Strategic Planning for a Successful Conference: Understanding Your Audience and Goals

In this episode, we wrap up the season with a sort of catch-all question:  "Do I really need a [fill in the blank]? " This type of question often stems from a mentality focused on a list of logistics and budget, rather than strategy and experience, so we decided to address it all in one episode.

Organizers might be wondering how to spend the least amount of money while still achieving their desired results or questioning the contribution of certain elements to the overall event experience. To address these concerns, we discuss the importance of understanding the type of conference your business and community can sustain, as well as identifying the goals of your audience and your own business.

As we wrap up this season, we reflect on the key takeaways from our discussions. The overarching question of whether or not you need specific elements for your event boils down to understanding your audience and having a solid strategy in place. 

By knowing who your attendees are and what they value, you can make informed decisions about what your business can sustain, which factors contribute to the experience, and how to efficiently execute the logistics. Remember, it's not about the nitty-gritty details like catering or venue, but rather creating something special for your audience.

Timestamps and key takeaways

0:03:13 - The Logistical Mindset 

0:06:56 - Maximizing Existing Resources for Organizing

The Logistical Mindset

So this episode's question is, ‘do I really need a fill in the blank?’ So Nessa, take us for a dive into what people really mean when they ask us, Do I really need a fill in the blank? 

Absolutely. So this always comes from a mentality of obsession with logistics before anything else. So instead of thinking about strategy, they are already  in the last phase of the logistics of the thing. What they're usually asking when they ask this question is, how do I spend the least amount of money and still get the results I want? How do I DIY this sucker and still make something that's good enough? 

Right. Way to cut to the chase. 

Yeah. I mean, that's the truth. That's what they wanna know because they think it's again, a logistics thing. They're thinking about dollars and cents.

Maximizing Existing Resources for Organizing

Another kind of underlying problem around this stems from a misunderstanding of what resources an organizer has at their disposal already. Thinking about things in terms of do I really need to hire a social media person? Or do I really need to pay for ads? If you don't fully understand what resources you have, that can lead to this blanket questioning of everything. 

So instead, you can be thinking about, oh, well, I've got a social media person already on deck for my business. We just need to enhance that a little bit to get some of that marketing out there. Or, oh, you know, it turns out maybe your marketing person or someone who knows your nephew or somebody actually has some graphic design skills and might be willing to contribute those to your event, so you wouldn't have to pay for it. So it's again, these are not– this has come up in previous episodes. These are not bad questions to be asking.

But what we want to try and uncover here is what is at the root of these and how we can develop some strategies to really get at what is causing these questions to happen rather than just flat on answering them at the top because they're not cut and dry answers. 

Absolutely not. And we had a client recently. The client was a designer and their partner was a designer and their partner did a bunch of the design work for us. Right? So we didn’t have to pay a designer versus another client who has absolutely no design  skills. So we had to find designers to do that.. It all depends on who you know, and the resources you have. I think a lot of people underestimate the people that they already know, the network that they already have, and they also underestimate people's desire to help as well. Mhmm. It's true.

Transcript

0:00:14

How do you as a leader of a growing community truly make a conference or event that has impact? A gathering with purpose, and an attendee experience that knocks their socks off. An event that leaves your audience in awe and wondering where you've been their whole life. Make it Kickass as the podcast that explores these questions by uncovering the strategies, tactics, and tools that we use every day to bring our clients' conferences to life. I'm Isaac Watson, executive producer of Kickass Conferences. And we're here to help you Make it Kickass.

0:00:52

We are back with another episode of Make it Kickass and we are coming up to a close with this season. But first, Who am I? I am Isaac Watson, executive producer at kick ass conferences, and who is she? She is Nessa Jimenez,  our Operations manager. 

Hi, everyone. Welcome back. 

Maybe next season, you'll be the one to introduce both of us. Okay. You did last season, actually. You were good. 

Correct. Yeah. 

You took the lead already. We're just flipping it around. So we are, I don't know. Maybe we're just a little loopy because we're in the last episode of the season.

0:01:29

But we have been spending this season addressing some of those hot questions that we get asked all the time related to organizing conferences and events from people who meet us on the street or at your favorite conference. To people who are actually our clients. And we're diving deeper and digging deeper. 

Lots of deep things that are happening to figure out what are people really asking when they ask these questions and what are some of the underlying problems that bring these to bear. So without further ado, because I'll just keep making a mess of the words coming out of my mouth.

0:02:10

Let's talk about this episode's question. So this question is kind of a catchall. So we were trying to figure out how best to word this, but the truth is it takes the form of many, many questions, but it usually starts with do I really need a and then it's a fill in the blank, and this could be a question about Do I really need av services?  Do I really need a social media manager? Do I really need to hire an MC for my event? Do I really need signage? Do I need a designer? Do I need someone to manage the front of the house? All of these questions are kind of stemming from the same root concern or uncertainty around these things.

