by jonc | Mar 12, 2019 | Plan & Create
Organising an event can seem a daunting task so discover a few of our top organisation tips and tricks to ensure that your next event runs smoothly!
Running an event can seem a daunting task, even to those who’ve been running events for years. To ensure your event runs a smoothly as possible, it’s important to set clear goals, prepare a schedule, look for partners, find service providers and, in our opinion, manage your ticketing!
Here are a few tips and tricks to ensure that you can minimise some of that necessary stress when you plan your next event and help it go as seamlessly as possible!
Write everything down on paper first
Find yourself a piece of paper and brainstorm down all your goals for the event. By doing this, it will help you clarify what the purpose of your event is. Think about why you’re creating this event and who you’re creating it for.
There are many events out there, from cultural to social to sports events, so you need to work out what makes your event special. What makes your event different from the rest? This will help you to identify your unique selling point (USP).
These elements will offer you guidance in planning your event. They’ll act as a signpost to help you avoid going in a different direction that may not benefit your end goal. Having all these goals outlined at such an early stage can also help you in the future when you may potentially approach partners and sponsors. If you have a clear and solid idea of your goals, it’ll make it far easier to communicate that message to others.
From this point, you’ll define the visual elements of your event and help you shape the tone of the voice you want to give your event.
Create a schedule and budget forecast
This will become the holy grail of your event! Taking the time to plan all the tasks that need to be completed and managed throughout the planning phase until the day of your event can be incredibly beneficial. Always be open to reviewing these throughout the process, though.
Some of the things you’ll need to plan will include:
- Building your teams
- Looking for partners and service providers
- Creating communication tools
- Choosing and creating your online ticketing tool
- Producing elements of your event
- Looking for speakers or bands
- Safety and other admin and legal steps, etc.
These steps can obviously vary depending on your event: you might need more steps or sometimes less. It would help if you covered everything you may need to do in the early stages of event planning, so you know what you have ahead of you.
Once you’ve planned and listed out all your tasks, begin to start organising your event. Event planning is notorious for being full of surprises, both good and bad, so it’s important to have a rough idea of a backup plan if not everything goes as expected.
At the same time as creating your planning schedule, you can begin to plan your budget, looking at available funds, forecasted revenue, financial needs, etc. It’ll be far easier to begin tackling your budget once you’ve completed your tasks and expenses, and this forecast will be crucial when approaching sponsors, donors and partners.
Contact potential sponsors, partners or benefactors
Usually, one of the first tasks in your schedule is to research and secure potential partners, sponsors and benefactors. Their support of your event can be a huge help in financial help, wellbeing and even equipment. It can also be precious in terms of exposure.
This process can require a lot of time and energy. The key to this is to define which organisations may be interested. You’ll need to look at which ones you can provide benefits to, as well as how they can benefit you. For example, can you provide sponsors with links into the local community or help build up their image and reputation within certain sectors? In return, the potential sponsors can then help by being part of your event planning and the event itself (speaker engagements, product samples, etc.).
Service Providers
When looking for partners and sponsors, you’ll also have to start looking for service providers. Obviously, this can differ hugely depending on the needs of your event. Usually, it’s common to have contracts with:
- A service provider to ensure health and safety on-site and at entrances (the venue can sometimes supply this)
- A caterer, food supplier or catering company for your teams and guests
- Before the event, a platform to manage ticketing or registrations (a service we can provide, click here for more details)
- A technical provider for everything that relates to sound and lighting, internet access, etc.
Many operational roles can be outsourced to service providers. Don’t hesitate to write a specification note listing your expectations and needs and issue a tender to choose them well. This will allow you to assess different proposals and prices.
Sell your tickets
As mentioned in the previous step, your ticketing platform is at the heart of your event. To make sure you get great attendance to your event, register to your online ticketing platform and list your event with plenty of time to market your event to make sure you see a high rate of ticket sales and registrations.
