How to Plan an Event: Event Planning Steps, Tips & Checklist (2024)

Need to know how to plan an event? If you’re planning a big event like a conference, we can help you successfully create, structure and lay out your event plan. This blog will go over everything you need to consider when planning an event, including event planning steps, tips and an easy-to-use checklist.

What Is an Event Plan?

An event plan defines how an event will be executed. It addresses all the components of an event such as the start and end dates, budget, venue, marketing, attendees and more.

The scope and complexity of the event plan can vary depending on the size of the event, but the fundamental challenges remain the same. Most of us have some experience planning an event, be it at home, work or in their community. For this article, let’s focus on large events.

Planning an Event

Most of us have some experience planning an event, be it at home, work or in their community. For this article, let’s focus on large events.

A conference is a common type of large event, so for our event management purposes, let’s talk about a TEDx conference that we were involved in to illustrate how to plan an event. This example is a good scenario to explain the structure and challenges of planning a big event, along with the benefits of planning an event with software.

Key Elements of Event Planning

The first thing to consider when planning an event is the date. That’s an anchor that can’t change. You’ll also want to estimate the number of attendees. These will be two critical elements that will help inform the other aspects of your event planning.

Let’s break down the other components to setting up an event. They are summarized below:

• Event: First, you must have an event of some sort to plan, of course. That event is going to require a series of responsibilities, revolving around its operations, legal and accounting duties.
• Budget: Estimate all your event costs and create a budget. Your available budget will influence many event management decisions such as your venue, the marketing and advertising methods, etc.
• Venue: The event has to take place somewhere, and that involves logistics management, food and beverages as well as the décor.
• Marketing: Once you have selected a venue, you need to start drawing people to it through a marketing program that can include a website, social campaign, email and print work.
• Advertising: Hand in glove with marketing is advertising. That can include radio, TV, newspaper and magazine advertisem*nts.
• Volunteers: A big event needs a big crew of people to get it off the ground and run smoothly. That means volunteers, which means writing contracts, defining their roles, setting up meetings and determining schedules.
• Speakers: You must have a keynote speaker or a group of speakers to attract an audience. This will involve contracts, curators to select the talent, a program, bios and rehearsals.
• Sponsors: All this costs money, and a big event’s budget is supplied by its sponsors. This will again involve contracts, marketing and logistics.
• Production: The production is going to involve creating contracts as you work on creating an audio-visual recording of the proceedings, as well as a sound and video broadcast during the event.
• Stage: The event takes place at a specific venue and on that venue is a stage on which the event proper will be presented. That usually will incorporate a projector, screen, microphones, internet connection, batteries, cables and more.
• Attendees: Don’t forget about the people who are coming to the event! You’ll need communications to inform them of event information, payment processes to collect fees, emails to stay in touch, directions, badges and access points.

Event Planning Steps

Well, we just went through a lot on event planning, so let’s break down those tips into concrete steps. These event planning steps will guide you towards success. Let’s continue with our conference example.

• Step 1. Determine your event goals and objectives
• Step 2. Assemble your team
• Step 3. Establish an event budget
• Step 4. Choose date & venue
• Step 5. Select the speakers
• Step 6. Event Marketing & Advertising
• Step 7. Execute your event

When you break down your event plan into manageable steps, the whole process seems a lot less daunting. However, there are a few more things to keep in mind when making your event plan.

Event Plan Template

This free event plan template for Excel is a great tool to start putting together all the information you need to create an event plan. It can be customized to add all your event details.

Event Planning Tips

Unfortunately, there are always going to be variables out of your control, such as the weather, delivery delays, technical difficulties and other potential mix-ups. As stated earlier, you can’t change the date of your event, so you’ll want to be as prepared as possible for any risks or issues that may pop up on the day of your event.

Event Planning Checklist

There’s a lot to manage when planning an event, so it’s important to have a list of everything you need to include in your event management plan. The following is a general event planning checklist to help you get started. The more questions you ask, the better your event checklist. Feel free to add your own unique responsibilities and tasks.

Goals and Objectives

• What’s your event’s reason for existence?
• What are the goals this event is expected to achieve?
• What are the revenue objectives?
• What is your target audience?
• How many people will attend?
• Is there a cost associated with ticketing and what is it?
• Where is the event being held?
• Create an event schedule.

Event Budget

• Figure out what the costs will be.
• If you held similar events, use and adjust an old budget for a baseline.
• What ticketing and registration software will be used?
• Finalize sponsor contributions.
• Set ticket price.

Date & Venue

• When will the event take place?
• Have a backup date in case issues arise.
• Is there the best location for the event?
• Is the venue appropriate for your expected number of attendees?
• Decide on needed infrastructure: wifi, capacity, bathrooms, near shopping & restaurants, etc.
• Hire caterer.
• Secure what equipment you’ll need.
• What are your security needs?
• Do you need permits, licenses or insurance?
• Create event signage and communication plan for attendees.

Speakers

• Research potential speakers.
• Create a list of relevant speakers.
• Create a pitch for speakers.
• Pitch speakers.
• Finalize speaker selection, get bios and headshots, arrange travel and accommodations.

Sponsors

• Develop a list of sponsors and what you can offer them.
• See if there are sponsors who have partnered with similar events.
• Reach out to potential sponsors.

Website

• Design signoff.
• Update the site or build a unique one.
• Make sure the site can handle expected traffic.
• Have a mobile-friendly site.

Event Marketing & Advertising

• What’s your messaging?
• Coordinate with digital tools and social platforms.
• Add the event to online calendars.
• Market event with blog posts and other promotions like video and online ads.
• Send reminders to all parties a month or two before the event date.

