How Many Events Per Year Should You Run?

I’ve mentioned before that the ability to plan out a successful event has become an integral skill for any marketing professional worth their salt. With the birth of social media and new methods of communication, consumers are demanding that brands interact with them in entirely new and personal ways. Events and conferences are an ideal means of accomplishing this.  Organizations are able to connect with both other personalities in the industry as well as their consumers; a good event can do almost as much for a brand as a successful viral campaign.

But is there such a thing as going overboard with an event-based marketing campaign? Is there such a thing as running too many events? Can a large quantity of events cause harm to your brand as easily as they might help it?

Honestly, it depends.

As a general rule, you shouldn’t be running more than one or two events per month – twelve per year -and that’s only if you’ve a fairly sizeable, dedicated team at your disposal. Part of the reason for this lies with preparation time. With any event, you’re going to want to leave at least a couple of weeks in which you can spread the word and market it to potential attendees. You’re also going to need to nail down speakers, partners, and venues for whatever conference you’re running, and all of these steps take time, even with a large events team. Pile on too many, and you’ll end up being overwhelmed.

There’s another reason you should limit how many events you host per year, as well; the reason bears some connection to the concept of the Global Village.

With new technology like telepresence robots and live-streams, attendees from all over the world can tune in to one of your events. Attendance at an event is no longer limited by physical location, and your conferences can as a result reach people on a global scale. Because of this expanded reach, there’s less of a need to run multiple events – the content at your events can now be delivered to a larger audience than ever before.

Speaking of content, that’s another reason it’s a good idea to hold off on hosting too many events. You can only produce so much content – and gather so many guest speakers – before the content you’re dealing with becomes stale, and the returns on what you’re spending to run the conference grow small enough that it’s no longer worthwhile. More than anything else, this is the reason why I’d advise against hosting more than one event per month – most organizations simply aren’t equipped to do so.

Ultimately, there really is no ‘sweet spot’ as far as event hosting is concerned. How many events you can – and should – run each year depends as much on your industry and brand as it does the team you’ve got at your disposal. Beyond that, the only advice I can really give you is that even though events have become an integral part of most modern marketing strategies, they’re far from the only aspect. Don’t get so caught up in your event planning that you neglect other avenues of brand awareness, as well.