Many options are available to support and market your ticketing, such as:
- Creating promotional codes to incentivise your attendees to share or communicate about your event, as well as boost your sales
- Promoting your event on social media with lots of insider information about your event
- Embedding your tickets on your website
Strong Communication
Linked to having high ticket sales, your event’s communication should be planned to help trigger your audience to perform certain actions at certain times. The can lead to an increasingly high impact on them as the event gets closer.
Make sure you target potential attendees using the most relevant support at certain times. For example, using social media, press, poster campaigns, partners, and media helps increase awareness around your event. Incentivise ticket sales at certain times using promotional codes as previously mentioned. You can use so many communication tools to maximise your potential audience; it’s up to you to choose which would work best for your event.
Create a press kit for the media to talk about your event and offer interviews, testimonies and reporting opportunities for the day of the event. The local and regional press may be interested in covering your event, so it’s always good to be prepared. This strategy will obviously need to fit in with your budget.
Spoil your attendees
The experience you create for your attendees should be your number one priority when developing your event:
- Make sure you remind everyone involved with your event of the essential and useful information ahead of time.
- Create a friendly, warm and approachable atmosphere at the event itself
- Establish dedicated spaces to relax and enjoy the event, and don’t forget about the basics such as toilets, water fountains and access for people with reduced mobility
- Have locations where attendees can seek out additional information depending on the scale of your event. – having easy access to these facilities and short waiting times will improve the attendees experience overall.
Brief, Communicate and Review
Before the main event day, take the time to create a summary of all the necessary information for your attendees and anyone who might be involved in your event. Make sure everyone has all the information they need.
Ensure any staff you have can communicate effectively throughout your event. This way, both you and them will be able to keep an eye on the event’s progress, track any feedback or handle any possible questions your attendees may have.
Once your event is over, don’t forget to get a review from any staff you may have at the event and your attendees to discuss what worked well and what you might need to watch out for next time!
by jonc | Mar 1, 2019 | Product
Planners and owners using Helm Tickets can now download a simple spreadsheet called “All Order Data” a CSV file, which will contain all orders made against an event/asset, no matter it’s order or payment status.
This includes orders that have been:
- Fully paid
- Fully refunded
- Partially refunded
- Cancelled
- Pending invoice payment
This was developed for planners, who needed this functionality to track attendees who turn up to their events having not paid for their tickets. But this feature can be used however you may need
The difference between this download and the guest list/bookings download is it now contains the following columns:
- Ticket Cancelled – whether the ticket was cancelled, as part of a refund or order cancellation
- Order Status – this will show the same statuses found on the “View orders” page, eg. received, complete or cancelled
- Order Payment Status – this will also show the same payment statuses found on the “View orders” page, eg. Paid, Offline, Fully Refunded, Partially Refunded, etc.
Please note: The existing guest list download remains the same and will only contain attendees where the ticket hasn’t been cancelled and has been paid for. This also includes office tickets.
A new “Download All Order Data” button is available in the “Tools” menu of the view event and asset dashboard page. When you hover over it a tooltip appears giving further detail to the planner as to what the download will contain and will warn them that we advise that it isn’t used to aid event entry/asset bookings management.
by jonc | Feb 14, 2019 | Promote
Intro
If you’re like most event organisers, one of the biggest challenges you probably face when running an event is creating an effective marketing strategy. Most events have small teams, and everyone in that team ends up doing a little bit of everything.
Like most event organisers, you probably don’t have the luxury of having a dedicated social media team religiously going through various channels ensuring plenty of engagement. Nor do you have huge budgets to spend on adverts and campaigns.
Instead, you have to get creative in making the most out of what budget you have and ensure you maximise the return on your spending. The end goal is usually the same — to spend as little as possible yet still sell more tickets for as little effort.
It can be a tricky one to get right, but not impossible! Here are some of our top low budget marketing tips for your event.
