The 3 Best Ways to Evaluate Your Event
The 3 Best Ways to Evaluate Your Event
In many of my blogs, I’ve shared tips and key learnings to plan an event, but I haven’t gotten the chance to go further in-depth on evaluating post-event. Evaluation is so important in many worlds, but especially in the events world. Why? Evaluation helps us understand what worked well, what did not work, what we want to do differently the next time around, and what we want to keep consistent. Over my years as an event planner in Edmonton and the surrounding area, I have found a pretty good system to help me evaluate an event that I planned and executed. I’m able to apply many of these key learnings to other events that I play a role in and I’m happy to be here today to share my learnings with you!
1. Evaluate Your Budget
This evaluation may seem like the most obvious one, but many don’t evaluate the budget unless it’s greatly exceeded. I think there is great importance in reviewing your budget post-event to see:
- What was over budget?
- What was under budget?
- Where there could have been further savings
- Where I would like to budget more for the future (i.e. on a promotional tactic that worked well)
Although this may seem tedious, go through each line item of your budget and reflect to gain a better understanding of if something could have been done differently to benefit the event more.
Not quite there yet? Check out my blog on how to set up your event budget!
2. Evaluating What Worked
This is my favorite step in the process – it’s celebrating your big wins! When you are evaluating what worked well in your event it’s important to gain insight from attendees, exhibitors (when applicable), sponsors (when applicable), special guests, or the hosting organization. These insights will help you gauge which techniques or aspects of the event helped them achieve their goal! Check out some of the questions that you can ask your different audiences below to gain insight into their successes of the event – these may not apply to all events.
Attendees:
Did you enjoy the event/conference/show?
What aspects did you enjoy the most?
What was your key takeaway from the event/conference/show?
Did you enjoy the networking?
What was unique about this event/conference/show?
Will you consider attending future events?
Exhibitors:
Did you find the event/show/conference beneficial to your business goals?
Did you gain valuable leads?
Was this the right audience for your business?
What did the event host do well for exhibitor promotion?
Were there ample networking opportunities?
Do you feel that you got or exceeded your return on investment (ROI)?
Will you consider exhibiting at future events?
Sponsors:
Did you find the event/show/conference beneficial to your business goals?
Did you gain valuable leads?
Was this the right audience for your business?
What did the event host do well for sponsor promotion?
Do you feel that you got or exceeded your return on investment (ROI)?
Will you consider sponsoring future events?
3. Evaluating What Did Not Work
This step isn’t as fun as the previous one, although it probably carries the most weight in the entire process. Finding out what did not work for your event will help you grow your event in the future. Learning about what not to do, what not to spend your budget on, and what people did not enjoy will create room for you to try new ideas in the future (check out the 2022 event trends here), or expand on what you have already implemented that is working.
I always feel like it’s beneficial to gain feedback from third parties in this situation, such as stakeholders, attendees, exhibitors, sponsors, etc. Check out what people are saying about your event through social media channels. Consider even sending a post-event survey to gain valuable insight into what your audience expects and wants to see from your event.
Planning events isn’t as easy as it may seem on the outside, so don’t be too hard on yourself if your event didn’t quite go as planned. Find those key takeaways and apply them to the next event and I can almost guarantee you will see progress. Planit Events Inc. is here for you throughout the entire event process. Feel free to reach out to us and we would be happy to help you in any way that we can!
How to Use Social Media to Promote Your Events
How to Use Social Media to Promote Your Events
Event planning and marketing go hand in hand. Without marketing, your event may not live up to its full potential. Living in 2022, the marketing world has a strong lean toward the digital side which comes with many challenges, however, once you have a grasp on using digital tools, they can come at ease and help you immensely in your event planning. As an event planner in the Edmonton and surrounding area for years, I have a few tips on using digital means to help promote your event, which I will share with you today. This blog’s focus will be on using social media to help promote your upcoming event!
Tip 1: Establish Social Media Accounts for the Event/Organization Early On
First things first, to promote on social media, you need to have social media channels. There are two ways of going about this:
- Social media channels for the organization
- Social media channels for the event
Sometimes it may be beneficial to use the social media channels for the organization as it already may be well established. By well established I mean:
- Steady growth in followers each month
- Post regularly
- Strong engagement with followers
Don’t worry, if you don’t have social media accounts set up for the event or organization it’s not too late. It’s best to set these accounts up as soon as possible so that you can start posting and gaining a social media presence among the right audience. There are four main platforms that I typically like to focus on depending on the audience and type of event which includes Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Each of these platforms provides great benefits however explore the idea of YouTube or even TikTok too if they are relevant for your event!
Need some more help deciding which platforms to use? Check out this great HubSpot article which outlines different platforms and their pros and cons!
Tip 2: Create a Social Media Plan in Advance
Ok, now that you’ve got your social media channels, the next thing to do is create a social media plan in advance. I recommend starting to post about the upcoming event months ahead, especially if you are looking for sponsors and exhibitors! Consider posting:
- Event information (who, what, where, when, why)
- Reasons to attend the event
- Attendee information
- Exhibitor information
- Sponsor information
- Highlight special guests attending or keynote speakers
- Highlight sponsors
- Registration information
- Promotion (ticket pricing etc.)
Use your social media channels to bring awareness to your event, share the benefits of attending your event, information about the event, and much more. It’s important to share information in advance, for example, if the last day to purchase tickets is May 10, ensure you give your audience plenty of notice!
What I like to do is create a calendar using a spreadsheet to help you organize your posts. Are you going or post 1x a week or 4x a week? You can track all of this information on your spreadsheet.
Tip 3: Use a Scheduling Tool
I can’t stress this enough, but using a scheduling tool will save you so much time! Scheduling tools usually come at a cost of $10+ per month depending on the capabilities you would like included. Instead of trying to remember to create your post and share it across your platforms multiple times a week, you can schedule a few hours at the beginning of each month or an hour or two a week to schedule out in advance. I prefer scheduling for a month in advance. This frees up a lot of my time so I can focus on planning and executing the event. If I ever have any last-minute announcements to make I can quickly add them in.
Using a scheduling tool not only saves you time, but it saves you the stress of forgetting to post and messing up the social media plan you made in advance.
Tip 4: Evaluate Engagement & Find Key Takeaways
Just like it’s important to evaluate your event to find out what worked and what didn’t work, it’s just as important to do this with your social media. (Keep an eye out for the next blog this month as I’ll be sharing ideas on how to evaluate your event) It’s important to try out different ideas and methods to see which creates more engagement with your audience. This way, you can put your effort into what works for your event and not waste time on what doesn’t. It’s best to test new ideas over at least the span of a month to help you really gauge engagement. So how do you measure engagement?
- How many likes is your post getting?
- Are there any comments? If so, what are they?
- Are people sharing, re-tweeting, or saving the post?
- Is your channel gaining more followers?
I’ve been in the events industry for over a decade now and each year new waves of promotion types come about. It’s important to stay on top of trends and evaluate what works best to promote your event. If you have any questions about planning your upcoming event or you need a helping hand, feel free to reach out!