How to Plan the Perfect Event - The Event Expert

hi my name is Chris Powell and welcome to my company the event expert next 20 minutes or so I'm going to talk to you about the seven key steps that I use to design plan and deliver successful events the steps are based on 22 years practical event management experience in the corporate and public sector so effectively I practice what I preach incidentally I'd like to point out that when I delivered my first event in 1994 I knew absolutely nothing about events so I learned to be an event manager so I think that you can learn

to be event manager too so let's get cracking let me start talking about those seven key steps I want to talk a little bit about the world of events and I want to talk to you about the event planning process so Step One is very much about the world of events and I describe them as the ultimate Life Marketing experience get it right and you're a superhero get it wrong and there may well be reputational damage and a little dip in the bank balance as well nowadays if we invest time effort and money into events

we want some sort of measurable return so I'm Keen to find out what it is that we actually get back do we get good audience numbers did we get the cash back those sorts of things one of the really tricky things about events is to take really dry subjects and make them interesting and engaging so we have to bring events alive so we need a process that takes an idea all the way way through to completion so I have a seven step process so my very first step and one I often find that people kind

of forget about is what I call purpose creating events that people actually want and the only way to do that is to do a bit of pre-event market research so we're looking for desires we're looking for Trends we're looking for things that actually people want we also need to take a little Peak at the competition as well so what are we trying to do with This research well we're trying to get some sort of measure of some opinions some interest levels and we're trying to identify an audience as well and how might we do this

well we can do kind of formal research um surveys talk to people phone them up or slightly inform formal and go online and do that stuff online that we often do as well we may also want to do some surveys and have a look at some pre-event research as well so just kind of getting ourselves some idea about what might work why do we bother it's really to find out whether you know your idea is viable is there a market is it actually worth entering and putting your time effort and energy into is it a

good idea good idea in other words step two is the really interesting one so those kind of creative types in the room this is where this your your this is where you begin to play so in the presentation St we're trying to design something that's interesting engaging exciting all those sorts of things as well iconic kind of like a blueprint we use words images and we use numbers as well but the key key thing here is that we must always think like a guest this is nothing to do with whether what I like or what

I prefer this has got everything to do with what our guests would like so we're I call it audience Centric think like a guest now the way we do kind of creative exercise other than full fill ourselves full of chocolate and caffeine which helps me is I use the whatif scenario what if we had all the cash what if we were really Brave what if we tore up the rule book and started again what would we do kind of wild brainstorming I call it I don't know if you've ever done any of that before but

give it a go and what we're trying to do is to come up with a whole bunch of ideas that um fit the audience fit what they might like then we need to think about how much they might cost we need to think about whether the audience actually likes them does it actually fit the original purpose as well and the final thing is just an operational thing do to think you and I could actually deliver it so as I said earlier fill people full of chocolate and caffeine and actually they get very very creative so

I want you to be brave so that's the second step the third step which is effectively where I spend most of my life is planning events and in fact the more time and effort I put into planning events the easier it gets to actually sleep at night so I always spend every sort of hour spent planning in event is an hour well spent so we're thinking about the end product so what is the event that we're actually looking for so what is it going to enta what is it going to look like so with the

end in mind we can start putting ourselves or putting into place some of the things that will need to happen to make sure that happens so we need a team so we're going to organize persuade recruit um in every way in any way you need to to get that team of people on board your planning team you're going to have to organize them into kind of roles and how you're going to work work with them all those sorts of things as well we need stuff as I call it and this is the technical term is

infrastructure so we're looking at stages microphones fences and all those sorts of stuff and Marquees so that's what we call infrastructure so what is it you actually need and the people that going to provide that are your contractors so what we're actually looking for is contractors who are called competent contractors they know what they're doing unfortunately we're going to have to talk money and at the planning stage that is exactly what we do we talk money so we need to think about the budget how it's going to work what we're going to do with it

