How to choose the date of your event

Choos­ing a date can be a real headache for event plan­ners, regard­less of the size and type of event involved. A lot of vari­ables — both inter­nal and exter­nal to your event organ­i­sa­tion — come into play. We have been track­ing thou­sands of events over the past 10 years. Here, we have com­piled a list of tips to help you choose the right date for your event.

Con­tents

1. The impor­tance of the per­fect date
2. How to pro­ceed
3. Some tools to help you
4. Speci­fici­ties of out­door events

1. The importance of the perfect date

This may seem obvi­ous but mak­ing a mis­take by choos­ing the “wrong date” can have a dis­as­trous impact on your event. For instance, an event tak­ing place at the same time as oth­er sim­i­lar events, in the same city, with the same audi­ence, could attract an insuf­fi­cient num­ber of par­tic­i­pants and thus have neg­a­tive con­se­quences on its cash flow — even if the bud­get was cre­at­ed per­fect­ly.

2. How to proceed

First, study your tar­get audi­ence and their habits. An event that wants to attract stu­dents must adapt to their pace of life and take place towards the end of the week, start­ing Thurs­day evening. For fam­i­lies, it is strong­ly rec­om­mend­ed to organ­ise week­end events only.

Then, feel free to test dates — with­out tak­ing finan­cial risks — if you organ­ise events reg­u­lar­ly and at sev­er­al dif­fer­ent time slots. For exam­ple, for work­shops or evening class­es, you can offer two dif­fer­ent days to attract a dif­fer­ent audi­ence and, espe­cial­ly, to test the attrac­tive­ness of the date. Don’t take unnec­es­sary risks if you think a date is not appro­pri­ate, espe­cial­ly if it is for a sin­gle event.

Don’t for­get your com­mon sense, it will always be your best ally. For instance, it’s a bad idea to plan an out­door event in Novem­ber – in the UK any­way. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there can some­times be unpleas­ant sur­pris­es — such as rain in July, which is why you also have to plan for the unex­pect­ed (see last part of the arti­cle).

3. Some tools to help you

Keep an eye on the events that will take place around yours — on Face­book for exam­ple. Feel free to also sub­scribe to Face­book pages that fea­ture news of events sim­i­lar to yours. You can also con­tact these organ­is­ers on social media to know the dates of their upcom­ing events.

If you often organ­ise events in the same city, you can take the ini­tia­tive of cre­at­ing a Face­book group with these organ­is­ers to cen­tralise all the infor­ma­tion. The objec­tive is for all event organ­is­ers in this city to be aware of upcom­ing events. This is a win-win solu­tion and pre­vents sim­i­lar events from being held at the same time.

4. Specificities of outdoor events

An increas­ing num­ber of events is being organ­ised out­doors — it is much more than a fad: open air, con­certs, fes­ti­vals, out­door cin­e­mas… All kinds of events are held out­doors, so that every­one can find a con­nec­tion with nature!!

How­ev­er, while this event for­mat is pop­u­lar, it is not with­out risks for its organ­is­ers. So always think of a back­up solu­tion:

• Post­pone the date — in advance, noti­fy guests, agree with all your providers, and plan the con­di­tions for this change of date.

• Pre­pare a plan B — anoth­er venue, indoors. Be care­ful not to pay a deposit, how­ev­er, as the back­up solu­tion should not cost you too much!

Our tip: watch the Weath­er Chan­nel very often because fore­casts can change at a moment’s notice. If you wish to can­cel or post­pone your event, be sure that this deci­sion will not have a neg­a­tive impact on your cash flow. Don’t can­cel at the last minute as that may cause you prob­lems with your ser­vice providers, who will have incurred costs such as trans­port, raw mate­ri­als, etc.

To plan a suc­cess­ful event, find out more about the ben­e­fits of our solu­tions by click­ing on the but­ton below:

Plan­ning an event