9 elements of event planning

People often ask how to plan an event ? Based on our team's experience in planning for clients, I would like to talk about what an activity plan should include:

Before planning any event, you should consider the following factors:

• What is the purpose/significance of the activity?
• What time does the event start?
• How many stages does the activity have and what happens in each stage?
• Who is the activity for?
• What are the promotional channels for the event?
• Who needs to participate in the activity?
• What is the individual division of labor among activity participants?
• What materials/budget are needed for the activity?

Therefore, a complete event planning plan should include the following sections:

1. Purpose/significance of the activity

Before making an activity plan, you must think clearly about the purpose of the activity. Do you want to attract traffic through the activity? Or improve customer perception? Or is it just to blend in with customers to increase exposure? The purpose must be clear. As the saying goes, plan before you act. Once your purpose is clear, the value of the plan will be more easily highlighted.

2. Theme of the activity

What theme does the event revolve around? For example, Mid-Autumn Festival activities revolve around the theme of reunion, Valentine's Day activities revolve around the theme of love, and Arbor Day activities revolve around the theme of environmental protection. The theme of an activity is a comprehensive summary of the content of the activity.

3. Activity time/stage

The time of the activity. This time includes the time to start the promotion, the time to start the warm-up, the time when the event officially starts, the time when it ends, etc.

If the activity is to be carried out in several stages, you should also clearly write down the time of each stage, the theme of each stage and the detailed schedule, etc.

Normal schedule should be based on days. If the activity cycle is longer, the time schedule can be based on weeks or even months (generally it is an annual activity).

4. Activity content and schedule

What are the specific contents of the activities? This is the main part of the activity. The steps and processes of the activity should be explained clearly in a classified manner. Combined with the time arrangement, you can use a Gantt chart to arrange the activity process.

5. Division of labor and arrangement of activity personnel

Combined with the above flow chart of activity content and time, corresponding to each specific stage, who should be responsible for each task, and assigning responsibilities to individuals, it will be more convenient for the implementation and execution of the activity.

6. Marketing and promotion arrangements for the event

When does the event start to be promoted? What channels are used for promotion?

This can be divided into online and offline:

Online channels, such as Moments, WeChat groups, Moments advertising, purchasing new media advertising, Tik Tok self-media, Weibo and WeChat, forum posts, etc.

Offline channels, such as promotional leaflets, roll-up banners, outdoor billboards, community billboards, elevator advertisements, influencer recommendations, offline traffic-generating activities, etc.

After the channels and time are planned, a process table is also made to correspond to the content of each section, the content that needs to be done, and the person in charge of each section, so that responsibilities are assigned to individuals.

7. Materials needed for the activity

Materials include online advertisements, offline advertisements and materials during the event promotion phase. The venue, equipment, tools and props needed during the activity. And the prizes that need to be used, etc.

8. Event Budget

The budget includes the cost of event planning, publicity costs for each stage of the event, personnel costs, material costs, and other expenses.

9. Event-related copywriting/speech

The advertising content needed during the execution of the activity, the promotional copy needed during the dissemination stage, the language used by relevant operators, etc.

The above are basically the sections that need to be involved in an activity plan.

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