How to plan an event well?

The essence of the activity is communication. Previously, the industry had descriptions of the IPO event planning process, which stood for Idea, Plan, and Operation.

But these days, attention is a scarce resource. Purely online event marketing can no longer capture consumers' attention. The status of ground activities has been magnified, and the integrated communication based on event scene experience marketing is the greatest value of the event.

Therefore, two factors constitute the key to a "good event planning": on-site experience + spread of voice .

Gudian mentioned in the book "Leap" that the learning logic of today's society has changed fundamentally compared with 20 years ago, and the concept of online brain has become more important. Simply put, the world is now flat , and a good event planning can no longer rely solely on internal forces, but needs to be connected to more open resources .

Therefore, the syllogism of Idea + Plan + Operation cannot fully cover the key links and essence of event planning at this stage. Based on the IPO process, I introduced two links, cross-industry cooperation and event fermentation , to increase the weight of the event's "voice spread" and refined this 5 I event planning thinking model. Enjoy:

01. Inspiration theme creative stage

The theme creative stage is mainly about conceiving the form of the activity and the theme gameplay. At this time, there may be two situations for the brief.

1) Topic-based writing activities. Your boss or the upper-level client (agent or brand owner) directly specifies the form of the event. At this time, you (marketing staff or event company) only need to plan and implement it around the form of the event.

2) Topic writing activities. Your boss or client just randomly proposes a public relations and marketing demand, but has not yet decided on the specific form of the activity, leaving a blank for you to develop.

Based on actual practice, the forms of activities are mainly divided into seven types : event marketing, forum press conferences, exhibition markets, brand festivals, performance celebrations, competitions and party team building.

In my opinion, as there will be more and more integration platforms for event industry suppliers, the stage where event companies rely on resources and material price differences as their main profit has passed.

In the future, creative experiential marketing is the core competitiveness.

Therefore, it is necessary for creative practitioners to browse as many peer cases as possible. The world is so big, you can gossip more about how other brands conduct public relations activities.

This process is a bit like a designer needs to go to Huaban.com to look for design inspiration, or an advertiser needs to go to Shuying.com to look at marketing works.

For example:

1) Go to the event announcement or ticketing website to read the event preview;

2) Go to the advertising and marketing website to find offline activity case classification;

3) In addition, some service provider cases can be found on classified information websites such as Zhubajie.com and 58.com.

4) At worst, you can save bookmarks and browse cases on the official websites of various event companies when you need inspiration;

5) Now there are some websites that are specifically designed to meet this kind of inspiration needs, such as Yiwen.com and Event Creative Warehouse, etc., focusing on creating an efficient and high-quality event marketing works library.

A good public relations event planning starts with an initial idea, which is then refined through continuous browsing of cases, and then to the deduction of the event logic, and finally becomes a big creative idea .

02. Intellectual strategy proposal stage

Event planning is not just a matter of pure creativity, but also requires a structured methodology.

The planning of an event must comply with the principles of “ attention-interest-threshold-participation ”. From eye-catching selling points (attention), to interesting activities (interest), friendly participation methods (threshold), and finally the on-site performance during participation (participation), every link must be taken care of.

After generating the activity idea, the planning stage mainly involves determining the activity goals and theme, activity name, time, venue, process, agenda, program settings, design style, on-site production renderings, communication channels, media pricing, performing arts resource determination, registration channels, bill of materials, personnel arrangements, budget preparation, execution node table, etc.

Here are four types of activity plan template frameworks we use internally:

Marketing planning framework for performance activities (performances/annual meetings/parties/concerts/celebrations)

Interactive event marketing planning framework map (promotion/interaction/ground promotion)

Marketing planning framework for selection activities (contests/talent shows/selections)

In addition to looking at the proposal resources of peers, it is also an option to browse the planning proposal templates on online document library websites , such as Docin, Doc88, Baidu Document Library, 360doc, etc. (the quality may be relatively uneven and relatively old).

Of course, this type of activity planning template is generally kept within the company. If you ask some colleagues, they will probably have the same answers.

The above practices, combined with discussions with colleagues, basically cover the blind spots of the event planning process.

03. Implement execution management stage

Although the main implementation links have been preliminarily finalized in the planning stage, remember to make flexible adjustments and not limit yourself to the previously formulated plans.

The production and rental of materials and equipment, venue reservation, travel and accommodation, personnel outsourcing, media placement, media contact, registration platform, transportation reservation, etc. In addition to using cooperative suppliers, there are also many Internet products to provide comprehensive and segmented demand solutions.

