Tips for planning your live event

Live events are great for building brand engagement and awareness, offering opportunities for community building, sales and educational initiatives. Preparing for such an event involves a detailed process designed to match your brand’s objectives with the expectations and experiences of your audience. Dive into our five principal areas and use them to create your perfect event brief or plan.

Establish an overall objective and goal

Begin by laying down the foundation: what do you aim to achieve with your live event? Goals can be varied, ranging from community building to ramping up sales or brand awareness. Your objective will serve as the compass for all aspects of your event planning, guiding decisions and ensuring every element contributes towards your brand’s broader strategy.

Work out the practicalities

Delve into the practicalities. The type of event – be it a conference, brand activation or exhibition – will dictate the necessary preparations and resources. Considerations such as when and where your event will take place shape the logistics framework, while budget constraints highlight what’s feasible. Aligning these factors early on helps prevent bottlenecks and ensures a smoother planning phase.

Understand your audience

Your audience is the heart of your event. Understanding them means going beyond demographics. Think about these questions to map your audience:

What are their perceptions or preconceptions of your brand?
What emotions do you want to evoke through the event?
What action do you want them to take after the event?

Convey key messages clearly in any stand designs or marketing materials, highlighting your unique selling proposition in a way that resonates with your key audience.

Integration with current activity and challenges

How does this live event amplify your current marketing campaigns? Brand consistency is so important within your marketing, and events are another invaluable marketing activity that should work together with other channels. Events should reinforce ongoing strategies and link to a clear and compelling omnichannel campaign.

Leverage insights for impact

Insight is your secret weapon. Understanding cultural trends, customer behaviour and contextual factors surrounding your brand and market is pivotal to making your event a memorable one. Gather competitor research to understand how you can stand out in your market.

Equally critical is determining how you will measure impact. Decide on the metrics that will signify success, whether through attendance numbers, social media engagements, sales or another quantifiable measure. Establishing these benchmarks from the onset enables a more focused approach to achieving and surpassing your goals.

Plan your event with confidence

Producing an event yourself, or asking an expert agency such as Linney to do it, involves an intricate mix of strategy, understanding and execution. By exploring these five areas your brand can create effective event solutions that foster genuine connections. So, if you’d like a little extra help, get in touch today.