshops and keynote speakers that are sure to deliver valuable information that will help your climb to the top of the event professionals list. Come rub shoulders with Event Pros who specialize in every niche of the business!