0:03:13

So this episode's question is, ‘do I really need a fill in the blank?’ So Nessa, take us for a dive into what people really mean when they ask us, Do I really need a fill in the blank? 

Absolutely. So this always comes from a mentality of obsession with logistics before anything else. So instead of thinking about strategy, they are already  in the last phase of the logistics of the thing. What they're usually asking when they ask this question is, how do I spend the least amount of money and still get the results I want? How do I DIY this sucker and still make something that's good enough? 

Right. Way to cut to the chase. 

Yeah. I mean, that's the truth. That's what they wanna know because they think it's again, a logistics thing. They're they're thinking about dollars and cents.

0:04:07

Bottom line instead of taking a look back at the strategy, I think another question that they're actually asking us tends to be, what does fill in the blank, what does this thing contribute to the experience? Like, what does a paid mc or a professional host, What do they contribute to the experience? What difference does it make? 

I mean, I got a cousin named Tito and he's not embarrassed by things. So what's the difference between getting it to get up there and host the thing versus somebody who's actually done this professionally? Right? That's the thing that other way people come at it. Right? Like, why? What difference does it make? 

Do you actually have a cousin named Tito? 

I do have a cousin named Tito. 

Brilliant.

So let's dig into the actual problems that that really are at the root of this line of questioning.

0:05:06

I think the first thing is that people feel like they are just putting together a conference and not their conference. They're just kind of going through the motions and at the same time questioning why things are the way they are, when it comes to organizing a conference. And they don't necessarily understand what value a certain piece brings to it. And when you think about it, yes, you need AV production of some sort. You have audio and you have visuals and those need to be produced. 

But if you don't understand what a skilled professional brings to bear in that, then it's easy to just say, well, we don't really need that, do we? 

 And we talked a little bit about this earlier in the season, where they're just looking at this checklist based on what other people have done. And they're not realizing, whatever that person did, they did it for their event. Like, ted x and the TED events. Right? They do it because that's their event. But you don't necessarily need all of that stuff that they're doing. Right? So it's forgetting about this checklist based on what other people are doing and realizing for example, AV, yes, you'll need AV, but there's a huge gap, like a huge range of what AV can look like. 

Exactly. And that's everything from one person sitting in a little home studio, running a zoom, to, you know, thirty people with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gear in a venue. Right? And everything in between.

0:06:56

Another kind of underlying problem around this stems from a misunderstanding of what resources an organizer has at their disposal already. Thinking about things in terms of do I really need to hire a social media person? Or do I really need to pay for ads? If you don't fully understand what resources you have, that can lead to this blanket questioning of everything. 

So instead, you can be thinking about, oh, well, I've got a social media person already on deck for my business. We just need to enhance that a little bit to get some of that marketing out there. Or, oh, you know, it turns out maybe your marketing person or someone who knows your nephew or somebody actually has some graphic design skills and might be willing to contribute those to your event, so you wouldn't have to pay for it. So it's again, these are not– this has come up in previous episodes. These are not bad questions to be asking.

0:08:07

But what we want to try and uncover here is what is at the root of these and how we can develop some strategies to really get at what is causing these questions to happen rather than just flat on answering them at the top because they're not cut and dry answers. 

Absolutely not. And we had a client recently. The client was a designer and their partner was a designer and their partner did a bunch of the design work for us. Right? So we didn’t have to pay a designer versus another client who has absolutely no design  skills. So we had to find designers to do that.. It all depends on who you know, and the resources you have. I think a lot of people underestimate the people that they already know, the network that they already have, and they also underestimate people's desire to help as well. Mhmm. It's true.

0:09:13

I think the third underlying problem behind these questions really comes down to money and being worried about not making enough revenue to make it worth the effort to either break even or turn a profit or concerned about how much they're willing to invest in making this thing happen. 

And when you are rooting the majority of your decision making in a purely financial evaluation that can work to the detriment of the event's outcomes. And that causes you to question, oh, we don't need that. Right? We don't need that. That seems superfluous. We can't afford that. So we'll just do it really crapply on our own or something like that. And when you do that, you start making mistakes. You make stupid mistakes a lot of the time. Right. When you're just looking at dollar amounts and then later on, you realize, oh, man, since we didn't pay this person to do that, now we have to spend twenty hours trying to figure out how to do it because it's too late now. Yes. Yeah.

0:10:20

I mean, one of the most classic examples that we've seen repeatedly is in working with a social media expert to help with event marketing. And so often, clients will say to us you know, this is just a significant expense for a bunch of posts on social media. And they're not really thinking about what the return on that investment would be. And so often, we see even within the first few months it is so obvious that it's worth it. 

Like, the money that we've spent to hire this person has already recouped itself through the ticket sales and has made the event better in the process. Right? So, you know, these are the kinds of things you need to think about when it comes to budgeting. Okay. Let's talk about some of the solutions. 

I think speaking of budgeting, one thing that we work with our clients on a lot is identifying what type of conference their business and community can actually sustain.

