A new year full of new events and new opportunities to make a great impression is just around the corner. That means its time to start planning for the upcoming trade shows and events of 2016. Here are some ideas to make sure youre ready for a new show season:
Review your budgets and actual expenditures from 2015
As the year comes to an end you should be able to collect all of the financial records you need from this years actual expenditures for each event that you attended. Carefully go over these expenditures and compare them to the marketing budgets you outlined at the beginning of the year so youre able to:
- Make sure your return on investment (ROI) is accurate for each event.
- Take a look at your spending to find the inefficiencies and search for ideas to improve them.
- Locate where you are spending too much money and come up with a plan on how to either save money or increase the value of your event marketing in the coming year.
- Decide whether or not a specific event should show up again on your schedule for the new year.
- Determine if your budgets for the coming year are accurate and sufficient or if you need to adjust them based on this year’s numbers.
Create an 2016 event schedule
Make a list of all the events you are planning to participate in for 2016. Include the following information for each event:
- Event name, date and location
- Booth size and orientation
- Number of booth staff and who will be attending, if you are able to plan that far ahead.
- Budget for the event.
- The goals and objectives of the event.
The schedule may change over the course of the year, but, creating this list will at least give you a great foundation for the planning and organization of the coming events.
Create a Brief
Include all of the necessary information that will ensure you will meet all of the objectives and goals for your events including:
- Important messages.
- Promotions you plan on using before, during and after the show.
- Crucial measures of ROI or the success of the event.
- The Key functionality of your displays
Get the input of others
When you have your schedule and brief completed provide the information to others involved in your organization to get their feedback and suggestions. Doing this gets everyone involved early in the planning stages and will ensure you have all of your information ready for when it’s needed.
Show and event season will be here before you know it, so its always best to be as prepared as possible. When the unexpected happens youll be in a much better position to deal with it.
