Impactful Event Management Trends
Published on Feb 03, 2016
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From the GWU Event Management Program
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Like most businesses, the event management industry continues to change. Event managers need to adapt to the new client and participant expectations and demands. Although change is difficult, not changing could be fatal.
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A good event manager must stay ahead of their clients by at least three years – what will events look like three years from now and how do winning event managers prepare.
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Personalize Your Events
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Event participants, especially Generation Y (born between 1980 and 2000), do not want to attend an event; they want to participate in the event. Participation includes the use of social media technology, but also, attending event sessions and gatherings, including collaborative activities and sharing.
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Everyone has something to share and everyone has something to learn. Along with greater participation, attendees want the event to be personalized. Personalized learning is the tailoring of pedagogy, curriculum, and learning environments by participants or for participants in order to meet their individual learning needs.
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So, how do you ensure that your event is designed to meet the needs of the different generations attending, as well as the diverse range of peoples’ learning styles?
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Use Content to Improve Marketing and Delivery Efforts
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The trend is to use content to attract event participants, as well as ensure the event includes current, relevant, and valuable content and/or experiences. Marketing events still requires outbound marketing, especially targeted to specific event audiences, but inbound marketing is becoming more important than ever – especially for new participants.
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As potential participants search for applicable events to attend, it is important to ensure your event website has the best search engine optimization possible, but also, has content offers requiring the potential participant to provide a name and email, so you can follow up. You want to give existing and potential participants a taste of what they will be learning.
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When they attend the event, you want to make sure they leave with actions they can take – an action plan – to implement what they have learned.
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Use Data to Improve Your Events
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The collection and the analysis of participant data are critical. You need to be able to collect demographic data about who attended the event, but you need to be able to dig deeper and understand who attended what sessions or gathering and how they evaluated them.
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For example, what are repeat participants saying about a session or gathering, compared to new participants? Even better, what are they saing by market segment? The data helps you better plan for the next event. The data also provides lead generation data for an additional fee – to maintain their membership and participation – or fee-based actions to generate additional revenue.
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Include Social Media Before, During, and After Your Events
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Social media continues to successfully be used in generating participation but also in making the event a more robust and shared experience. Whether past participants are sharing their experience with potentially interested participants or participants at the event are sharing their reactions with what is happening at the event, they are promoting the event.
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Social media supports your inbound marketing efforts, new content ideas can be discovered, you better understand your audiences and what they like and do not like, supports your search engine optimization, and you can find new opportunities – new members, new sales.
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Be Prepared for Generation Y
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By the year 2020, Generation Y will be between the ages of 20-40 and will most likely be the primary attendee of your event. You should be using Generation Y staff to help guide the planning, marketing, and delivery of your event.
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You must listen to Generation Y to identify shifts in event management requirements. Face-to-face events are still popular and although they are supported by remote events like webinars, they have not been replaced. So, Generation Y is the participant base that is most likely to know what events in 2020 should look and act like. Engage Generation Y.
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Whether your event is for 100 people or 10,000 people, these trends should be taken into consideration as you look at the next five years and the actions you must take to ensure that your events are successful.
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The George Washington Event Management Certificate Program is based on staying ahead of the event management curve with best practices in event management planning, marketing, delivery, and evaluation.
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