Collect and Understand Your Data
You’re likely marketing on several different channels, whether that’s email, digital advertising or various social media platforms. All these channels can provide you with essential data that tells you who’s looking at your event and what’s working.
Reviewing that data as frequently as possible is essential in building an understanding of who you’re marketing to and who your potential attendees might be. Understanding which marketing channels are working best and who’s engaging with that marketing means that you can tailor your marketing budget to where you see the biggest return on investment (ROI).
To learn how to be more efficient with your budget, to work out who to target and where to target them, do the following:
- Set up tracking links to your post. Tracking links are the best way to see where people came from when they found your event listing/website. Bitly offer a great free service where you can customise the link and track not only how many people have clicked on the link but which social channel they came from and where in the world they’ve clicked from. They offer a paid service which offers more features, but for basic link tracking their free service is perfect!
- Look at how your social media is performing. All social media channels offer ‘insights’ into how people engage with your posts. You can look at views, likes and shares which tend to come as standard. Some platforms also offer you insights into link clicks as well as profile clicks. If you run a business account on some social media channels you can even check the ages, gender and time of day when your posts receive the most engagement.
Refine Which Social Media Channels Are Used
There are several social media channels available for you to market your event. Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Pinterest — the list goes on. Every one of these channels is both time and cost consuming. Once you’ve gathered your data, you’ll be able to make a more informed decision about which social media channels work best for your event.
The best way to make your event marketing budget go further is to the only fund in the channels that will work best for you. For example, if you’re running a music event, you should probably throw marketing on Linkedin out the window! Or, if you’re running a fashion event, Instagram is the best platform to showcase all of your great visual content.
Suppose your budget is limited; just pick a couple of social media channels – where you’re already seeing greater engagement and focus on those. If you’re unsure which platform is working best for you, go back to step one and look at the data from the platform you’re already using. Look back over time to see if your engagement on some platforms has grown or dropped.
Automate Your Social Media Post
A great way to save you time and money with your social media posts is using automation tools. Automating your marketing posts for your events will help you reduce the amount of time spent manually managing your campaigns, meaning you can be more productive and improve the content that goes out.
There are plenty of free tools that can help you with this:
- Buffer – With Buffer’s free service, you can schedule multiple posts to be automatically posted when you decide across multiple platforms. It works across Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram. There is a pro version of Buffer; however, if you’re looking to save those pennies to reinvest in your event, the free version can offer you everything you need.
- Planoly – Planoly is purely an Instagram automation tool, but it does have some other powerful free features. You can plan and schedule your posts and look at basic stats from the previous week or 30 days. Another cool feature of Planoly is that you can grab stock images or other accounts images directly through the platform to share on your own feed. So if you’re running low on the content, you have the option of ‘regramming’ others’ content to bolster yours. There are multiple paid–for accounts, but the free version should be more than enough to get you going.
Reach Out To Partners and Influencers
Sponsors, vendors and even your attendees all can be a part of your marketing team. Discover ways to engage with them on social media and reach out to their fans and followers. This way, you can expand your reach to those who may also be interested in your event.
The best people to reach out to build engagement are influencers — these guys are the pros of social media. We aren’t saying to reach out to huge celebrities who can be incredibly expensive to have promote you. Look out for ‘micro-influencers: those that fit your niche and have a smaller yet more targeted following. These are the influencers that are perfect to market your event to and get behind you.
Conclusion
Marketing budgets can be a nightmare, especially when you’re running a small event, and you’d rather be spending the money investing in your event. Whilst you can’t eliminate all marketing costs, we hope these tips will help you save a bit of money and make your budget go that little bit further.
by jonc | Feb 7, 2019 | Promote
The use of influencer marketing has grown exponentially over the last few years due to the ever-increasing growth of social media. Influencers are common users to promote brands and products through sponsored posts across social media. Influencer marketing can involve anything from product placements to brand mentions. These influencers are generally paid per promotional post.
However, more and more brands are beginning to use influencers to promote events.
