How to Simplify the Event Planning Process for Infrequent Planners

Event planning is no easy feat, especially if you’re tasked with spinning a thousand plates at once. As a result of the pandemic, businesses have been forced to cut back their events teams and in some cases, remove them altogether. While this saves on costs, putting the challenge into the hands of infrequent or inexperienced planners can be a risk to the success of your investment.

The world of events has changed dramatically and it’s time for a new approach. Whether you’re planning a meeting to strengthen your internal teams or putting on an event to boost brand awareness, there is a better solution.

Keep reading to find out more about how simplifying your events process could make infrequent planners more productive than ever before, all without hiring more staff or paying expensive professionals.

What Is an Infrequent Event Planner?

The title of ‘infrequent planner’ is exactly what it says on the tin. It’s someone who plans events and meetings on the odd occasion, despite it not being their primary responsibility. Marketing directors, managers, administrators, or interns often fall under this category, forced to take the reins of events despite their areas of expertise lying elsewhere.

COVID: How the World of Event Planning Has Changed Forever

Source: Marketing Charts

In the early months of 2020, every aspect of the business was turned on its head. Corporate organizations were forced to shut down and events of every nature came to a grinding halt. The impact of the pandemic has been immense for many reasons, but its effect on event management has kickstarted a new era for both complex and straightforward gatherings.

Teams Significantly Reduced

One of the biggest challenges faced by organizations currently is a lack of expert events staff. During the height of the pandemic, it became clear that events were unlikely to be scheduled for a long time, leading to a string of redundancies and cutbacks. One huge trade show specialist lost up to 500 events team members by November 2020, so you can only imagine the reductions that had to be made by businesses with events lower down on their priority list.

• Smaller teams=fewer hands on deck
• Recruitment post-Covid is slower than anticipated
• Tasks are now delegated to less-experienced team members

The Rise of the Virtual Event

While the pandemic’s restrictions brought many challenges to the world of business, they also made events more accessible, wide-reaching, and interactive than ever before. Without the possibility of in-person meetings, companies all over the world were forced to pivot, hosting virtual events on a whole host of different platforms.

There’s no doubt that virtual events will continue to reign supreme for both small and large organizations, but understanding how to plan and execute them properly is essential moving forward.

What Are the Trials and Tribulations of an Infrequent Event Planner?

In the changing world of events, infrequent planners are taking on more and more event-planning responsibilities. Learning how to plan successful events that meet ROI targets isn’t something you can learn overnight. Event planning is a valuable skill and one which has the potential to make or break a business. Infrequent planners face many challenges to bring their organization’s events to life, so let’s dive into them.

Lack of Familiarity with Event Management System

The primary pain point of any infrequent event planner is a lack of knowledge and expertise. They might be a complete marketing guru, but understanding the ins and outs of timeline planning, venue hire, and speaker management is another world altogether. Not only will they have to bring the whole event to life, but they also have to deal with the initial and most important decisions.

Those choices could include:

• What type of event will work best to meet our aims?
• Will in-person, virtual or hybrid events be most successful?
• How can we use the budget to its full potential?
• What are our priorities to get it up and running?

Systems Overly Complicated for Simple Events

Combined with a lack of knowledge, having little time to plan is no way to do an event justice. Successful events and meetings require focused and detailed planning, complete with advanced market research and well-thought-out objectives. Without the time to do all of these things, investing in an event just isn’t worth it.

Lack of Experience Creating Events

The third challenge on the list of tribulations? Spinning too many plates. As we’ve already established, adding event planning to a schedule that’s already jam-packed with other responsibilities isn’t an ideal way to achieve success. If you’re a marketing associate who has now been tasked with managing a portfolio of events and meetings, producing the quality expected of you isn’t going to be easy.

Adhering to Enterprise Branding Guideline

Rightly so, infrequent planners will often do some quick research into the latest and greatest platforms for hosting their events, as well as any activities that could make it more interesting. While this is a brilliant way to improve the attendee experience, using a range of different platforms for various types of events can lead to some confusion over licensing and costs. Free platforms often add additional prices for corporate use, and some require certain permissions to be in place, inevitably leading to overspending outside of the set budget.

How to Simplify the Event Planning Process

Now we’ve delved into the challenges of event management for infrequent planners, let’s talk about the solution. Simplifying the event planning process means getting the most out of your investment, achieving better results, and saving on time and money.

Manage Your Entire Portfolio Through One Smart Platform

Businesses can harness the power of a singular event management platform to make their infrequent planners more productive and better equipped to handle new challenges. As well as organizing small meetings with an added lunch, large-scale events can also be tackled on the same platform. Not only does this reduce the cost of ownership, but it also allows businesses to leverage all the benefits of an event management system.

Instead of expecting infrequent planners to understand every aspect of event planning at the click of a finger, they can plan simply with the click of a button. General templates and straightforward systems make event planning easier and more productive than ever before.

The Benefit of Planning Events Through One Integrated Platform

A fully integrated event management platform is the key to helping organizations move forward in a post-pandemic world. As businesses continue to use software like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Skype to host their meetings, they’re also beginning to plan for a future full of in-person interaction. Uniting these two concepts is a challenge that many will face over the coming years, especially when it comes to launching events for optimum success.

The biggest benefit of using one integrated events platform is streamlining the whole process. They’re convenient, effective and mitigate all the previously outlined challenges that infrequent planners face.

• No more extensive research
• No more licensing confusion
• No more time constraints

Just one straightforward, efficient, and integrated place to plan successful events.

The world of event planning has changed dramatically over the last two years and as we’ve all experienced, the future is never clear. The one certain thing? Virtual, in-person, and hybrid events will remain important to every business, and it is essential to equip planners with the right tools to bring them to life.

Businesses now require one event management system that can support an entire range and portfolio of events, from large complex conferences to small, ad-hoc internal meetings. An effective event management platform like this can take a heavyweight off of a business’ shoulders, saving significant amounts of time, effort, and money.

Want to find out how Stova’s event management solution can make your events more productive, lucrative, and seamless? Request a demo today to get started.