As we approach the end of 2021, we move from an era of virtual event apathy into a more complex virtual community. This is the time to assess what will be required for effective event planning in 2022. There will definitely be great opportunities for event planning businesses, but they come with increased competition and inevitable challenges. To keep up with the competitive pace, event planning businesses must understand consumer behavior that has changed due to the ongoing pandemic.
If people cannot organize events to meet with their close ones in person, they look for alternative ways to celebrate different occasions. There has been a rising trend of virtual events these days. People greet each other on special occasions over video calls that can last for hours. Event planning is also required for these virtual events, especially if held on a large scale.
In this post, we will explore some event planning tips that you can examine in 2022. You can consider this article your event planning guide for the upcoming year. With the event planning tips we share here, you can get your event planning business back on top even if the economy is still going through a recession.
The Event Planning Checklist for 2022
Let’s look at several strategies that you must adopt if you want your event planning business to prosper.
1. The Holistic Event Planning
You must have had an experience whereby you were forced to reevaluate the industry you operate in to realize what you have been taking for granted for so many years. Certain aspects of life are always accepted as part of the model. The event planning industry has become one of them.
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It is time to develop a more holistic approach towards an event planning business in 2022. This means accepting every aspect of being an event manager and adapting to new ideas and innovative ways of organizing events. This is essential for bringing back the exciting times, and getting your clients to keep coming to you for more business.
2. Technology Literacy
Technology literacy is at an all-time high these days. As many businesses were forced to shift operations online in 2020, customers have also become used to dealing with businesses online. New tools, apps, software, and devices have been invented to facilitate businesses to operate in this technologically advanced world.
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Consumers are now more familiar with technology than ever before. As we experienced this pandemic over the past two years, we realized the value of the latest technological tools available at our disposal even more. Remote working and video calling became the new norm. Brands have been exploring clever technology to facilitate and engage their customers in alternative ways to face-to-face interactions.
Event planning in 2022 will need to cope with these changing trends. If you are in an event planning business, you need to find out how to use the best of event technology. Some examples of using technology as event planning tips are as follows.
- Gamification of customer engagement techniques, which make the overall experience of attending an event more exciting and thrilling for everyone
- Streamlining of the event check-in and check-out experience and making it accessible through mobile devices
- Providing convenient mobile mechanisms for customers to buy tickets to an event
3. Molding Customer Experiences
Virtual events offer a more widespread reach and exposure to a business event. Physical events cannot compete with this aspect of virtual events. But on the flip side, virtual events cannot provide the level of engagement that in-person events offer. To take advantage of both types of events, hybrid event planning is on the rise.
Hybrid events tend to offer the best of both worlds. They are events that have some areas managed online while others are in-person. An event planning business that can organize a fun and engaging hybrid event wins the game. For instance, if you want to provide brand exposure through an event, you can start a pop-up shop but add some virtual elements to the event to benefit from the hybrid model.
4. Festivalization
Festivalization is a term that has been very commonly used in the event planning industry. The shift in people’s preferences and lifestyles during this pandemic has made them crave more for crowded festivals and exciting celebrations. Thus you need to include this in your event planning checklist.
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The market these days is dominated by millennials and Generation Z members. This is the demographic that craves even more to create memorable experiences. These can be created through festivals and large-scale event planning.
Festivalization is gaining traction because people generally have a great appetite for celebration events. We have been deprived of social events for over two years now and really want things to go back to normal. Event planning businesses should organize festivals and large celebrations as soon as the authorities allow citizens to arrange and participate in such events.
5. Sustainability
The event planning businesses, as mentioned earlier, need to keep the ideologies of the millennials in mind when coming up with marketing strategies. Consumers are now more aware of their environment and how it impacts them than ever before.
Event planning businesses need to address these modern issues when strategizing their next moves. A good way is to approach the modern generations with an incentive that attracts great attention to your event or stall. This will increase the sustainability of your business.
Initiating sustainable practices in event planning is not so difficult. You just need to be careful that your efforts for sustainability are genuine. If they are not, rumors or negative reviews about your service can spread quickly on social media, making your business vulnerable to losses.
Now that you know how to plan an event and what strategies to consider to succeed, let’s talk about one key element of running an event planning business.
Building an Event Planning Website
As you know, for any business to be prosperous these days, it needs to have a professional website to showcase its products or services. The same goes for an event planning business. While building your event planning marketing strategies, don’t forget that the first thing anyone who hears about your brand would do is search for it on Google. That’s why you must have an appealing event website before reaching out to the audience.
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We would suggest that you build an event planner website on Strikingly. That’s because that will make the job very easy for you and save you tons of money and time. With the help of our ready-to-use templates, you can start adding content to your event planning website within just two minutes of signing up for your free account with us.
Many of our users are happily running an event website on our platform. Besides creating an event planner site for your business, you can also build a website that can serve as an invitation to a personal life event that you’re having. For example, if you are getting married, you can create a simple, one-page event website that will serve as your wedding invitation for your friends and family.
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Our user-friendly editor allows you to add content to your site through our drag and drop tool. This means you do not need any coding or programming skills to do this job. You simply need to have some catchy pictures ready to add to your event planning web pages.
If you upgrade to our Pro Plan, you can add a live chat feature to your event website. This means anyone who wants to ask you anything regarding your event or service will be able to get in touch with you instantly via chat. The more we use instant communication these days, the more successful we are in building and maintaining relationships.
Concluding Remarks
Event planning is a field of business that will never go out of trend. This industry has huge potential as long as you keep up with the changing economic trends and customer preferences. When competition is high, you need to look more closely into your market analysis. If you can tap into the minds of your target market, you can make tons of money with your event planning business even during a recession.
The event planning tips discussed in this post are relevant at the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022. However, the pace at which the world is changing its norms nowadays could mean these tips might not be suitable to adopt by the end of 2022. Let’s see where this pandemic takes us during the next whole year. We know for sure that even if we enter a lockdown again, people will continue holding events. If physical events get banned in certain countries again, virtual events will continue to bloom.
