Your members and sponsors have an array of options for how they invest their time and money when it comes to events. They want to be part of an event that attracts high quality attendees and delivers can’t-miss experiences. Long before your event, you meet with your team, tour the venue, and evaluate how it will function to suit your needs. To take your event from good to great, you need your next site visit to maximize the potential of your event. 

To draw the richest insights from a site visit, you need the perspective of a creative team on-hand. By viewing the venue through their perspective, they can unlock new opportunities, beyond what you could imagine, for your event.

Successful Events Demand a Balance of Perspectives 

A site visit is a crucial early step in planning your event experience. Once planning begins, you meet with your event planner, facility manager, and the AV specialists at the venue site. You’ll likely also have many of your stakeholders in attendance, such as executives, volunteer leaders, and vendors. All of these individuals offer a different perspective that contributes to a successful event.

These tactical conversations are vital to managing the details that make up any event. However, your site visit also presents a key opportunity to incorporate the viewpoint of a creative team. One who will consider all aspects of your event branding and in-person activations through two critical perspectives:

• What do your members need?
• How can the venue better serve your organization’s goals for the event?

Your organization depends on its events to deeply engage members, and form relational bonds, and underscore the value of your membership. A creative agency like ours will view your event’s venue as a blank canvas rich with opportunities and ensure your event delivers an elevated, branded experience. It’s time to incorporate a creative perspective to reimagine your event experience.

Consider the User Experience (UX) Design for Your Event 

User experience (UX) design, similar to event design, revolves around tailoring an experience to meet the requirements of its users and ensuring its seamless functionality. It is essentially a problem-solving approach that places the needs of your attendees—the members—at the forefront. Moreover, just like an external design partner would approach your event, UX design principles can be applied effectively to enhance your event experience.

In both virtual and physical spaces, UX designers define the audience and empathize with what they need to do. Then they identify problems and eliminate any barriers standing in your audience’s way. The UX process challenges pre-existing assumptions about your event to open the door for new ideas to solve those problems.

You need to apply the same well-honed approach of UX design to your event location. Considering every moment from your attendees arrival through the entire event experience, your external design partner should stand in your members’ shoes and recognize potential challenges. The right creative partner will see details about your event during a site visit that would go unnoticed by merely viewing a venue’s website or photo gallery.

3 Key Considerations for Every Site Visit

A positive user experience at your event allows your members to stay focused on your organization’s message without distractions or negative impressions. These three important details are just the start of what your design partner will consider when touring your event site.

1. You need to understand your space from every angle.

To make the most of your site visit, your team should tour the space at the same general time that your event will take place. Does the venue stand on its own from a visual standpoint, or does it need additional elements so your members immediately recognize they’ve come to the right place? Is the décor highly ornate in a way that will clash with your on-site branding? Adding branded graphics or redirecting attention from elements that don’t align with your brand will create an environment that’s cohesive and consistent with the goals of your event.

2. Remember no one wants to feel lost or confused.

In the same way website users shouldn’t question what they need to do when they arrive on a page, your attendees should always understand where they should go next. Whether your event begins once they arrive at the hotel or convention center, the addition of impactful branding gives your members the confidence they’re on the right path.

Your event planner will resolve any issues of wayfinding. But your design partner builds upon those guiding details in a branded, elevated way that’s impactful and creates a sense of place.

3. Welcoming your guests — in a big way — is crucial.

Your event needs a meaningful moment to underscore that your members have arrived. This is your chance to surprise and energize your most valuable audience with an experience that’s unmistakably representative of your organization — and your brand.

Whether you’re trying to create a sense of place or generate excitement upon your guest’s arrival, first impressions are everything.

How a Well-Branded Event Creates FOMO for Your Next Event

Bringing a creative team to your site visit does more than ensure your organization seizes every opportunity to create an innovative experience. It also results in events that generate the kind of buzz that improves attendance and boosts sponsorship rates for the following year.

Your members should view your organization’s event with a sense of FOMO — the fear of missing out. Creative details will establish that your organization has placed its distinct stamp on the event venue. Branded giveaways that connect your brand to the event experience offer another means of creating a positive buzz. 

FOMO isn’t easy to generate, but when every aspect of your event experience combines to deliver that special feeling, your event becomes much more attractive for members. Plus, your sponsors take notice when attendance and the surrounding experience becomes more elevated, which leads to greater financial opportunities.

Bringing your creative team on a site visit constitutes an additional investment. But in the context of engaged, excited members and a more profitable event for subsequent years, it’s an investment in a brighter future for your organization.

Prospective members can meet your organization in several ways: at a mixer, on your Facebook page, through an article on your website, or through an email a friend forwarded them. The combination of those experiences adds up to something critical: their perception of your brand.

If your design is outdated or inconsistent across touchpoints, you’re giving prospects reason to doubt you. And frankly, they’re already skeptical. There’s no question about it: you need to tell one story of who you are in a cohesive brand experience to win new members. 