An incredible example of the power of influencer marketing for events is Fyre Festival. Despite the festival itself being a complete disaster, without the influencers creating such a large hype before the festival it may never have spiralled out of control as quickly as it did.
Rohan Midha, managing director of the PMYB influencer agency, says that while Fyre itself was a failure, the marketing choices behind it were not. He told the BBC:
It just shows how powerful influencers can be. Influencers can reproduce the largest return on investment…That’s across the board.
Werner Geyser, the founder of the Influencer Marketing Hub, agrees, saying since the release of the documentaries his web traffic has spiked a curiosity in the industry has increased.
If anything [the Fyre Festival documentary] was showing utilising influencer marketing was part of its success in terms of marketing the event…It’s all publicity at the end of the day. I think brand managers and influencers will be more cautious and that can only be a good thing.
Influencers’ primary purpose is to boost visibility and engagement around the brand and event. Read on to discover the best practices when using influencer marketing.
Create Great Visual Content
The main reason to use influencers for events is it can promote it for you on various social media channels. But you always need to keep in mind that influencers won’t share posts of your event if it doesn’t look good. Influencers have an image to maintain, so they need to constantly be sharing visually appealing content (images/videos).
If the lighting or decor is n’t up to standard and they can’t create good content, they may not be as keen to share your event with their followers.
It is crucial that the event is ‘Instagramable’. There needs to be plenty of opportunities throughout the event to take good pictures. Whether it be something as simple as good lighting or even event accessories such as place cards, food, banners and table settings. From there they will proactively share Instagram Stories, photos and live feeds to show their followers how ‘awesome’ your event is.
Understand Your Guest List
You can’t get just any influencers to promote your product through sponsored posts. This works the same for events. You cannot just invite any influencer to your event. You need to ensure that you invite influencers that appeal to your target market, audience and attendees. This means you should really study your guest list and your social media audience.
Take a look at the various demographics and identify which influencers would be the most effective for your event. Asking your audience directly is even an option through polls and surveys on social media. This again brings greater engagement to your event. By gathering this information from their responses you should be able to gauge exactly what kind of influencers your audience would like to see at your event.
If your guest list includes any non-paid influential people within your community it’s worth checking their social media accounts see if there are any specific influencers they follow. This should give you a better idea of whom to invite and whom to avoid.
Generate Buzz Before Your Event
In many cases, you want influencers to talk about your event before it even begins. They can share pictures of an invite or even what they plan on wearing! The most important thing is to share details about the event to inform and remind followers about it. This helps generate a buzz around the event and encourage people to keep an eye out for more event-related content.
Creating this buzz before your event is especially important if your event involves some kind of audience involvement, such as product launches, concerts, etc. Generating pre-event buzz is great if you’re looking to drive higher audience attendance or if you need your attendees to take some kind of action before the event itself.
Have your influencer share plenty of event content
The whole point of having influencers at your event is to get their audience and reach to engage with your event. Briefing the influencers before the event is also essential, as you’ll need to encourage them to share as much photo and video content with their followers, along with a relevant event hashtag.
Sharing a live feed or stories from the event to document their experience is another useful tool. They shouldn’t just share content after the event is over, but share content throughout the event itself to let their followers get a real feel for the experience of the event.
Live content from events is a great way to build authenticity around your event. As everything is captured in real time there’s less risk of audiences thinking the content has been edited in any way. It makes audiences feel involved and makes them feel closer to your brand and event.
Share content after the event finishes
Using influencers to create content about your event is a fantastic way to expand your reach and potentially bring new audiences to your event. Keeping the momentum going after your event is over is also a great way to keep that audience engaged, especially if your event is recurring. It brings another level of credibility and keeps your current audience engaged.
If you had professional photography at the event, sharing those images on social media and creating blogs will give your profiles and brands a professional image. The images will look exciting and aid in creating the “fear of missing out” (FOMO) when alongside a line of plans for your next event.
