Ten mistakes conference organizers make and how to avoid them

Conference organizers rely on events of all types, shapes and sizes in all types of venues. All of these require sophisticated planning and management to ensure success. Events are organized by people with varying degrees of knowledge and experience. Many of them find themselves responsible for organizing a company meeting or conference event without much if any, formal training.

As the country’s leading conference and meetings organization. we offer all types of services from multiple sectors and have experience in all types of events. We’ve identified ten common mistakes organizers make and how you can avoid them:

Doing too much

Planning an event from start to finish is a huge undertaking. No matter how well you organize events, or how small your event is, your event will suffer if you try to do everything yourself.

Trust your team and delegate responsibilities. This breaks down your responsibility into smaller, more manageable parts and reduces the risk of missing small but vital items.

Most good conference venues will also provide an event management service. Despite the additional cost, it will pay dividends towards the overall success of your event and significantly reduce the stress on your shoulders.

Late marketing

The earlier you start marketing and promoting your event, the more time people will have to schedule a time to attend. The more they look forward to your content. Leaving yourself a few months before the event start date. It will allow you enough time to effectively promote your event, especially if you rely on offline media channels to reach your target audience. This will also help in negotiations with the venue about expected attendance numbers as most will contract for minimum numbers. If your event is annual, you should market year-round! Stay in touch with your delegates immediately after the event. This way, you’re benefiting from the “buzz” of the event and will get more engagement at the next event, rather than letting engagement die down and having to rebuild from scratch next year.

Choosing the wrong size

On the face of it, you don’t want attendees wandering around a large space and making the event look like a sparsely attended event. However, having a small space with too many people is uncomfortable and will ruin engagement with your content. Filling more space creatively is much easier than starting to add space to your event.

Discuss your options with the venue and ask what overflow areas they might have, or how the room can be modified if your numbers are different from what you expected. They will have seen every incarnation of the event in their spaces and can help strike the right balance with you. If your projected numbers are on the cusp of room capacity, choose the larger room!

Choosing the wrong date

Many events fail because they are not relevant to the target audience. It’s important to choose a date that not only suits you, but also suits your speakers and delegates.

Make sure that similar conferences are not held at the same time to ensure minimal competition and attract the largest number of attendees. Avoid bank holidays and school holidays/half term – attendees will have other plans and commitments during this time and your event may not be high on their priority list. Also keep in mind that international travel is likely to be more expensive during these times, so keep this in mind if you are expecting delegates from abroad.

Failure to follow up on attendance

If you intend to hold similar events in the future, it is essential to maintain positive relationships with those who attended the last event. At the very least, you should follow up with a simple thank you email to show your attendees.

However, you can create real added value for attendees by making presentation materials and content available after the event so they have a useful resource to refer to. This can also be useful to start building engagement for your next event by distributing snippets of previous content or reusing it for useful promotional tools across your platforms.

Choosing the wrong place to hold conferences

The location you choose will reflect your brand image. Make sure you choose a venue that reflects positively on your brand. And portrays the right image to your audience, sponsors, and partners. Choosing a venue that shares your vision and event goals will also provide attendees with a much greater customer service experience. The venue becomes an extension of your organizing team.

It is also important to consider suitable nearby accommodation. Many guests may have traveled a long distance and will want to stay for the duration of the event. It is therefore essential that your accommodation is either at the conference venue or very close to it.

There is no timeline for completing tasks

Creating a realistic timeline for getting the job done is absolutely essential to keeping everything and everyone on track. It’s important that everyone on the team understands what needs to be done – and. If it needs to be done – especially if the team of organizers are not full-time event managers and plan the event in addition to their primary roles.

Consider using free project management software like Trello or taking advantage of cloud-based file sharing like Teams, Google Drive, ….etc. This will allow you to centralize key documents that all collaborators can access and edit in real time. It will give you much better visibility into the status of key tasks, rather than people working in silos and being unclear about how certain tasks are progressing.

There is no emergency plan

There is an almost 100% chance that something will go wrong or not go as planned. Despite all your best efforts and planning for every possible outcome, something is bound to happen that no one expected.

Work closely with the venue and inform them of your intentions during the planning stages. They have the expertise to recognize potential obstacles and can often anticipate problems. To work with you to find solutions before they occur. This comes down to choosing a venue that understands your goals and helps you deliver the best event possible.

Loss of communication between team members

The larger the event gets, the harder it becomes to keep everyone on the same page but you must do! When assigning tasks to team members, make sure they understand the task and the expected outcome. This will avoid unnecessary duplication of work. Or worse, neglecting important tasks because the team thought it was “someone else’s job.”

Create a clear activity schedule and have regular follow-up intervals. The team can report on progress and identify any gaps that need more focus or assistance from the wider team.