Finalizing, Last Steps

• Schedule
• Caterer
• Speakers and scripts
• Venue
• Equipment
• Decorations
• Contracts

Pro-Tip: That’s a lot to coordinate and plan, which is why there is a real need for project management software that has the right features for event management. It provides a common portal, where you can track costs and tasks with automated alerts. It also offers both a communication and a collaborative platform that reduces the need for unnecessary emails. Software collects all your files in one place, and makes team reporting simpler by adding efficiencies and reducing stress.

How ProjectManager Helps with Event Planning

ProjectManager is a cloud-based software that is ideally suited for event planning. We have the tools to keep all the parts of your events, from managing vendors to promotions, organized.

Our planning software helps you keep track of all the elements that make up your event plan. We already showed your our online Gantt chart, but we also offer task lists and kanban boards for executing on your event plan. Move tasks from column to column as you collaborate on work with your team. It’s easy to spot bottlenecks and get everything over the line in time for the event.

Plus, timesheets make invoicing easy for all your events. They can be submitted and approved with a keystroke. Our software also offers a variety of views, from a list to a calendar and even a kanban board that helps you visualize the workflow to keep on task.

Take a free 30-day trial of ProjectManager and see how it can tie all the strings of your event into a pretty bow.

More About Planning an Event

Event planning can be complex. There’s a lot of balls to keep in the air. If the above is too much to digest immediately, you could start with our event plan template and watch one of our planning experts. Jennifer Bridges, PMP, has years of experience and uses it to teach you the fundamentals of event planning in this short video.

Related Content

• Free Event Proposal Template
• Event Management: A Quick Guide
• How to Plan a Virtual Event: Virtual Event Planning Checklist
• Event Project Management Software

Transcription:

Today, we’re talking about how to plan an event. Well, most of us in some way get involved in planning an event whether it’s at home, work, or in the community.

But today, I want to focus on larger events. So think about conferences. So the example I’m going to share today is one of the most fun ones I was involved in, a TEDx conference.

So I want to talk about the structure and the layout. I want to talk about some challenges that you might find common in events, some things we did to resolve those, and how software really helped us.

So first of all in laying out an event, there are multiple components of events. So I’m just going to take this at a high level. So at a high level, we have the event. So it’s about talking about what the show is about, any kind of operations, legal and accounting.

Then we talk about the venue. So we have to plan out everything regarding the location, the logistics of that location, food, and beverage, and decorations there.

Then we talk about marketing. So we have a website and we have social media, email marketing, any kind of print. And then we also have advertising. We leveraged radio, and TV, newspapers, and magazines.

And then we had to plan the volunteers which was a lot of work too. So we had contracts and we had to lay out the roles and responsibilities, and we had to plan our meetings and schedule out the work and any kind of contact information.

Then we had the speakers for the TEDx event. So we had to come up with the contracts for that. We had to go through curation and search for the speakers and vet them out and work with them to lay out their program, get their bio, and have a practice run-through.

Then we had the sponsors. So again, we had contracts with them, any kind of marketing collateral that they needed from us and we needed from them, any kind of materials they needed, planning logistics for them to arrive and set up.

Then we had production. Again, more contracts. And thinking through and planning for the audio and the video, and there were multiple components of these.

Then we had to set up the stage. So on the TEDx, you know that the stage is very important and there are all kinds of requirements for those. So we had to set up the stage according to the requirements and their projectors and screens and mics and the internet, any kind of batteries and backups, and all kinds of cables.

And then there were the attendees. So communicating with the attendees, getting their payments, sending them emails, giving them directions, badges, and any kind of access.

So there were more than this, but this is just kind of a high level scope. So you can see it gets complex with the event. All the different people involved, the volunteers, speaker, sponsors, attendees, stakeholders, and vendors, you can imagine how complex that gets.

So with that, we ran into several challenges like the event date doesn’t shift. So if anything happens or derails or goes wrong, that date can’t shift. And in most events, so if you’re doing a conference, that date really can’t shift. So that also brings a level of stress.

And just the sheer number of people that you’re dealing with. Even if you’re dealing with a smaller event, there’s still challenges because of the number of people. And then there are variables that are out of your control. So think about the weather, of different kinds of inclement weathers whether it snows or rain or anything that might impact that event.

And then there may be delivery of different equipment or the food or the beverage. If that doesn’t show up on time, then there’s a big trouble. You have to think through all kinds of plans. And then order mix-ups. So think about ordering different marketing materials or ordering the food or different things and it shows up wrong.

And then there’s all kinds of communication. See, again, thinking about communicating with all the different types of people, it’s just a lot of challenges.

So what we did is we laid a structure and a foundation, a process flow, and then we also implemented project management software which was a huge help because the benefits of that is it helps provide a common portal for everyone involved.

They get to go there to get real-time updates on what’s going on. It also allows for tracking of task and cost. Then you can set up alerts when maybe tasks are completed or when they’re late, and then when certain things need to be paid or if they’re late.

So also, it’s very valuable to have communications and collaborations. So there’s nothing worse than having to go through so many emails to dig around and find information. So if somebody sent you something, a file or something like that by email, it just helps with collaborating and communicating through this common portal.

Then it also provides a central repository for your files. It could be marketing documents. It could be contracts. It could be invoices. So they’re all right there.

And then it also allows for team reporting. So whether it’s your volunteers or some of your vendor partners, then it allows people to report real-time. That also just allows efficiency for the entire event and everyone involved, and greatly, it reduces stress.

So as you can see with the structure, how this project management tool can help.

And if you need a tool that can help you plan your event, then sign up for our software now at ProjectManager.com.