This may drive attendance at your next event as well as encourage other influencers to potentially reach out to you and join your next campaign.
Sharing the influencer’s direct content is an amazing way to build engagement with your current audience; it can lead to growth in both your own and the influencer’s following. Just ensure you get their permission before sharing their content.
Conclusion
These are a few of the best practices when using influencer marketing to promote your event. Planning is key with this, so plan your campaign carefully and ensure you have plenty of time to build that hype and organise what elements of your event you want to highlight, capture and share. Influencers can be incredibly busy, so make sure you give them plenty of time so they can execute your carefully designed plan. If the influencer you have in mind can’t make your event make sure you have a list of backups to invite, so you can carry out your plan as efficiently as possible.
by jonc | Feb 5, 2019 | Plan & Create
As the internet evolves, the solutions for better protection on websites increases. However, so does the inventiveness of cybercriminals and hackers. For years now, organisations like Google have been working on making the web a safer place by encouraging website owners to use the HTTPS certificate, making sure that data sent from your computer to the website you are using is encrypted and secure.
In recent Google Chrome updates, Google will ensure that all sites without HTTPS are marked as not secure. All other websites will continue with the green HTTPS letters in the URL; this means that an SSL certificate secures them. Continue reading to determine why SSL certificates are so important and how they can benefit your business or personal website.
What Is An SSL Certificate?
For over 20 years, SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates have been available for use. Having an SSL ensures that the sensitive data of your website’s visitors will be transferred over a secure network. Despite this essential component of SSL, many end-users and organizations have delayed their adoption due to the price of the certificates and the complexity of implementation. Today, getting an SSL certificate is much easier because there are options that offer them free and have made their installation super simple.
Is It Important To Have An SSL Certificate?
If you still need convincing, here are several important reasons:
- Increasing site security: Firstly, SSL certificates protect the sensitive data transferred from and to your website. Such information can be login details, signups, addresses and payment or personal information. SSL certificates encrypt the connection and help protect your visitors’ data from being misused by attackers.
- Safety for all your subdomains: A specific type of SSL certificate known as a Wildcard lets you secure your main site and all its subdomains (like blog.yourdomain.com or shop.yourdomain.com) with one single SSL certificate. That’s useful if you are a business owner or if you maintain large websites with several subdomains. With a standard SSL, you’ll have to install separate certificates for each of your subdomains.
- Credibility and trust for your customers: A benefit of SSL certificates is that they can help you gain visitors’ trust. Your website will be displayed with a security padlock in the address bar of the browser. This indicates that the connection is secure and will show your website’s visitors that you take privacy seriously. If your website doesn’t have a certificate, some browsers may label it as “unsafe.”
- SEO advantages: Another benefit of having an SSL certificate installed is the SEO improvement in rankings that your site will get. In line with their HTTPS everywhere initiative, Google gives websites with encrypted connections a slight rankings boost. Although the boost may not be substantial, having an SSL will give you an advantage over your competitors who don’t have certificates yet.
How Do You Get An SSL Certificate?
The most common way to get an SSL certificate is to check if your current website hosting provider offers any SSL certificates. Until recently, all SSL versions were a paid feature. However, more and more companies have started to release free SSL certificates.
In some circumstances, it is better if you use paid Certificate Authority. If you have an enterprise-level site (or multiple sites), consider using an EV certificate. The EV certificate has a strict authentication process. It will add even more visible indicators of trust like the name of your company, country abbreviation, green bar in the URL of the browser and more.
In conclusion, the benefits of activating SSL certificates for your business or personal websites are incredible, and some web hosting providers have made installing them easy and quick. Don’t miss to take full advantage of the HTTPS revolution, add an extra layer of security for your website visitors and gain their trust.
To ensure your attendees view your event as safe, we always recommend having an SSL certificate on your site. Alternatively, use the direct Helm Tickets link provided to you as that is HTTPS secure.