0:11:32

Because a lot of people come into it thinking, I want a three day conference. I want a thousand people there. I want it to be just like this conference in this other space and It needs to be this and that, and they come in with these preconceptions around what this conference is. And as we start to dig into understanding their audience, ding ding ding. There's our keyword for this entire season. When it comes down to understanding goals and things like that, we then start to uncover what is the conference that their business can actually sustain that has to do with budgeting, that has to do with audience size and conversion to ticket sales or to event registration. 

That comes down to even like how long is the thing? How many speakers can we have all of that plays into that sustainability aspect, especially if you're thinking about a first time event, like, you wanna start small to keep a proof of concept. Keep your gossip bay and then you expand from there. Right? These are all the kinds of things that we work through. And what you're willing to invest and possibly lose, that's an important number to think about as well. Like, I'm willing to invest x amount of money. And if we lose it, then we lose it. Right? Especially when we're talking about a first a first time event. Yes.

0:13:03

Related to the sustainability or or your business goals, figuring out what kind of conference will actually serve those. What are your audience's goals? How can you serve them? Because serving them helps serve your own goals. They're all interrelated. And then thinking about, like, what is your business made up right now? Like, who is on your team? What resources and bandwidth do you have available? And by resources, I also mean, we talked about networks. Friends and family, professional associations, all these kinds of things can help bring your conference to life. And if you don't know how those are mapped out and how you can use those to your advantage in a sustainable way, then you're gonna be working really hard to try and backfill when you could just be leveraging that kind of stuff.

0:14:03

So do I really need to fill in the blank? This is our, like, overarching question. Do I need an AV? Do I need catering? Why do I pay so much for catering? Do I really need to hire a social media manager? Do I need this? Do I need that? What about this? So and so did this? Do I need to do this? All of these questions boil down to wanting to maximize the finances of your event, feeling the need to DIY everything, like, oh, well, I could just do it myself. Right? Probably not and questioning what a particular element actually contributes to the experience. 

The key things that we can do to support that are helping you identify what your business can sustain what kind of conferences best for your business, for your audience, for your goals, for their goals, and identifying what capacity your business has and what resources you have at your disposal to be able to efficiently and effectively execute on the logistics of the conference from a strategic standpoint.

0:15:13

First, before you dig into those nitty gritty logistical questions. And this being the last episode of the season, I’d kind of like to discuss sort of like an overarching takeaway message of the entire season. Okay. Any thoughts around that? 

I mean, it's the thing we've been harping on from in most of our episodes. It's about really understanding your audience. I I cannot emphasize that enough. clients will ask us, why do you wanna know all this stuff about who our people are and what they want. Why do you need demographic information? Why are you asking this line of questions? And it's because we need to understand the people that this event is serving.

0:16:03

An event does not purely serve your business. It serves the people who are attending. And if you don't understand who they are, what they value, what they want, what they need, and how best to deliver that to them, then I don't think that you can do that. Like, that's just– you're gonna shoot yourself in the foot. And I think that's why it's so important to have that strategy from the beginning. That's why we lean on it so heavily. That's why it keeps coming to bear and all of these conversations we're having about these common questions. Is backing up and saying, okay, but what's the strategy? Who are these people? Why are we doing this? What are we doing? How can we deliver this in a way that is valuable to them? How can we create something special for them? That is the key to me. Those are at least my final thoughts. 

Those are great final thoughts. I agree with all of them. Strategy is the key.

0:17:06

All of these questions that we've spoken about this entire season can be easily answered once you have a strategy in place. Once there's a clear definition of who your audience is, what are your goals? What are their goals? What are their needs? What do they want? They're easily answered and then easily executed upon because as we said, I think we said at the meeting, it's not the logistics. Just a strategy. The strategy will tell you the logistics. stop worrying about the catering and the venue and the chairs and the fabrics or whatever and get a strategy in order, and all of this will come together. 

Yes. We've talked about paying speakers. We've talked about hybrid events. We've talked about how much I should sell my tickets for. We've talked about event platforms. We've talked about big name speakers. All of these things are rooted like Nessa said in a kind of logistical mindset instead of strategic mindset. And that is why we want to talk about all of these because so many times people come to us with these logistical questions and we keep having to back up and say, yes. And let's figure out the strategy. Let's answer the strategic questions first because that will inform the execution.

0:18:34

Alright. We are officially wrapping up with this season. It has been great pulling these episodes together for you. We're gonna take a little bit of a break and we will be back next season with all kinds of good stuff. Who knows what's gonna happen? Nessa gonna start introducing me or I'll introduce myself and she introduces her or vice versa, it's anybody's guess. But stay tuned. We will be back And in the meantime, make it kick ass. 

Yeah. We'll see you next season, everybody. Thanks for listening to the Make it Kickass podcast, we hope that our discussion today about vendors will help make that decision making process. A little bit easier for you. You can visit us at geteventlab.com and download a free copy of the questionnaire that we use with our clients all the time to help them figure out the answers to these questions and a whole lot more. That's geteventlab.com, and I will see you all next season.