Event marketing is a powerful tool for promoting your brand, products, or services and connecting with your target audience. However, without a well-planned budget, it’s easy for costs to spiral out of control, and there not be enough resources to continue with a marketing event on the scale which you prefer. To help, we have put together a step-by-step guide to walk you through the process of creating an event marketing budget suitable for a variety of budgets and experience levels.
What is Event Marketing?
Before looking deeper at how to budget for event marketing and do so in a strategic manner that makes sense and covers all the bases, it’s important to understand the purpose of event marketing in the first place. Event marketing is a type of marketing strategy you can use to promote your product, service, or brand. You might find yourself questioning what makes it different from standard or traditional marketing then, as that is the purpose of it as well. However, event marketing is a bit different in that it puts all those marketing strategies to work in a real-time way. This can be either online or in-person, but it's a way to connect live with an audience and has been proven an effective way to:
- Educate customers or prospects on details about your brand, service, or products.
- Generate leads.
- Build brand awareness.
- Upsell customers.
- Increase customer engagement.
When they are approached correctly, and the budgeting is well-thought-out, event marketing can be an extremely impactful type of marketing. Here are 8 tips for building a budget that allows you to tap into these benefits and not break the bank:
Step 1: Define Objectives
Now that we have looked at why event marketing is beneficial, it’s time to dig deeper into how to budget for this in this step-by-step guide. The first step is to clearly outline your event goals to guide your budget decisions. For example, if your goal is to generate leads, then you will want to allocate your funds to targeted advertising and lead-capturing tools.
Step 2: Set a Realistic Budget
We are all guilty of biting off more than we can chew in terms of a marketing plan. However, to avoid this, it’s best to set a realistic budget. This means determining what a reasonable budget limit is for your brand. This number should be based on your overall financial capacity and your ROI.
To help you determine this number, look at the potential return on investment you have garnered from past events. If you have never before organized such an event, you can instead look at industry benchmarks to get a good idea of where your budget needs to be to get the kind of results you want.
Step 3: Break Down Budget Categories
Now that you have a general idea of how much you can or should be spending on this event, it’s helpful to divide up the categories within that broader budget. Typical categories include venue, promotion, catering, staffing, and other costs. Based on your priorities, meaning your overall goal, you can allocate more resources to that area in order to give it a greater chance to succeed.
For example, if your goal is to reach a wider audience, then you will want to assign more resources towards the promotion of the event beforehand. If something else is your goal, like putting on an entertaining event where the food and experience overall are the talk of the town, then you might instead put more towards catering, the venue, and so on. Where you want the most success is the area in which you should dedicate the most resources within reason.
Step 4: Research and Gather Quotes
Compare prices for vendors and services to get the best deals. Reach out to multiple vendors and negotiate to secure favorable rates. In addition to cost, when it comes to venues, it’s also important to consider the location, being a responsible distance for most attendees. In addition, you need to consider parking options, transportation, traffic, and more.
Also, it’s important to consider how large of an event you want to host. Some venues will have capacity limitations, which could impact your guest list. Also, when it comes to services like caterers or other vendors, it’s important to create an official contract outlining the flexibility and options of any working relationship, so you are never in a place where you can’t make necessary changes.
Step 5: Prioritize Expenses
The next step to take when creating an event marketing budget that works for your needs, prioritize your expenses. Do this by focusing on items that directly impact your event objectives. This will look different for you based on your event goals. This doesn’t mean you won’t spend anything in other categories, but instead will prioritize the end result you want to achieve if budgeting decisions need to be made.
Step 6: Monitor and Track Expenses
Use spreadsheets or management tools to stay within your budget. Regularly review spending to identify potential cost-saving opportunities. In other words, setting a budget at the outset of event planning is a great idea, but it will do little good if you don’t keep track of the expenses as you move throughout the planning process.
While it might not be fun to keep track of every little expense related to an upcoming event, it’s an important way to prevent your budget from getting away from you. It will keep you from showing up one day and wondering what happened. A good monitoring and tracking tool will make this process much easier.
Step 7: Consider Sponsorships or Partnerships
Let’s face it, even when you are careful, allocate funds purposefully, and keep up with your expenses and resources, having a big enough budget to host this type of marketing event can be difficult, if not impossible. Sometimes, you simply need more resources than you have. One way to do that other than borrowing additional money or moving more resources into the budget from another area is to seek partnerships and share costs, effectively expanding your resources.
Another option to boost the event is looking for sponsors that align with your brand values to enhance the event’s credibility. This will give you more resources to use and can help you build your guest list as well.
Step 8: Evaluate and Learn
Last but certainly not least, when creating an event marketing budget, measure the ROI and learn from each event for future improvement. Conduct surveys or feedback sessions to gather insights from attendees and stakeholders. Don’t beat yourself up if there are still issues you need to resolve, as this only provides a learning opportunity, allowing you to correct mistakes when planning future events.
Follow this Step-by-Step Guide
Follow the steps listed above, and your event marketing budget will be a recipe for success. Happy planning! Remember, a well-planned budget can elevate your event’s impact and help you achieve your marketing goals.