At some point long ago, the world’s very first experiential marketing event took place, and the folks responsible for executing that event probably used a set of tools to manage it (we are guessing they were paper-based).
Event Management is hardly a new concept, although one might think so given the fact that disparate, one-off tools claiming to solve everybody’s problems seem to emerge on a monthly basis. We’re talking about:
· Web-based project management tools
· Team chatting and collaboration apps
· Cloud storage services
· Secure communication portals
· Camera/traffic sensing technology
· And our favorite, the dreaded planning spreadsheet
Hear us out: having some (or all) of these tools is a must, and they can make your event management either a chaotic nightmare or a walk in the park. How you implement them, though, determines if your experience ends up being the former or the latter, and hopefully you want the latter.
Here are some tips we’ve picked up over the years, having helped lots of clients with their Event Management strategies:
1) Centralize your data. Having too many independent tools is when data ends up in silos and, ultimately, forgotten. There’s no point in having data you’re not going to use, so keep it together in one place.
2) Adopt experiential-specific technology. You don’t need to compromise by using templates or procedures designed for “similar-but-not-quite-the-same” environment. Any provider worth its salt will customize their technology to work for you.
3) Event Management is also an event indicator. A little lesser known truth about Event Management is that you can analyze the content that organically forms from these tools to improve your display’s performance. The conversations, photos, and reports are invaluable items when it comes time to plan next year’s event.
Event Management isn’t easy, but selecting the right tools that can centralize information as well as communicate with each other is sure to increase overall productivity (and sanity!).