Event Management Marketing

An Introduction to Event Management and Marketing


Abhinav Girdhar
By Abhinav Girdhar | Last Updated on February 22nd, 2024 11:42 am | 5-min read

Event management has become a popular profession in the past decade. Event management entails organizing an event or function – from a wedding to product launches and corporate conferences. Anything that happens and brings people together can be considered an event. It could be the launch of a new model of an SUV or a retreat for corporate team building activities. The task of an event manager is to plan the budget, logistics, decor, food and beverages, rewards and recognitions, etc. and bring all the elements together perfectly.Event Management MarketingIt is no easy task and requires ceaseless work by a dedicated team. Through an event management course, you can understand the duties and responsibilities of an event manager and effectively fulfill them. Here’s an informative video that talks about the basic responsibilities of an event planner.

(Above video is a part of a more elaborate course on Academy by Appy Pie. To access the complete course, please Click Here, or continue reading below.) Let us look at the various aspects of event management in detail.

Key Components of Event Management

An event manager needs a clear comprehension of the tasks and functions they have to shoulder.

  1. Establish an objective
  2. This happens in a series of meetings with the client. An event aimed at experiential marketing exercise will be different from wedding event management. Much of it consists of asking the client numerous ‘what, when, where, why, how’ questions. Of course, they might not have an accurate idea but an abstract concept. It is the task of the event manager to translate these into a tangible form.

  3. Set up a budget
  4. One of the foremost tasks of event management companies is to help with budgeting. The allocated event budget has to be used as efficiently as possible. Considering that most events have expenses for venue, transport, food, beverages, recreation, wages, entertainment, and, most of all, the event manager's fees, this is one of the toughest components of the work. Cost overruns may occur, but it is a last resort since client's do not take kindly to inflation of budget after allocation.

  5. Storyboarding
  6. Storyboards are an idea that event managers have taken from film directors of the past. It is an accurate depiction of the design of the event with expert sketches. Of course, it requires having an adept artist in the team. Still, the method enables clear communication of ideas between the client's team (personnel from corporate PR and communication) and the event management personnel. Some event management services use intuitive software such as StudioBinder in place of actual sketching. While that is a more high-fidelity depiction, it also takes a lot of man-hours to create animation mockups, which add to the cost.

  7. Venue Selection
  8. Once the budget is completed, and the concept is approved, the rest of the task is purely legwork. The venue has to be selected and for this, quotes are obtained from different hotels and resorts. The availability of venues varies widely depending on the time of the year, and clients often depend on the event company to tap into their contacts in the hospitality industry to hire banquet halls and auditoriums. Here’s a video that tells you all about getting the venue for event management and planning
    (Above video is a part of a more elaborate course on Academy by Appy Pie. To access the complete course, please Click Here, or continue reading below.)

  9. Logistics Management
  10. An event is bound to involve guests who require transport. The travel arrangements of all or some of the guests have to be planned and travel arrangements need to be made. Then there is the matter of pickup and drop from the airport to the venue. Some events might require luxurious sedans for important guests, and it all has to be planned in the most granular detail. Obviously, with limited personnel at your disposal – say a team of eight – you can't hope to be everywhere, and the smallest delay in one of these many moving pieces can cause disaster.

  11. Vendor Management
  12. The event manager is also tasked with the complex responsibility of vendor management. Getting the right price, ensuring that vendors deliver on time, keeping both the vendor and the client happy - it takes some doing. This entirely is the duty of event management companies. A magnificently planned and executed event can seem off-color because few of the flowers seem droopy and a day old or because a Bluetooth mic fails to work at the exact moment of the car launch. The quality of vendors has to be assured by the event manager.

  13. Event Marketing Plan
  14. It is not enough to have an event, but a considerable amount of event marketing is required. Open door events like product launches are not only about the event itself but the event promotion surrounding it. Through the use of media, the event marketing plan has to control the exposure of the event to the wider public.

