Assembling your Dream Team for Recurring National Events

Event planning is a complex job, spanning from the strategic to the tactical. One day you may meet with executives to line out conference programs, and the next finds you sampling desserts with catering and calculating seating diagrams for your keynote.

When taking your event on the road in a national series or road show, you layer on even more complexities to an already challenging role. The hands-on approach you’ve used for a one-site event is not scalable nor is it likely to be the best use of your time. Instead, your best path forward is to assemble what we call the “recurring events dream team”.

The key players:

1. Event Producer
2. Corporate Hotel Sales Manager
3. Event Program Chair
4. Marketing Coordinator

Event Producer

This dream team selection should come from a nationally focused production company that is experienced at multi-site events, such as ATX Event Systems. You will be paired with a producer who will serve as your single point-of-contact across all events. He or she will be responsible for establishing a plan, timeline and driving deadlines for all production needs, from the largest keynote and creative after-hours sponsor party to the most detailed audio/visual need. Because they are experienced working in all major North American event hubs, you can also tap into their experience and established relationships. They’ll know which venues to avoid, cool places for social events and a host of other gems. Production companies often also offer registration services or can recommend a trusted partner to fill this role at each event location.

Corporate Hotel Sales Manager

Typically road shows are held in major metropolitan cities, which lines up well with major hotel brands. Your venue dream team member will work across their various properties to help you secure deep discounts on room rentals, catering and other perks. Be sure to do your homework on specific locations, as not all brands are equal in all cities. A good hack for this is to utilize field employees located in that city for quick feedback.

Event Program Chair

Regional customization in programming content adds more appeal by improving relevancy for attendees in that area. The 80/20 rule works well for your program framework – keep 80% of the content the same across all events, and customize the final 20%. Your dream team member will likely be a product or marketing manager wearing an event “Program Chair” hat, who in turn works with regional resources in business development/sales to identify regional topics and select speakers. Once the program for each location is set, this team member is often also responsible for presenter recruitment, training and obtaining their final presentation files.

Marketing Coordinator

In order to scale your event marketing to a multi-city series, you’ll need to take a formulaic approach. Your marketing dream team member will have three primary focus areas: generating awareness of the event series as a whole, securing registrants for each regional location, and implementing lead nurturing and qualifying communication for registrants post-event. Once you’ve provided them with clear registration goals by region, they should utilize branded event templates and regional targeting tactics to efficiently meet each event targets.

Final thoughts

By recruiting a recurring events dream team, you will naturally shift to spending more time collaborating with your team members and spend significantly less time hands-on. This can be an uncomfortable transition if you have historically had your hand in every detail. Bringing on team members who have established frameworks for project management and communication such as the RTS system will provide you with confidence that all details are handled on your behalf.

To learn more how an Event Producer can support your recurring national events, book a meeting with an ATXES Producer.