When I hosted the teleseminar last week on “50+ Places Online to Promote Your Live & Virtual Events to Reach Your Target Market & Pull Sell-out Crowds,” I mentioned briefly that event planners can use online calendar sites to see which events are competing with theirs on a certain date.
It isn’t always possible to steer clear of all major events. But if you do your homework, you can decrease the chances that your event will be on the same date as another event in your community.
When I teamed up with Debra J. Schmidt, former Community Affairs Director for WISN-TV Channel 12 in Milwaukee, several years ago for a series of recorded interviews on How to Plan & Promote Sizzling Special Events,” Deb mentioned several other things event planners can do before choosing a date. This is an excerpt of one of our six interviews:
The Best Day of the Week
Joan – Let’s talk about timing. How critical is the timing of the event, specifically, the day of the week?
Deb – Tuesdays and Thursdays are considered the best days of the week right now to plan an event.
Joan – Why is that?
Deb – Currently, if you live in the northern regions, because of the short summer seasons, many non-profits hold golf outings as fundraisers, and the golf courses tend to open their courses for those events on Mondays. If you’re planning a Monday event, you’re competing with golf outings all over the place, if indeed it’s a summer event. Tuesday and Thursday nights are currently—and I say currently because this changes and you need to pay attention to what’s going on—Tuesdays and Thursdays are the nights currently that most professional organizations do not meet. They hold their meetings on Wednesday nights and a lot of breakfast meetings, and so you have a little bit less competition generally on those two days of the week.
Joan – Also, isn’t Wednesday typically prayer night for a lot of churches?
Deb – Yes. Wednesday can be a prayer night. You run into religious holidays, yes. All of those things have to be taken into consideration.
Weekends & The Weather
Joan – What about weekend events? Does Saturday work better than Sunday or vice versa?
Deb – The first thing to think about on weekends is, you’re going to have a lot of competition if you plan a weekend event. Now that doesn’t mean you can’t have a weekend event, but you better make sure it appeals to the people who are available on weekends. Saturdays are generally going to be better. Sundays are still fairly protected by families as their time. Unless your event has strong family appeal, you’re going to have trouble getting families out there on Sunday.
The advantages, obviously, to weekend events is you’ve got less traffic on the roads. It’s generally easier for people to get there unless there’s a ball game or something else that’s going to get in the way. Again, you have to evaluate your target audience and where are they likely to be on the weekends.
Joan – What about weather considerations?
Deb – That’s a good question because weather does factor into the timing. Ask yourself, if you’re planning an event that’s in the dead of winter and you’re in the northern regions, or if you have a possibility of heat waves, is there a better time for the event? Take a look at that because this is something you can’t control. We’ve had great events planned in the wintertime in Milwaukee and we’ve gotten hit with an early snowstorm that buried the city and people simply couldn’t get to the event.
The other thing, if you know that weather may be a factor, particularly if it’s an outdoor event, you have to build in contingencies when you’re planning so that you have a place for them to go if there’s a storm because obviously, the safety of the attendees comes first.
Joan – What about the business impact?
Deb – That’s another great question, Joan, because that’s something that a lot of companies don’t take into consideration. Remember we talked earlier about the people and the staff and the volunteers being one of your great resources? Well, let’s say you’re an accounting firm and you’re in the middle of tax season. That’s not the time to put on an event. You want to make sure that the event times out with what’s happening—any kind of trends in your business. If there are times of the year that are quieter and slower, that’s when you want to have the event held because it takes up a lot of time.
Joan – Certainly you have to be aware, too, of religious and commemorative holidays.
Joan – Certainly you have to be aware, too, of religious and commemorative holidays.
Deb – Yes, you definitely do. Don’t limit your concerns to Christmas and Hanukkah. There are a lot of other commemorative holidays. Don’t forget about Martin Luther King Day or Kwanza or Cinco de Mayo. Make sure that you’ve checked your calendars, that you’re worked closely with Convention & Visitors Bureaus to take a look at competing events, religious and commemorative holidays—all of that needs to be taken into consideration.
The Christmas Holidays
Joan – You mentioned the Christmas holidays. There are a lot of events during December. Is that a difficult time to stage an event?
Deb – Yes. It’s a very difficult time because the competition for people’s time goes up dramatically during the Christmas season. They’re invited to holiday parties. They’ve got all the demands by their families and all of those kinds of things. Unless your event really makes sense for the Christmas holiday, I would say don’t plan it.
If you are raising funds—that is a time when fundraising is more successful because people’s hearts are a little bit softer. But what they like to be involved in is holiday fundraising that they can visibly be a part of. For example, putting cans of food into a food container to collect food for the hungry at the food pantries. Anything that is more visual works better. They like tangible feelings of having given. So not just raising money at those events.
Don’t Compete for Tourists
Joan – What about events that would rely significantly on the tourist trade?
Deb – The tourist trade…you have to allow a lot more planning time for your event. You are now not only competing with local events. You’re competing with national events. You need to take a look at what’s going on nationally. Time your events accordingly.
Make sure that you’re allowing enough planning time to get into national publications. Check with Convention & Visitors Bureaus and Chambers of Commerce. Find out what other events that you might be able to dovetail into. But it becomes a bigger issue now. You have to look beyond your own community if you’re trying to appeal to the tourist trade.
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Before you plan your next event, be sure to read 7 things that can kill your event before it begins. And to make your event publicity easier, check out Make event promotion/PR easier: 27 questions spark ideas.