    Pre-Event Marketing

    Your marketing begins the day the event date is fixed. However, there is a lot to be done apart from marketing. Our Event Planning Checklist will help you do just that. While you prepare for the event, the marketing team must be ready to blow social media up with your event, and here are 8 ways to do that.
    1. Begin with a Hashtag
    2. Social media works on hashtags. Give your event a catchy yet relevant name that connects back to your brand. Make sure to include your branding in your event name and create a hashtag. You can use the hashtag to create hype for your event. You must ensure that your hashtag is easy to write and remember. It should be catchy too. Creating hashtags is also the best way to keep track of the conversations about your event. A well-timed hashtag will be useful even after the event has been completed (discussed later). Begin promoting your hashtag at the earliest.
    3. Tease and Aggrandize your Event
    4. Sit down with your design team. Start with a teaser poster on Instagram. Cross-post the teaser poster on other social media like Facebook, Twitter, etc. Follow this up with a teaser event video trailer on YouTube. Use your hashtags at every turn. Use press releases and news to give your audience hints as to what your event might contain. Give them reasons to come to your event but don’t give them too much. Maintain the suspense of your event the best you can.
    5. Tailoring Content for Social Media
    6. Go deeper with teasing your event by creating specialized content for individual social media. Create a filter for your Instagram, start a tweet bombing campaign of content and news about how your event’s preparations are going, and create a Facebook album of preparations. Double down and use the pictures from Facebook to create professional interest on LinkedIn. Make a landing page for your event. You can go further and try to hire influencers to promote the event. Send special goodies for them to ‘unbox’. Create an influencer campaign around your event, if the budget affords it. Use your YouTube to share information and your reasons for creating this event. Spread out as wide as possible on social media to reach out to the most possible audience.
    7. Respond to People Who Ask Questions
    8. Give people who ask questions about the event informative answers. Make sure you let them know what they can look forward to. Disclose the name of the guests that will be attending the event, a possible event timeline, and general queries about venue and timings. Assign someone to this task entirely. Even during the event, make sure that this activity goes on. It’s good for your brand and not too hard to achieve.
    9. Host Event Giveaways
    10. Giveaways are a great way to attract attention to your event. Declare special giveaways for attendees. Capitalize on FOMO (fear of missing out) and maximize your attendance. Make sure the giveaways are exciting. Create social contests and give them passes, VIP access, special gifts, and much more.
    11. Behind-The-Scenes Sneak Peeks
    12. It is likely that your event will generate a buzz in the industry way before it actually happens. You need to nurture the initial attention you receive. To do that, create and use behind-the-scenes sneak peeks. Click photographs, shoot cam videos, and ‘leak’ them. BTS moments are a great way to ensure that the buzz keeps rising towards the day of the event. If your event continues for multiple days, you can generate a significant amount of buzz using BTS footage. FOMO plays a critical role in this too and ensures that you get proper attention throughout the event.
    13. Create a Countdown
    14. An official countdown meter is an added cherry on the top. It creates hype. Create a countdown on each social media. Countdowns raise excitement and make people more enthusiastic about your events.
    15. Live Event Posts
    16. This tip is meant for event posts during the event. Live updates via Twitter and in some cases, a Live feed is a great way to keep people hooked even from home. Live updates and feeds have made multi-day events experience higher attendance over the course of each event day. In a way, live event posts maintain the hype through the timeline of your business event.

    Post-Event Marketing

    Event marketing does not end with the event. Marketing an event can be taken further. Post-event marketing is a legitimate activity that has long term effects on your social channels and future events. Post-event marketing is a good practice to build up a brand’s reputation. A successful event can still be marketed to the people. Here are three ways to do that:
    1. Post User-Generated Content
    2. People are bound to add their experience at your event on their social channels. Share/Cross post their celebrations with your created hashtags to show off your event. Doing this conveys how enthusiastic you were about your event and how much you enjoyed hosting people. It is a good brand reputation building exercise that bodes well for your future business events.
    3. Event Highlight Reel
    4. Make sure you record your event with professional videographers. A few weeks after the event, make sure to create a highlight reel and blast it across your social media. The audience that missed out on the event can recap all the best moments from it. Don’t post the entire event. Post enough to tease the people who missed it. When you organize an event again, these people will attend the event any way they can.
    5. Post Event Survey
    6. Create a public survey for the people who attended the event. Get their feedback to know how they felt about the event. You can further use this information to record and analyze the success of your events. Good feedback can be published across your social media to play on your audience’s FOMO.
    Check out this video that talks about the top strategies to promote events.
    (Above video is a part of a more elaborate course on Academy by Appy Pie. To access the complete course, please Click Here, or continue reading below.)

  15. Execution
  16. Event management operates on the principle that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Successful event management has a lot to do with backup planning. The client will accept no excuses for failure, and it will forever hurt the manager's brand if he does not deliver during event.

What do event planning courses teach?

Event planning and management is a type of project management. What does the best online event management course from Appy Pie teach? Let us take a look.

  1. Communication
  2. Due to its complex nature event management course has to involve training in communication. Clear, effective, and unambiguous speech is the lifeblood of corporate event management.

  3. Leadership
  4. A top event executive has to lead from the front. From drawing up plans to putting into place redundancies, it requires superb leadership. The client has to be appeased, vendors have to be guided, and the smooth segue from one segment of the event to another should happen like a well-choreographed ballet.

  5. Action
  6. Any artist can draw a storyboard. Executing that storyboard into corporate management events is a whole different set of capabilities, and that’s why event managers are paid highly. It is one of the most essential skills that you learn with Appy Pie’s event management course.
Eventually, the whole point of getting into the business of event management is to make money. Here’s a cool video that talks about different ways to generate revenue from your events.
(Above video is a part of a more elaborate course on Academy by Appy Pie. To access the complete course, please Click Here, or continue reading below.)

Conclusion

Event management is an intricate chain of plans and events, from concept to fruition. In fact, it is due to event management’s complexity that renowned event managers only specialize in a few types of events. It is a very rewarding profession, and the hard work that one puts in pays off well in financial terms. With an attractive event management website for advertising, optimized Facebook Ads, continuous SEO for your events’ webpages, you can attract eyeballs and make your events successful. It is a suitable career for those who feel up to the challenge. It is definitely not for those who are faint of heart. Did you know that you can create your own event management app without writing even a single line of code? Get started with Appy Pie’s event app builder and create your own event management app in minutes!

You May Also Like:

Take a deeper dive into the digital ecosystem and start expanding your business with these helpful resources:

Related Articles

Abhinav Girdhar

Founder and CEO of Appy Pie

Take a Related Course