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“When it comes to designing events, experience is worth it’s weight in gold.”
Your executive team comes to you…”Let’s hold a conference.” You handle a lot of projects for your firm but wouldn’t exactly call yourself an event planner. How hard could this be though? Figure out the who, what, when and wheres. Management can keep the why.
Seriously, before you make a call to an event production company to “put on a show,” be absolutely sure you’re NOT making these common mistakes. Really. Don’t do it!
Mistake Number One: Lack of purpose.
Don’t be the company that says they want to hold an event, and yet doesn’t really know what they want to achieve.
For example, do you want to achieve company wide uniformity, employee engagement, introduce a product or service, reward employees, show your growth, or a combination of these goals? Many customers already know the answer to these questions, but some still need to reflect on their objectives. Figure these things out before you make the call. Start with the end in mind.
Think about what the firm would consider a successful event, and what you want the executive team to say when it’s all wrapped up. We all have someone to answer to and we all know which way things roll.
Mistake Number Two: Relying on in-house resources.
If your firm wants an external event, then don’t just bring the office to them. They want more than your two-person web meeting.
Similarly, don’t believe that you get what you pay for when it comes to in-house AV at the venue. Those costs aren’t promising you a team of technicians that can provide secure speaker content management, flawless audio and video recordings, audience polling, webcasting, photography, program registration, and on-site staffing for hundreds or even thousands of event participants. They just guarantee that someone will be there. And when it doesn’t work, well, ask someone in charge.
Mistake Number Three: Ignoring event follow up.
Okay, so you had a great event. Now comes the follow up. Your boss is about the bottom line, so collection and summary of event data, like post-show surveys and polling, is important. Marketing needs someone to edit live recordings for website placement and social media content, and distribute of all of the above to attendees. Accounting wants someone to reconcile the event’s actual expenses to the budget. Who will handle the myriad details afterwards? Have you done it before, on top of your regular, day-to-day responsibilities?
An event without follow up is like a super fun first date without hope of a second one - because you forgot to exchange contact info. It was wonderful in the moment, and everyone is basking in the afterglow. But then you (and they) never call. What happens now?
Mistake Number Four: Literally everything else.
Call it Murphy’s Law, or just poor planning. Smart companies know that if anything can go wrong, it probably will. For example - your next presenter wants to use some equipment that wasn’t previously ordered, a piece of equipment fails mid-show, or maybe the event nextdoor is using a lot of equipment that causes a power outage. Pop-up requests and mishaps are surprising to everyone (including you). And who will get blamed?
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The Solution
Take a deep breath, be smart, and understand that experience is worth its weight in gold. Part of the benefit of working with specialists like Enliven Production Group is that we safeguard your event as much as possible before it starts.
The next time you’re thinking about “putting on a show,” call us. Before we begin planning any event with a client, we help them articulate their vision for it (mistake #1). We call this discovery process our Success Alignment Study, or SAS. It may seem simple, but we ask our customers a series of key questions to determine the purpose of the event. Then, we work together to establish goals and objectives. This helps us guide our clients to the services they need for success.
Those services include graphic content development for slides, printed banners, digital signage, branded charging stations, and more, as well as site logistics, custom scenic design, audio and video module production, app development, script writing, and whatever else you can dream up. All our production services (mistakes #2 and #3) are designed and developed by experts to reach your target audience. Odds are we’ve seen it before, and know what to watch out for (mistake #4).
So whether you’re embarking on your first event or your 99th, don’t make these big mistakes that will hamstring your event before it even launches. That’s why we offer complete design and development of services for your event – no matter the size, location or duration. Because after 15 years of producing upscale conferences, corporate meetings and special events, Enliven Production Group has it down.