and importantly we need to have some sort of financial strategy so what is it we actually want to achieve do we want to make a bit of money are we happy to lose a little bit of money and accept that that's okay or do we just want to spend the budget so you know it's just a break even budget so there is some need for financial strategy as well and the only way to do this real realistically is to have a plan so we call it a project plan nothing particularly special it's just a list

of stuff to do okay so that's our event project plan so just to kind of recap then on those little five minutes we've had stage one where we talked about purpose I've asked you to do a bit of pre-event research stage two is where I've asked you to kind of get all creative and design stuff and stage three is the planning one which we which which we've just done where I've asked you to think about budgets I've asked you to think about contractors I've asked you to think about project planning as well so those are

those kind of the stages that we would use what I'd like to do is to talk about stage four I call it places or event spaces so this is the venues that we're going to use so the first and four thing that we've got to do is kind of set a venue criteria as I call it so what are we looking for kind of types sizes numbers location parking you know how how long would going to be there all those sorts of things so we get this kind of venue criteria and the venue criteria then

allows us to search and what that means is that we can go online we can talk to venue finding agencies and all those sorts of people and actually work out you know kind of short list a bunch of venues that fit us so we do a short list we then need to go and visit these people have a little look around what it is they've got to work for uh what they've got to offer I should say and then when we're there we need to kind what I call a venue of evaluation so we kind

of walk around the building we look at what's there we look at where the stages are the power the parking and all those sorts of things as well so we're evaluating whether the venue fits what it is that we're trying to do and if you like it then we'll contract it so that's where we sign away our life um we put a contract in place and unusually the venues tend to like us to put some money up front as well we call it deposit so that's stage four stage five is one of the my favorite

Parts I like the creative bit but I love the idea of actually putting together a program that really works and the way we need to do this is to think back to the audience and to think of value because this is everything to do with the audience it's got nothing to do with me it's got everything to do with the audience if they spend time effort and money to come to my event then the program has to work for them in my eyes is exactly why they sign up they don't sign up to eat my

food or to park in my car park or to wander around my venue they sign up because of what they're going to learn see and do so we need to deliver a program that um kind of I I call it delivers the money action and what I mean by that is kind of behavior change so if I spend half an hour two hours three hours with you what is it you want me to think say or do as a result of coming to your um event so I call it Behavior change um and in my

eyes it's incredibly important that when somebody leaves your event they're different they've had a good time they remember you so you're memorable so I call that behavior change whenever we put anything into a program we always think about um impact has it been useful valuable is it relevant and how long does it take so those are our kind of um raise on debts I guess you call it for whatever goes into the program and of course nowadays we just like a mix of activities as well so not the same same thing so keep it engaging

keep it relevant and then when people leave your event they'll actually have a very strong memory of what it is that you're actually doing now having a fantastic event is one thing maybe the best event in the world but in my world great event poorly promoted equals certain failure so event promotion is one of the things that we're particularly keen on and as operational types we often leave the promotion to the end but the promotion itself is a is an ongoing process so first and foremost we're back to the audience I've mentioned them a few

times what is it they like or do you know on their promotional media what is it do they like email do they like social media so we need to understand what it is that they actually like and for me I like a compelling reason to attend so why if you're going to steal three hours of my life why do I need to attend your event so what is going to happen to me so I call them compelling reasons to attend these days a mix of media is great so not just email but email social media

perhaps an advert perhaps the radio and we are now growing up in an age where kind of Google is everything so if you don't have a web page or a web site that's active and busy you'll never be found so I call your website needs to be what I call a One-Stop sales and conversion Factory we also need to put money behind this as well because actually promoting events takes time effort and money and one of the key things about event promotion is you got to turn up every day so you need a budget so

