7 Event Project Management Tips for Running a Successful Event

Hosting an event can bring a lot of benefits to your company or organization. While they’re difficult, there’s a simple fix that can help hour events be successful. With proper management, some tools, and a few tips, you can have a successful event that meets your goals.

Here are 7 event project management tips for running a successful event.

1. Schedule properly

The worst thing you can do is to schedule your event poorly. Delays are almost inevitable during the event planning stage. The best you can do is create a schedule that addresses all problems related to deadlines.

Scheduling as early as possible gives you and your team enough time to accomplish each task until the date of the event. This will also help prevent and hold up that might make it harder for you to create a successful event.

Avoid tight schedules. If it’s possible, add extra time to fix things if some of your tasks go poorly. Sometimes, some deliverables will be delayed, and you need to account for such instances.

Your motto during the creation of the event should be, “Hope for the best but expect the worst.” Creating a backup plan in case things go awry is important, especially for bigger events. It’s also better if you have more than one backup plan for every scenario.

2. Assign Responsibilities

You cannot manage an event entirely on your own. It’s best to assign all the tasks to your team members properly. Choosing the right people to do specific tasks is important for things to go smoothly.

Make sure that nobody is overloaded or underloaded with work. Encourage people to help each other whenever needed. As an event manager, you should also be available to guide your members in their specific tasks if they need any assistance.

You can also set a deadline that is earlier than your actual target. The extra time can be used for you to review the accomplishments of your team members and correct any misstep if there’s any.

3. Project Management apps

As a project manager, you can never go wrong with using a project management app like spider impact that can help with almost anything you need. You can have all the data, communications, and schedules located on one platform.

You should choose a project management app wherein you can view your tasks in different ways. A calendar view is advisable for people who are focused on deadlines. But a Kanban board is proven to be more efficient when it comes to team activity.

4. Set KPIs

How will you know if the event is successful? The easiest way is to set KPIs. There are different KPIs you can set. Each of them can give insight into different types of data.

Ideally, you should have a few KPIs for any type of event. One should focus on the success of the event itself using KPIs such as event check-ins, total registrations, and cost-to-revenue ratio.

Running a KPI during the event planning stage can also help avoid any delays. Ticket sales is one example of a KPI that should be constantly monitored. You can sell early bird tickets to cover prior costs if you have a limited budget.

If your ticket sales are a bit on the low side, create a stronger marketing campaign to attract more people. By setting the KPI for your ticket sales early on, you can manage your event without ever going in the red on your budget.

There should also be a KPI focusing on the attendees, such as the audience demographic, number of returning attendees, and customers acquired. Another thing you should measure is sponsorship satisfaction.

These things are important in the current and future events that you will hold. You can check out more event-related KPIs to find one that aligns with the goals of your event.

5. Online marketing

Promoting your event is important, and experts have proven that online marketing is the most effective way of doing so today. Both social media and websites are the most popular marketing techniques in 2021.

Aside from online marketing being more cost-effective, it’s also easier to reach your target audience. You can also use a few traditional marketing techniques in conjunction with your online marketing campaigns to really boost awareness for your event.

Online marketing also wouldn’t stop after you finish your event. Your attendees would most likely want to see some pictures of the event. You can still increase brand awareness by uploading pictures from the event so people can share them on their own social media profiles.

6. Run through

Before the event, make sure that everything is ready. It’s best to have a run-through with everyone involved to double-check that things will go smoothly. If any problem arises, you will still have time to correct or amend them.

For regular events, a run-through two weeks prior to the date is enough. But for bigger events, you might need to have multiple run-throughs to iron everything out. If you’re facing a lot of problems during run-throughs, consider changing the target date of your event to a later date.

7. Proper communication

Before and during the event, you should make it easier for everyone to contact you. You need to be aware of any immediate problems that may arise. But allowing people to contact you through different channels can lead to missed and unread emails.

If you are using a management app for the event (and you certainly should), then it’s easy to centralise all the messages within a single app.

For third-party companies, you can decide between other means of communication. Email is still a standard in the industry, but you can also allow access for representatives or contact persons in your project management app.

You can limit what they see so they will only be accessing relevant information. This protects any sensitive data from leaking while still allowing for ease of communication.

Final Thoughts

Managing an event is truly stressful, but with the tips above, you’ll be able to handle any event with ease.