For example, if the internal staff is unable to handle the design materials needed for an event, they can first find a service provider on a crowdsourcing platform (B2B model, such as Zhubajie.com), or they can use online graphic design themselves (SaaS model, such as Chuangketie.com), and then make the materials on a standardized material printing platform (F2B model, such as Yunyin.com), and have them delivered directly to the event venue. The required material preparation can be completed online. Of course, if time permits, the material details should still be confirmed in person.

Here I would like to share the URL of the event execution tool I often use, eventtool.cc . It is relatively niche, but it includes efficiency tools for each of the above-mentioned links. There are two major categories, namely preparation and promotion, with about 10 steps.

During the event preparation stage, project management tools can also be introduced for collaborative work. For example: Ming Dao, teambition, etc.

If you don’t want to use the full range of project tools, you can synchronize the execution checklist and project management manual with a file collaboration tool. I personally use Quip from Salesforce, which allows the team to see the progress and information at a glance. In addition, there are Youdao Cloud Notes, Graphite Docs, etc.

In addition, the deposit, payment time, whether to issue an invoice, and what type of invoice to issue must be clarified in advance.

In short, as the industrial Internet continues to develop, execution problems that can be solved through the power of the Internet can be considered to be solved online. To a certain extent, it will make you scream with convenience. I also pay more attention to these tools, welcome to leave comments.

04. Interaction promotion and investment promotion stage

The execution stage and the publicity and investment promotion stage do not necessarily have a clear order of sequence, and are often carried out simultaneously.

First of all, you need to make a good investment plan . During the investment and cooperation stage, the activities should be productized, the resource value of the activities should be developed, and different equity product packages should be established. (Regarding the writing of the investment promotion plan, we will discuss it in detail later)

The key here is to put together a product package of sponsorship benefits that is attractive to partners in both form and substance. When doing business with other brands, we can also be aware of our own event resources and be ready to tell you what important benefits we can provide.

Cooperating units, such as co-organizers, co-organizers, guiding agencies, supporting agencies, etc., can be continuously enriched during the publicity process. Increase the influence of the event through resource integration.

In addition, resource matching and business cooperation are always the most troublesome issues. At this time, WeChat groups are still the most useful community product, with instant reach, high frequency, and strong interactivity, allowing resources to flow more efficiently.

By adding your own fan group to the official account and asking colleagues and friends to recommend you to join, you can accumulate a lot of WeChat groups (or QQ groups) for business cooperation. These group members often have common needs and can easily hit it off. Many of my personal business collaborations are still brokered through WeChat groups.

In addition to the community, the cross-industry cooperation channel of the marketing department website and BD Walker are also efficient channels. Easily achieve cross-border resource cooperation.

In addition to online, participating in a market event or exhibition with similar merchants can also allow you to quickly obtain cooperation resources in a short period of time.

Anyway, just use all the free resources.

The rights and interests need to be quantified in time and quantity using EXCEL, and the relevant responsible persons must be confirmed by email.

Personally, I believe that we should treat our business partners fairly and realistically, and not just obey their orders or agree to everything just because they are our financial sponsor. Clarify each other's reasonable rights and interests. We are only in a cooperative relationship, not a relationship of Party A and Party B. Be confident that an organizer should be.

In addition, the division of labor must be clear and the relevant contacts must be specifically designated. Even if you are in the same docking group with merchants, the same colleague should be the speaker. We will communicate internally first and then give you a reply.

In addition to attracting investment and cross-industry cooperation, this stage also requires work on visual aspects such as event marketing H5, countdown posters, nine-square posters for Moments, and exclusive invitation letters to guests.

The above four stages do not necessarily follow a strict sequence, but may be repeated and overlap with each other .

05. Induction and review stage

The end of the event does not mean the end of event marketing. The details after the event are even more meticulous. But many people tend to ignore the importance of this link.

There are three main things to do:

1) Information statistics (media coverage, project settlement, benefit statistics (traffic, funds, brand benefits>);

2) Guest tracking (thank you letter, customer satisfaction survey, follow-up on further conversion cooperation/sales);

3) Event fermentation (event reporting, case packaging, joint KOL marketing event packaging and promotion).

Regarding the third point, on the one hand, it is necessary to publish press releases, and on the other hand, through case sharing, it should be placed on relevant activity communication industry portals and advertising and marketing media. Shuying.com, Admen.com, Yiwen.com and many public relations and marketing KOL self-media are all channels for the distribution of these cases.

This is for the audience's sense of identity and to build loyalty; of course, it is also for the public relations effect of the event, to prepare cases for the next round of investment promotion; and more importantly, the post-event report is the greatest value of event marketing, which fully increases the presence on the entire network.

06. Conclusion

Event planning and execution generally include these 5 I processes. The experience sharing of various event planning also leads to the same goal, which is to double the efficiency of event planning through systematic event management and structured output.

Author: UI design is good. Share source: Jianshu