From conferences and tradeshows to product launches, to different target groups, to events with different brands in different locations – it’s fair to say that there’s a lot of combinations, reasons, and benefits for hosting events.
That’s why it should come as no surprise that big corporations are hosting so many events every year. This involves hundreds of locations and external providers, and thousands of attendees. The sheer multitude of this makes planning an event extremely complicated and this is only amplified when you’re catering to multiple brands.
So if you’re one of the companies that fall into this category, here’s a list of rules on how to plan 1,000 events per year or more.
?Centralize all of your events
From brand message to attendee experience and brand image, if there’s one thing that planning multiple events requires, it’s consistency, and to get this you need to centralize your events aka have one platform which manages all of your events.
A central planning hub enables you to plan multiple events in one place which has a big impact on the delivery of the events because it provides uniformity. It all means that the whole event cycle can be harmonized through a single platform which avoids any major discrepancies in the execution of the events.
It’s also worth taking note, that the many different features that come with event planning such as event cloning or keeping track of metrics, saves your employees time, and empowers them to create better events because time isn’t being wasted on manual tasks.
?Create an event planning protocol
Just like any other area of business, companies lose a lot of money when they don’t have the right planning protocols in place. This is normally the case for when you plan even just a few events, now imagine what that’s like when your managing hundreds or thousands?
That’s why extensive planning is vital to prepare yourself and the multiple teams for all possible eventualities at your events. A planning protocol gives everyone a clear understanding of the procedures involved with different situations and scenarios when planning an event.
Not only does this quickly solve any queries that the team or individual might have, but it also makes it easier for staff to make the right decisions when it comes to planning events. So, by following the protocol they get a clear picture of what the event should look like and what’s needed to achieve it.
?Have an event branding guideline
Similar to the planning protocol, it’s also important to have a branding guideline which sets the scope for all things branding related. For many large corporations this is always a big problem because when you’re managing multiple teams, one team’s idea of how something should be done will always vary from another team located somewhere else.
Discrepancies start to form and these are picked up by the attendees who will quickly notice a difference in the attendee experience and overall quality of the event. This is why you need to provide a branding guideline that gives everyone a central reference point which answers all of their questions.
This should provide an overview of the specific brand, their identity, their purpose, and what they (and the events) are trying to achieve. This forms the starting point of creating closer alignment and unity across every event.
?Have an internal planning team
To help ease the load on all of your teams across the different brands, it’s a good idea to have an internal planning team responsible for overseeing the planning across all of the brand’s events. This is important for a few reasons. Firstly, it gives all of the teams a central hub, or point of contact, that can help them with planning the event, meaning that nobody will be left in the dark.
Secondly, it gives a much better understanding of where things are and where things are going. This is particularly important from a management point of view because they’ll have a high-level overview of where things stand.
Finally, it would be incredibly difficult to ensure that each brand and their respective teams are working towards their common goals. This is why an internal planning team goes a long way in creating a cohesive culture and more importantly, cohesive events.
?Make a list of trusted local event providers
The truth is that you’re always going to have to collaborate with external providers. From caterers, to AC and different venues, all of these different components are required to turn your event into reality. Because without local event providers you wouldn’t have an event.
With all of these events going on, you’re going to end up with thousands of different providers, some good, some not so good. This is why you need to have a list for each brand and its respective location that has reliable providers for every aspect of the event.
This is going to save you a lot of time not just in terms of man hours, but also at the event which won’t be affected by no shows or unreliable and low quality providers, which can have a big impact on your event.
?Get a trusted event tech partner
Now up until now, we’ve touched on a few different aspects of where event tech can come in such as centralizing events, tracking metrics, and having planning protocols. Now it’s time to talk about this in some more detail.
Choosing the right event tech partner is a big deal, and rightly so because when you get it right you can see a huge investment in your budget and the total amount of time saved. To help with this, your event tech partner should be making it a lot easier for you to plan multiple events for your brands, saving you time and money in the process.
Remember, when looking for good event tech you should be looking to see how easily all of the different brands can be integrated into the platform, how much of the event cycle can be automated, and how key metrics and data can be tracked.
?Always evaluate the ROI
Data is a vital asset to everyone involved with event planning who depend on it to get the full picture of what’s happening at their events and how they can be improved in the future.
Yet, unfortunately, when planning so many events it becomes too easy to be handicapped by siloed data and incomplete analytics, making it a lot tougher to plan future events. With these limitations, maximizing your event marketing ROI becomes much more of a challenge.
The solution to this is having one platform that collects and manages all of your data. This will integrate all of your key metrics into one dashboard which can be accessed by anyone from event planners up to management. Performance and key metrics can be tracked which provides everyone involved with complete insight into what you’re achieving or what you’re wasting resources on.
?Create a guide of best planning and event marketing practices for all your brands
It’s always important to think towards the future and the good news is that when you’re planning so many events you’ve got an abundance of untapped knowledge waiting to be exploited. We’ve already tapped into how you can track your ROI which will give you a good insight into what’s going across the events at each of the brands.
To take this one step further, it’s important to compile all of this information and use it to improve the planning process and the quality of events. The best way of doing this is to get with everyone responsible for each brand and each team and find out what’s working and what’s not.
Key takeaways
- With hundreds of locations and external providers, and thousands of attendees, the sheer multitude of this makes planning an event extremely complicated and this is only amplified when you’re catering to multiple brands.
- An important part to achieving this is finding the right event tech. This will enable you to have all of your events in a central hub where you can track and use all of your information and data, which can be used to better use.
- The other component is to make sure that you have all of the correct protocols and guidelines in place so that your team has a set of standards to follow. Not only does this quickly solve any queries that the team or individual might have, but it also makes it easier for staff to make the right decisions when it comes to planning events.
