Start with WHY you’re planning an event, and everything else will follow. Know your core reasons and you’ll achieve your goals. Identify your intentions and the actions will reveal themselves.
Sounds reasonable, right?
Whether it’s designing a marketing campaign, launching a new app feature, or trying a different sales strategy, you can’t expect awesome results if you don’t know the WHY of your actions.
However, so many professionals fail to take the time to analyze the main motivations behind their actions.
As the famous WHY expert and author Simon Sinek wrote in his book Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone toTake Action, “Sometimes a project that looks like an easy win for us turns into a disappointment or even a disaster. More importantly, sometimes we, or a competitor, succeed brilliantly when all the usual business assumptions say we should have flopped. These outcomes can seem mysterious, but they’re not if looked at in a framework that starts with WHY.”
The same thing happens in the world of events. Not being clear about why you’re planning an event will considerably dilute any impact your brand may have.
Why your brand event needs a WHY
As Sinek writes, “The WHY is a tool that can bring clarity to that which is fuzzy and make tangible that which is abstract.”
What gets you enthusiastic about planning your brand event? Why do you think planning a brand event is the only way to achieve you want? Finally, what is your core goal?
Your event needs a clear WHY so you can set up an efficient strategy and a powerful roadmap that will get you the results you want.
You can only put your vision into practice if you can clearly articulate it.
Once you understand the WHY of your event, you can exclude the things that won’t serve your purposes, while perfectly aligning the actions of your team at the same time.
But what can be the WHY of your brand event? Are reasons such as increasing brand awareness or attracting more leads good enough?
One of the things that will make your WHY truly authentic and powerful is the need to get deep into the specifics.
To raise brand awareness or get more leads are too general and impersonal.
Will you and your team actually get excited about these goals? Probably not. You must have great clarity regarding your main goals.
Also, it’s your responsibility to identify a WHY that is deeply interconnected with your personal reasons to help the brand grow.
So how can you find your WHY?
Here’s a list of recommendations that may help.
How to identify the WHY when you plan your next brand event
Stating a clear and exciting WHY for running a brand event will fire up your team and increase your chances to get the results you want. So don’t underestimate the psychological power of this question.
Get your team involved
The search for WHY requires teamwork. Every person has a different perspective and can make valuable contributions toward identifying the WHY.
So get everyone in the same room—your sales team, your marketing department, the product point-of-contact, etc.
Create a safe space for brainstorming, so that everyone can express his or her thoughts freely.
Plan a strategic meeting to talk about the results you want to achieve by planning the brand event. This will get everyone on the same page and to help find the WHY.
Stop looking outside and turn inward
Don’t just ask the WHY question. That’s not how you’ll find the answer. You should always gain a lateral perspective.
Start by asking yourself what you love most about your brand. Why are you waking up each morning eager to go to work? What excites you about this brand? How do you plan to pass that same excitement to your attendees through your brand event?
Asking these questions will get you in the right state of mind for brainstorming and enthusiastic about the upcoming brand event planning.
Decide what type of people you want to fire up
A big part of finding your WHY involves the question, “For whom?” To identify the core reason for the brand event, you must identify your attendee personas so that when you articulate the WHY statement, you’ll also consider their needs.
After all, you can’t plan a successful event without taking into consideration the motivations of your guests!
But first, you must know who they actually are (for example, warm leads, customers, loyal customers, etc.).
Apart from that, you also must understand their professional profile and emotional blueprint by answering this question: Why people should attend your brand event? What will they get from it?
Determine how to increase your brand’s impact
Each brand has its own challenges and issues. Some may want to expand their customer base, others may want to better qualify their leads, and the rest might want to strengthen their social proof.
However, all of these growth goals have a common thread: maximizing the brand’s impact.
Do you want to increase sales? Is your number one priority to transform your brand into an industry leader? You’ll only be able to establish the WHY of your brand event by figuring out your company’s number one priority.
Define your long-term focus
You don’t just plan a brand event for the sake of it. It’s your responsibility to make sure that your event will serve your brand’s long-term goals. Or do you simply want to increase brand visibility while engaging with your community?
So when you’re trying to figure out the WHY of your brand event, you also must consider the company’s long-term vision.
Write down your brand event’s WHY statement
The answers to the above questions will give you enough material to understand and decide your brand event’s WHY.
For example, you may conclude with the following statement: I’m planning this brand event for entrepreneurs who are passionate about their work. I want to keep them motivated by reminding them how important self-care is and by offering them solutions to avoid the burnout.
So what’s the WHY of your brand event?
When one has multiple business goals and sales strategies, it’s almost impossible not to lose focus. When planning a brand event, you’ll want (most probably) to launch as many marketing actions as possible. However, this can dilute the impact of your event.
To keep this from happening, it’s crucial to define the WHY of your brand event. By identifying your main reason to run the event, you’ll be able to align the marketing actions of your team and set up an efficient planning roadmap that will ensure positive outcomes.
