Dubai’s fully developed events industry does demand a lot more than we think they do. Whether you’re planning your event’s public relations yourself or outsourcing it to an experienced event management and public relations firm, it is important that you understand your constructed media plan and how to make it work for your event.

The most common mistakes we event managers make these days is focus on social media advertising spotlighting internal aspects, process writing and technical details, which normally end up getting lost in detailing and finally losing out on the bigger picture. My core marketing team experienced this to be a huge challenge while planning their media strategies as they constantly worried about questions like ‘who’d write the material?’ and ‘which channel do they start advertising it from?’. The most simplistic equation before drafting a media plan is to set your objectives in the following manner –

Firstly, a media plan requires you to recognize your target audience. To identify the right kind of audience for your show, it is customary to source them amongst your current clients, potential clients, stakeholders, competition, or event news channels.

Secondly, you ask yourself what you want your target audience to do? This area can be accomplished with some amount of research including – direct marketing, random choosing or mass mailing to the database, turning your potential clients into actual clients, or by dealing with journalists.

After you’ve set your objectives, its vital that you develop a schedule for your campaigns. Your event marketing campaigns are most effective if combined with your expected sales plans, public relations plans, and event operations plans.

Last but not the least, focus on using the right communication vehicles to get your message right to your decided target audience. Few of your communication channels may include – press releases, articles in relevant magazines, customer success stories, letters to the editor, press conferences, interviews or media tours, radio or television interviews, seminars or public speaking engagements, and event sponsorships.

After you’ve accomplished all of the above, you could spend your valuable time putting measures in place and tracking results of your PR campaign. It’s important to review each of the channels you’ve marketed through and see what’s bringing in the best results. Should you wish to consider making any modifications in your plan, you will know what’s working best for your organization.