Fonts, colors, textures, and images are not trivial details. All brand elements should reiterate your organization’s mission and messaging. A consistent brand experience builds trust and resonance with each interaction. Isn’t that what you want to offer prospective members?

It might be time for your organization to update your materials, so you’re telling your one story masterfully. However, deciding what to prioritize and how to sketch out a reasonable timeline is challenging. Whether you need to start from scratch or attend to just a few elements, you need a solid plan. Here’s how to get started.

Prepare By Auditing Your Current Brand Materials

Perhaps you know exactly what needs updating. But before making decisions, you’ll need to systematically take stock of and prioritize each asset. 

Take Inventory 

Account for your website, emails, social media, event materials and displays, webinars, membership collateral, sponsorship materials, and all other assets. Assign each asset a rating from 1-5 based on the level of potential impact it can have on your organization and members. 

In addition, document:

• Any asset that isn’t “on brand.” Does any touchpoint conflict with your brand identity? Even small conflicts can have real consequences. For example, prospects can fail to recognize you if your marketing collateral uses a different color palette.
• Any deficiencies. Are you missing any key assets? 
• Each asset’s dollar impact. How much value or impact can it generate directly (like additional sponsorship dollars) or lose you in opportunity cost (like lackluster attendance to an event or someone not signing up as a member)

Set a Budget  

Avoid determining your materials update budget purely on cost. Instead, consider what investment is reasonable based on the value to be generated. If a positive outcome was likely, what would you invest to achieve that outcome? 

For example, if you were told that you’re likely to generate $500k in sponsorship dollars for your event if you invest 10% of that goal on branding the event, would you? This exercise gives you a ceiling for what’s reasonable to invest if there was a high degree of certainty in the results. From there, you can reduce the investment based on your ambitions, available resources, and level of certainty in generating that value. 

Allocate Resources 

Ensure you have set up adequate internal and external resources to tackle each project. Even if you have the most capable external vendor to help you through this journey, you still need timely information, decisions, and approvals by your internal team.

Create a Brand Asset Update Timeline 

The following timeline represents an example of a complete brand update. As you approach this process, be patient and realistic. And bear in mind each part of the update affects the following, so the sequencing is important. 

Every organization is different, so you can customize this suggested timeline to one that fits your needs.

Identity and Brand System: Months 1-3

The story you tell, how you talk about yourself, and the value you bring to members should be consistent and complementary. Your logo, colors, fonts, and visual elements bring your story to life in a unique, authoritative way.

Make sure you work diligently — and with an external partner if needed — to build a robust brand system that equips your team and vendors for success.

Website: Months 4-10

Once you’ve solidified your brand identity, you can begin designing and building a website that supports it. The website is your primary communication tool, and it will require the longest time commitment. 

Organizational Primary Brochure: Months 4-6

Your brochure is a foundational product that will establish messaging, tone, and visuals. It’s a vital asset that serves as another face of your business and a detailed reference of your services. Subsequent materials (like presentation decks and sales folders) can follow and complement this primary piece. 

Membership Management Platform: Months 8-10

As you wrap up work on your website, you’ll integrate your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. Your CRM allows members to connect with resources like webinars and registration for organizational events and cannot be an afterthought and disjointed from the rest of their experience on the website. 

Email Templates: Months 9-10

Since email drives traffic to the website, design and deploy your email templates post-website launch. Remember: a good email depends on crisp, clear, concise content.  

Membership/Sponsorship Sales Folder and One-Sheets: Months 6-7

When you sell a membership, you’ll want to leave a sales folder in that new member’s hands. And one-pagers can be just the right thing when you need a brief, easy-to-read marketing piece. Both of these assets play an important supporting role and build from what you’ve established in your organizational brochure. 

Presentation Decks: Months 6-7

Decks can be built alongside sales folders and one-sheets and are also inspired by the established organization brochure, website, and brand guidelines. You’ll use it to present information to potential sponsors, members, or partners. A customized PowerPoint template, another must-have asset, will help you create presentations quickly and professionally.  

Event Design: Variable/Ad hoc

Event design has a unique place in your brand update timeline. Membership organizations typically start marketing events a minimum of 2 months in advance. The development of an event look and feel should start 6-8 weeks before you want those materials to go live, depending on the complexity of the event. 

A well designed event not only drives attendance, but also helps to communicate the caliber of an event to potential sponsors. Reimagined events have the opportunity to tremendously increase sponsorship revenue.

Membership Campaigns: 24/7/365

Membership organizations like yours need to actively communicate your value with year-round efforts. As soon as the core corporate communications materials (identity system, brochure, and sales kits) are complete, you’re ready for your membership campaign.

Robust, Lively Brands Are More Compelling to Prospective Members

Today’s digital natives have high expectations and low tolerance for counterintuitive, disjointed design. So use all of your brand elements to create and maintain your story and your vision. That’s the way to earn trust and make your organization memorable, impactful, and sustainable to future members.