So, you’re holding an event.   But how do you reach out beyond your current exhibitors and attendees to grow your event? It all comes down to successful branding, design & marketing.  Most of the time you’ll find yourself outsourcing this process to those with experience and expertise – namely a design agency. 

When looking to engage an agency for your event’s marketing needs here are a few things to consider and discuss in your initial meeting.

1. Understanding your Business. First of all, do they actually understand your business and how your event relates to it? Share your event goals with them; whether it’s growing attendance by 10%, greater brand awareness based on an increase in social media following or increasing overall profits by a particular amount.  Depending on the spectrum of your goals, you may find certain agencies (particularly if they are niche) have strengths in different areas than what you’re trying to focus on, or conversely, you might find a perfect fit with a proven track record in the areas you are trying to bolster and improve.  

2. It’s More than Just Good Design. Beautiful design that’s not underpinned by the appropriate business understanding can be unfavorable to your event, as it may not be targeted to the right demographic; losing you potential exhibitors and attendees and tarnishing rather than enhancing your brand awareness.  Therefore, don’t be fooled by impressive examples of prior work, particularly if it’s unclear how what they present parallels with your event objectives.

3. Understand Their Process. Use the opportunity to have them outline their process and demonstrate how they’ve taken a few previous clients’ briefs from brainstorming all the way to execution.   You want to make sure that they don’t have a one-size-fits all, cookie cutter approach across their entire portfolio.  If they lack a particular skill set or acumen relating to your event’s needs, will they outsource this to a freelancer or another agency? 

4. What’s the Timeline? Be sure to determine a budget and deadline, but remember to be realistic in your expectations of what can be achieved with a given amount of money in a particular timeframe and allow some flexibility.  A good agency will be able to propose a few different approaches based on different degrees of fiscal and chronological constraint.

5. Dealing with the Unexpected Finally, on the subject of problem solving, ask how they handle unforeseen issues such as delays and budget overruns if they haven’t mentioned it when discussing their creative process.   You need to know they have contingencies in place and aren’t assuming that each brief that crosses their desk is going to be smooth sailing.  

Fortunately you don’t need to venture far to find this experience and expertise. At Streampoint we have our own design agency in-house, and we understand the event space.   If you’ve got an upcoming event reach out and ask us these questions here!