The 7 Steps Every Event Planner Should Follow

There’s something about running an event that is thrilling but also taxing. There’s a sigh of relief at the end, and the hype of letting the first guest into the event. With all of the changes throughout the event process, it can be hard to make sure you are following all of the steps of the event planning process. Here, we are gonna break down the steps that you need to follow to help you keep your wits about you when going through the waves of event planning.

Determine Your Theme and Goals

When it comes time to determine your theme and goals, well, that has to be your first step! What are your goals for your event? What do you want your return on investment to be? What experience do you want your guests to have? How many pictures do you want to have circulating? How many attendees?

Not only do you need to determine your goals, but you also have to determine your theme. This requires time and effort to just think about where to start. Generally speaking, begin with what you know: what kind of event you are running, what guests you are targeting, and then your goals will also come into play. Once you have your goals and theme together, it’s time to do the biggest piece of work: the actual planning.

Do the Event Planning

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Another part of event planning is decor and choosing your venue. You want something that fits with your theme or can be decorated to fit your theme the way you want it to. Decor and venue are kind of intertwined because the two will rely on each other to make the ambiance that you want and need to keep conversations going and keep guests intrigued.

Develop Your Guest List

This step can be done in so many ways, and it also pairs well with the next step of outreach and marketing. You want to make sure that you are reaching out to previous guests, corporate partners, investors, and guests that you already know about. Now, when you do outreach and marketing, you will get a plethora of guests that you don’t have on your list. That’s why you have to make sure and rely on outreach and marketing to add to your list of guests.

Plan Outreach and Marketing

Planning outreach and marketing can be difficult to manage without the help of a team, but it can be done! Marketing and outreach includes creating advertisements, making sure you connect on all social media platforms, and also making sure that you are reaching out to previous guests through your collected emails. You can even do outreach through the mail, which is something that not a lot of people do anymore. The novelty of that will definitely bring some interest.

Follow Through With Plan Implementation

It’s finally that step, the follow-through. It is the high point of the event, and the way that you bring everything together that helps everything coalesce. You made it to this step! This is where you coordinate all of the previous steps to actually create the event that you have been planning. You have to have your call sheet ready and be ready to adjust on the fly, but you’ve got this!

Do Data Analysis and Follow-Up

A two-step process, but one that is just as important as everything else. Follow-up means that you are going to reach out to those who attended the event. You can do surveys, follow-up photos, compile a video, or many different things. Alongside this, you have to do data analysis. This is where you take reviews from your guests, general guest data from your previous steps, and your email lists to figure out how well your event went.

It’s Done

At this point, you can pat yourself on the back and get ready to rest, or start the next event planning process. Keep in mind that this seven-step process isn’t the only way that you can approach an event. This is only one of the many ways that you can go through an event. You don’t even have to do these steps in the same way that you read them. Sometimes, the best thing you can do is research and create your own process. Make the event yours and off you go!