Event planning involves a great deal of planning and administrative work. It is a very demanding job that needs proper anticipation, scheduling and arrangements to have a successful conference. Even before submitting the first written draft of your plan, you should ask yourself certain questions:

  • What are you or your client trying to achieve with this conference?
  • Who are your target audience as delegates and sponsors?

Once you have your answers, it’s time to start planning your conference.

Decide on a perfect date

It is suggested to keep multiple dates in mind, so that if you have to cancel a date due to unavailability of your chosen venue or anything else, you can change to another. Avoid selecting a bank holiday because your potential attendees may not like to visit the conference on special dates. Be sure not to hold your conference on the same date as other conferences held by your competitor or related industry. It is advisable to plan your conference just before or after another conference in your city, whose theme is related to yours. Conference attendees most often attend conferences on related topics to increase knowledge or connections.

Decide on the budget

Perhaps the most crucial part of planning is the budget, against which you will count your return on investment. The ideal way is to offer a financial cap on defined areas of earnings, including sponsorship, ticket sales, as well as expenses such as printing, location, food, supplies, and security.

Decide on a place

Location and venue sometimes play a key role in increasing attendance. A location that attendees can easily reach is the most preferable option. For example, you can select a location near the airport, central station, or downtown.

Reserve your conference venue based on the number of attendees you expect. Good hotels have very professional conference rooms which are ideal as they provide manpower and good infrastructure. Don’t forget to survey your place well in advance to avoid unpleasant surprises later.

Speaker and Program

Good topics and speakers are the main attraction of any type of congress. Therefore, schedule good speakers at an early stage to ensure the success of your event. Be sure to include as many big names as you can. Speakers draw a crowd and acceptance from a good speaker helps you gain approval from other famous speakers.

Next, you need to set a packed agenda before you even start promoting your conference. This is because the speakers and schedule of the show will be your main way of getting noticed.

Promote your Conference

The goal of promoting your conference is primarily to gain more volume of new attendees and invite existing ones. You can use online event management solutions to make things easier for you. Apart from offline promotion using relevant newspapers and magazines, you can get more attention using online ways. Publish your event page with your corporate look, send automatic invites to last year’s attendees, post the conference schedule on your website, engage social networking websites like Facebook, and post your conference on local event listings, conference calendars, and more. conferences and relevant blogs and directories. Use powerful communication and calendar features to intensify marketing and promotional activities. Use email communications, discount rules, and gift cards to promote and sell your event online.

Online registration for your conference

An easy-to-use solution with a professional approach is what attendees want when they go to register for your conference. Use the online event registration and payment solution to streamline ticketing and payment processing. Fully customizable registration forms with auto-fill function protect and save attendee data. The built-in questionnaire adds value to the registration process. You can know all the required information and your preference, which you can use to ensure attendee satisfaction. This online registration form can be hosted on your event website, where you can allow one person to register and pay for a group of people per event or per booking option. Your event website is not just an online registration form, but also an online announcement of the agenda, speaker, directions, and some hotel recommendations where attendees can stay during the conference.

Use the online payment management solution so you can offer your registrant the ease of a secure payment transaction that supports real-time processing and authorization for all major credit cards, PayPal, purchase orders, and checks.

Finally, when ‘The Day’ arrives, you prepare yourself with a registration list and barcoded ID cards that you have created using the registrant’s details. If you use online event management software for your conference, along with numerous benefits, you can use the dashboard to generate reports on post-event results. You can also send targeted emails for post-event surveys to get honest feedback from your attendees so you can plan for a more successful conference next time. Use these tips to plan your conference and you’ll see your ROI increase and your workload decrease.