Planning for the conference has to begin at least six months before it is scheduled to take place. There are several factors that you must monitor.
I can only imagine all the questions running through your head. Where do you even begin?
If you want to host a great event, how do you go about selecting the perfect speakers? Which location do you think would work best?
Don’t worry, we got your back!
Are you prepared to begin planning the upcoming meeting?
Here is a comprehensive conference planning guide that will keep you and your team on track:
1. Ensure that the location fits the event
Unexpected flare may be added to a conference by utilizing unique locations. Conferences have been held at museums, historical places, theaters, libraries, and sports venues. But evaluate your group’s needs: A venue should facilitate the conference’s work, not take the spotlight. Ensure that there are sufficient toilets for the size of your event, that the food satisfies any dietary restrictions, and that the venue is ADA-compliant.
Hotels and conference centers are purpose-built to accommodate these requirements and allow attendees to focus on the content of the proceedings, so do not overlook these conventional locations. The ease of hotel rooms, group pricing, and the enhanced networking possibilities afforded by having everyone in one location are particularly advantageous for conferences that attract out-of-town guests.
Bring extraordinary conferences to life without worry!
2. Give each guest a networking advantage
Prepare your conference name badges: The primary reason individuals attend conferences is to network. In addition, face-to-face networking is several times more successful than internet networking during a job hunt. These gatherings allow individuals to converse with others who share their professional or personal hobbies, facilitating their achievement.
If you are using or creating a conference app, consider the ways in which the app itself might facilitate networking:
a) Before the conference: Permitting participants to import their LinkedIn profiles rather than requiring them to build an event-specific profile; allowing people to designate their interests and specializations and displaying other users interested in the same topics or attending the same.
b) Throughout the conference: Providing in-app messaging; facilitating communication with participants at the same social event or with users who commented on the Social.
c) Following the conference: Providing guests’ contact information so they may simply keep the contacts they have
Be sure to provide traditional offline options as well. There is always the sponsored social mixer, but you may also consider methods to include other wellness trends, such as yoga, outdoor activities, and healthy cooking. Design networking opportunities that involve introverts, and you may experience an increase in event satisfaction from up to half of your participants.
3. Develop a precise content strategy with unique insights
Follow a clear plan to acquire your information if participants are attending your conference to increase their level of expertise.
First, if feasible, conduct a survey to determine the themes, subtopics, and level of subject matter expertise of your audience. This may appear to be a Catch-22: If you attract an audience with your content, how can you conduct a survey without an audience? There are solutions to the problem: If this is a recurring event, contact past participants. Create a Facebook event group that includes a simple polling element. And if all else fails, survey a sample of potential attendees or those whose career/interest demographics place them neatly inside your target group.
If polling is not a possibility, consult with stakeholders inside your organization or the company of your client. The business development and marketing teams should be updated on the topical topics and trends that are generating the most attention at now.
Using this information, recruit and confirm pertinent speakers. After the primary speakers have been confirmed, compare the original plan to the roster. If there are missing subjects (e.g., a pet dog training session where no one discusses the latest strategies for handling separation anxiety), go out to specialists in the field to fill in the gaps.
4. Create a marketing tree for your conference
Your conference website is the trunk of your marketing tree; it is easily identifiable, promotes the event as a whole, and assists attendees in locating the information they want.
The event website must be search engine optimized in order for visitors to locate it online. Consider what guests could enter into a search engine when seeking for a conference relevant to their hobbies or industry; these are your primary keywords. Include your
conference’s name and additional keywords in your page names and content. Have a logical layout that allows visitors to simply locate your “About” page, the conference agenda, registration information, and a link to purchase tickets, as well as other essential information.
Your marketing tree’s branches and leaves consist of social platforms, email marketing campaigns, and pay-per-click methods. Reach your audience on the social media channels that make the most sense given their demographics and the nature of your event. (Professional occasion? LinkedIn is a sure bet. Young specialists? Consider Twitter.) Review the broad guidelines for developing a thorough social media plan for an event.
5. Avoid the most typical meeting planning difficulties
There is no way to avoid experiencing headaches. However, watch out for these frequent danger spots:
Clarify your cancellation policy. The policy itself is entirely up to you. (No refunds? Refunds up to two weeks beforehand? Anytime refund, even one year after the event?) Just ensure that it is transparent and extremely apparent.
The reality is that not everyone is as organized or attentive to emails as you are. Obtaining the essential information from various speakers can be a scramble requiring repeated outreach; hence, a buffer should be included in. In an ideal world, this would not be required. When you reach that planet, please send us a postcard. Until then, this segment of the timeline should be padded.
Train your workers in the following: Long lineups and continuous difficulties during registration create a negative first impression among participants. Select an easy-to-use event check-in tool and plan a time to familiarize your registration staff with it before the event.
Early security checks: The days when security was only an afterthought are over. Obtain their advice early on in the planning phase if your event will require security, so that you can integrate it easily from the start rather than adjusting afterwards.
Establish team communication channels: There is no longer any cause to cope with layout version misunderstanding or never-ending email thread searches. Utilize project collaboration platforms, such as Slack, and provide team members with access to your event layout tool so that everyone gets the most up-to-date version.
6. Walk in the footsteps of all conference participants
Bring out the conference planning schedule once again and schedule many periods for a symbolic tour of the conference from the perspective of:
Look for pain areas and issues, as well as solutions to improve each group’s experience. On the first day, you may discover that participants in some sessions have little time between sessions to use the restroom, so you shorten each session by a few minutes. Volunteers who arrive on the second day may not have a coordinator to distribute their tasks. Or you
may discover that you have the opportunity to plan a little networking event for the event’s speakers, which is a terrific way to show your thanks and demonstrate that you respect their involvement.
Regardless of your level of experience, this stage will nearly always reveal possibilities to enhance your conference!
7. Increase app engagement
According to our experts, enhancing attendee engagement remains the top objective for meeting planners. The greater their engagement with the app, the greater the rewards. An app for conferences provides all the advantages of traditional paper-based conference materials while meeting three fundamental goals:
- Understanding attendee desires, needs, and
- Making contact with
- Facilitating guests’ social
To increase involvement prior to the start of the conference, encourage guests to utilize the app for scheduling: Include a user-friendly calendar function that makes all pertinent information easily accessible. Provide attendees with access to a complete agenda, speaker biographies, and a method for submitting questions to speakers.
Prior to the commencement of the conference, registrants should be comfortable with utilizing the app. Engage your audience with information like speaker slides and networking possibilities. You might even provide the opportunity to complete speaker evaluations in-app at the conclusion of each session, with responses entering into a prize drawing at the conference itself.
8. Dive into cutting-edge conference perspectives
Want to keep up with the most recent developments in participative meetings? Check out the most popular articles in our blog. They provide a comprehensive examination of conference meeting design.
All in all,
Good luck with your conference! We hope that you now have a much better understanding of how to organize a conference and the essential tasks required. It is time to get things rolling. We know you are capable! If you are still uncertain and in need of a conference management, please contact us at DOREMI Events.
