By Tori Sullivan

For many organizations, hosting an event to celebrate a successful project or in pursuit of reaching a critical milestone may seem like a necessary, yet time consuming effort. While an event can absolutely amplify key messages and help reach organizational goals, we have found that in order to see true return on investment, the event planning process must be thoughtful, strategic, and most importantly, have clear objectives.

Goal Setting

At Issues Management Group, we are experienced in coordinating thoughtful, effective events aimed at amplifying key messages and garnering media attention. This includes groundbreakings, ribbon cuttings, activations, press conferences, fundraisers, and other events that range in size and visibility. However, regardless of size, most share a crucial goal: to increase attention and elevation of your brand or mission in pursuit of a long-term objective.

However, we must go one step further and identify what true “success” looks like as the guiding principle before beginning to think about the brass tacks of the event. The first step of identifying success is to think about key audiences. For example, does success look like having an opportunity to build key relationships with high-level stakeholders in an intimate environment, or does success look like having the maximum number of eyes on your brand? The answer to these questions will help determine the size, scope, budget, and newsworthiness of your event, while ensuring return on the investment of holding the affair.

An event focused on creating and leveraging relationships with key decision-makers will not have the same size and feel of an event focused on activating large groups of people, yet we often see companies fall prey to locking in space, speakers, or materials before determining their key goals and audience to start.

Programming

Once you have set your key objectives and identified your audience, you can begin to think about programming for the event itself. For many organizations, it is an opportunity to thank the elected officials, board members, members of leadership, strategic partners, or other influential parties who helped make the milestone a reality. If getting media attention on the event is a goal—and often it is—utilizing the speaking program to elevate high-profile individuals is a great way to amplify your messaging through broadcast outlets and other platforms who may not have had an opportunity to interact with or cover your organization in the past.

While events do not need to be big or flashy to drive impressions, the programming should be engaging and ultimately demonstrate to your key audience who the organization is, what you do, and have a call to action for those in attendance to continue engaging with the organization into the future. All event attendees, regardless of role, are an opportunity to expand your organization’s reach and brand awareness into the future.

Identifying Success

Once you have identified key objectives, audience, and programming, you have all of the necessary outputs to begin tracking progress to goal in a meaningful way and identifying a successful event.  

What’s important to one brand or organization may not always be crucial to the next, and this is reflected in their KPI’s following an event. We have seen companies execute events purely with the intention of improving internal sentiment among staff members and introducing themselves to community members in a new market, while others are focused on media coverage and developing relationships with key stakeholders or decision-makers. A successful event is one that has clear objectives, thoughtful programming, and solid identification of what success may look like at the culmination of the activation.

Overall, events are (fun!) (engaging!) (creative!) opportunities to support our clients in meeting their strategic priorities with out-of-the-box, abstract activations. Together, we can ensure your event is effective, efficient, and most of all, successful.