Any event, no matter what the focus, whether it is a music festival, gala fund-raiser, carnival, county fair, educational conference or pow-wow, has its staging requirements in order to assure success. Having just come away from what was supposed to have been a 4-day regional dowsing conference that fell flat on its kiester, I really felt the need to describe this for quick reference. With some 30 years in advertising, marketing, PR, graphics, printing and all related activities, I can offer some simple guidelines so that any event planners out there can be successful. It isn’t rocket science, but it does require a certain amount of organization and a real plan.
At a minimum of 6 months in front of your actual event, you need to have your date and site completely solidified and your committee in place. If it is a yearly event, you sign the contract to reserve the venue for next year before the end of this year’s event. The bigger conferences and trade shows sign multi-year contracts to get the better deals. If your core audience has other competing events in the same time frame, you have to make sure you are not competing for those people because it will hurt you! How important is this? It is the very foundation.
Believe it or not, I’ve seen various groups still trying to find a venue as little as one month ahead of their event… it doesn’t work. Some years ago Texas Chiropractic College was trying to bring a high-society donor crowd to their gala… and they scheduled the gala for the same night as the Junior League of Houston’s gala… the result was a very expensive party for some 200 chiropractors and none of the society swells… and yes, they lost a lot of money on it.
The deposit money for next year’s event must come off the top of this year’s event’s income. If you don’t have all the money you need to reserve your venue at that point, negotiate for the latest point they will accept the money to give you time to get sponsors. Local companies are certainly willing to sponsor… for example, Green Mountain Energy, some radio stations and BFI have been very active in their sponsorships.
If this is a big event which will take a lot of capital to put on, then fundraising events have to begin as early as possible, perhaps 9 months in front of the big event. You name it… fashion trunk shows, psychic fairs, pub crawls, book signings, brunches, and concerts at local venues where part of the door is donated. Be creative.
Raffles or silent auctions are often a part of either pre-event fundraising or the event itself. Of course your group can always scrounge some stuff from around the house to give away, but if you are selling those tickets to raise money, you need some worthwhile stuff, so this is where your network of contacts will be valuable. Gift cards are all the rage these days, but one or two larger ticket items help close the deal.
Your committee is important. You need “doers” instead of “talkers”. Make sure that everyone is clear on their jobs. If you don’t know your committee, find some small tests for each person. Personally, I’d rather have a couple of unimaginative people with a “git-er-done” work ethic than a pack of self-serving drama-queens any day. Meet with your committee regularly. E-mail really helps to stay in touch.
I’ve also witnessed a local renaissance festival in the Pearland area, that lost the rights to its name because one of the staffers held the DBA on it, so when this flim-flammer finally left (taking a lot of vendor booth money with him), they had to change the festival’s name, and as a result couldn’t put on the event because they had to get re-licensed and re-permitted, and of course, the local power-brokers at city hall threw a monkey wrench into the works, and they had to wait another year to begin recouping their investments.
There is also a renaissance festival in west Texas that’s been floundering for the past several years because of crooks on the staff and a complete lack of money to either make necessary upgrades to the property (the dirt road keeps washing out) or even do basic advertising. They’ve blown their credibility for the last time this year. If you’ve got a situation where you’re mopping up after someone else, you either have to go large and rewrite the paperwork so you can get a loan, or start over from scratch.
Have your whole itinerary mapped out by 120 days before the event. This is GO TIME. You need to start promotions with the chambers of commerce, networking other non-profits, giving lectures and having informational booths at other events, and doing press releases at 4 months ahead of your event in most cases.
You can locate local, regional, state and trade publications over the web nowadays, and build a database spreadsheet to make mailing out your press releases faster and easier.
This is also the point where you need to start booking your display advertising since most magazines have their ad deadlines one or two months ahead of publication. You need to set appointments with advertising managers to negotiate some deep discounts on display advertising and how much they are willing to help you out by peppering their calendar with PSA mentions, not just to promote the event, but to recruit volunteers… you have to get the media people on your side. You can start with small announcement ads for volunteers, talent and vendors in appropriate newsletters at this point, if you don’t already have them lined up. Please bear in mind that the very LEAST amount of advertising you can get away with is one solid month of coverage in front of the event.
Getting radio stations to mention your event is great, but it’s very much a crap shoot… they need those press releases ahead of time, too.
Remember that all of the broadcast and print media are hurting, so they cannot afford to give much space to press releases, so you often have to buy space to get mentioned in their community events calendars.
You must also have flyers ready for volunteers to place into appropriate retail outlets and take to other events… sometimes you can get a printer to donate flyers. The thing about flyers is they have to be out several months in advance to be picked up by the target audience. Flyers are probably the most effective single method of advertising, so use this method!
You need to be booking talent, speakers and vendors as early as you can and throughout the process. Bands book their gigs for months in advance. The more popular the band, the further in advance you have to book them, and all the more important that you are not conflicting with bigger events in the region. If your timing is good, often a band will donate their performance for P.R. purposes. Most bands make their real money from CD & cassette sales.
Vendors that work a whole festival circuit need the lead time to work your event into their schedule as well. You don’t want to leave any of this for the last minute. You want GOOD vendors, not the psychiatric cases that come out of the woodwork.
Keep a comprehensive contact database and don’t attempt to commit anything to memory. The more you get done in the 120-90 days before the event, the less stress you will have and the more successful the event will be. You have to have a plan and work that plan.
E-mail is the very last method of advertising you should consider. It is a great tweaker, but you cannot rely on it. I’ve seen event organizers attempt to float all of their advertising by e-mail and it simply doesn’t work. Bet on the spam filters removing most of it.
Websites are all-important nowadays, and it isn’t expensive or difficult to put a decent site together and get it registered on the search engines. Make the maximum use of it. You can have pages for the event itself, as well as pages for vendors, talent, volunteers, and all events leading up to the big event. A good website keeps you from having to answer the phone at all hours. Have a good contact form so you can build a customer database. Have a full event brochure available in PDF format for easy download. PayPal is an excellent tool for handling money… you can put PayPal buttons to sell tickets and various merchandise. You can feature links to CafePress to sell imprinted merchandise such as mugs, caps and t-shirts. The quicker you get a website up, the better.
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Rev. Suzanne Powell manufactures and markets a full line of line of natural stone “medicine jewelry”, subtle energy tools, pendulums, angel and fairy art and “spiritual soap” through her website, http://www.turtleisland.cc
Originally posted 2010-03-07 03:18:10. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