I tend to think 15 to 20% of the event budget is is about right in terms of uh getting this to work you need a plan so we talked about project planning to get the whole thing done but you now need an event promotional plan so it's going to have dates it's going to have messages it's going to have media updates it's going to tell me you know what it is we're going to do and when we're going to do that and as I mentioned a little bit earlier um we got to turn up every

day so we have to be relentless we have to be out there doing all this sort of stuff and of course it's really handy if you know what works so we have to monitor what works every campaign we send out you know what actually works so I'm particularly passionate about the event promotion side because actually on once we put together a fantastic event you know why why let it fail by um you not promoting it properly all right we're now onto our final stage which is stage seven this is where where we start to get

a little bit stressy this is where we start to uh the hours in the day don't seem long enough and perhaps we don't sleep quite as well as we used to so this is the event production stage we've done all the hard work we've got people signing up we've got all the infrastructure and all the rest of it all ready to rock and roll um and now we need to build the thing to make it actually happen so the way we do that is to understand the build schedule so that's the kind of sequences of

arrivals you know when things need to arrive and what needs to happen and the way to do that is to go backwards think backwards and think well when do we need to open so work back backwards and see how long these things are going to take other things that happen in the operational stage are um or the production stage I should say is um ticketing and registration um operations catering any guests or VIPs that you've got coming and of course we can't ignore the health and safety so this is where we start thinking about insurance

risk assessments those things as well so all that kind of needs to be in place on the production stage as well of course to make this really work then it's it's good to have a great event day team slightly different to your event planning team your event day team is often bigger it may contain contractors it maintain people you've persuaded to help you on the day as well so one of the ways we do that is to create an operational plan and guess what it's just another list of stuff to do so the production stage

is a kind of key stage we're getting quite excited about the event happening but we're also getting a little nervous that people kind of phoning us up they're looking forward to they're quite excited about what's going to happen so it's a kind of stressful time but do your homework get everything in place and actually life is fine the final thing I want to talk about is um this will only work if you and the people around you want to drive this forward so this is kind of like half a stage but it only kind of

works if you're committed to your event and you really really want this to work so think about your internal team these are the people around you and think about your external team which is your contractors and people like that we're all one big happy family give them coffee feed them Chocolat do all those sorts of things as well just get them on side get them motivated support them and stuff like that as well as I mentioned right at the very front end we're going to be trying to measure what like call the effect of the

event you know kind of what I call a return on event you know is it going to work has that money time and effort been well spent so I call this the return on event or Roi is the the kind of popular corporate term these days as well on event day you as event manager have two roles one's a little bit easy I say it's easy it's kind of running the event so we have our lists and we run it to time and the other one's a little bit more difficult is running the people running

the event and that's where we need to be motivational supportive caring and give people advice and support so those are the kind of the seven stages I'd like you to go through um so just to very briefly recap stage one was purpose I actually you did a bit of pre-event research there stage two was the presentation stage where we kind I want you to be all creative just be brave and then we would evaluate the ideas and and work out what we need to go forward if you recall that the event planning stage was the

stage where I suggested that this might take a little bit longer so there's many hours as you can put into the budget the planning the project planning uh and getting the infrastructure in place is is time well spent we now need a venue a place as I call it so we evaluate them we search for them then we contract them I think if you recall I talked about the program as being incredibly important so this is what we're going to see do and take part in so it needs to be um very much designed with

the audience in mind I think I alluded to the fact that if we have a great event but we don't get around to promoting it it will fail so event promotion is incredibly important so I think I told you to turn up every day get on to social media get those emails out be relentless be creative and all those sorts of things as well production was that final build bit about making it happen actually taking all those ideas all those emails are making the thing happen on the day and the very final bit was actually

to make sure sure that you personally have the confidence and skills to take this forward the team around you are motivated excuse me and interested and want to help so get that right and then life will become a lot lot easier so just to finish off with then um so what is it I do well I help people design plan and deliver events and the way I do that effectively is to to provide courses and training to help people have the skills and confidence to do this um as I said earlier I didn't know how

to do this I had to learn to be an event manager so what I do is help accidental occasional Professional Event managers to design plan and deliver their own events do I think everybody can do this absolutely it's suited to some people more than others but I love this wonderful creative and dynamic world and I think you're probably going to love it too so if I can help then pop over onto my website and have a little look at what I've got to do so thank you very much for your time and I really appreciate

um you spending this last 20 minutes with you thank you and good luck