Boost Your Event Planning Business (Using A WordPress Event Calendar)

Calendars have come a long way in recent years. And so has WordPress.

WordPress plugins are highly versatile, giving you all kinds of capabilities that can streamline event planning, along with other activities.

With the rise of the digital age, more and more companies are integrating online event calendars into their websites. 

Lots of cleverly-designed event calendars now have plenty of business-boosting features that will help your event planning business grow. 

So if this baffling question on how an event calendar can boost your business is on your mind, join us. 

We’ll first go through some event planning strategies and then will see what specific ways there are that event calendars can boost your event planning business.

Why Use WordPress for Event Planning?

First of all, it’s easy to use and has an extended plugin library. Also, there are lots of customization options. Plus, it is SEO-friendly and cost-effective.

Different Types of WordPress Plugins for Event Management

Let’s take a look at some of the categories of plugins and how they can enhance your event planning and execution.

Event Calendar Plugins

Event calendar plugins provide you with an easy-to-use interface for scheduling and displaying events.

Ticketing and Registration Plugins

These types of plugins help you manage ticket sales and attendee registration for your events.

Event Promotion Plugins

These are used to boost an event's visibility, often by integrating with social media platforms, email marketing tools, or SEO optimization features.

Event Management Dashboard Plugins

Event management dashboards can provide an all-in-one solution to help you manage every aspect of your event. 

Virtual Event Plugins

They often integrate with live streaming services, allowing you to host and manage online events.

Comprehensive Event Planning Strategy

Holding an event is a great way of engaging your audience and turning them into lifelong clients.

Here are the details of a comprehensive event planning strategy:

Event Goals

From the very start, you must be crystal clear about your objectives.

Prepare a list of your goals. It is always better to arrange them in order of priority.

You should make sure that your goals are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, result-oriented, time-bound).

KPIs

KPIs are central to effective management, boost performance and amplify the chances of success. Without KPIs, you cannot measure progress (or the reverse).

Event Budget

Event budgeting is a key component of the planning strategy.

You will need to list down all the elements of the event and how much they will cost. 

Describe these elements in detail so that you can accurately ascertain the resources that will be necessary to this end.

Event Tools

While event planning is not the easiest of endeavors, event planning tools can make them somewhat easier and more manageable. 

You can use analytics, software apps, marketing suites, or an all-in-one software that comprises all the above-mentioned. 

CRM

Keeping this in mind, you can select an event platform that can seamlessly integrate with your CRM.

This will give you better visibility and more complete data about attendees and customers. 

Event Branding

The event is an excellent time to build, consolidate and bolster your brand image.

Make sure that all emails, messages, venue decor and even the food is in line with your branding elements.

Boost Your Event Planning with a WordPress Event Calendar

Now that we went through some important event planning strategies, it is time to see how event calendars can boost your event planning business.

Choose the Right Plugins

The plugins you choose should align with your event type, target audience, and specific objectives.

That way, you can compare different tools and see what kinds of features you can get in a system. 

Leverage Integration

Many WordPress plugins have some way to integrate with other tools you might be using, such as email marketing platforms or CRM systems. 

Using these integrations can streamline your workflow, reduce manual work, and ensure a cohesive event management strategy. 

Stay Tuned and Updated

Event calendars can help both your event planning business and your customers keep organized by making the process of adding events, rearranging events, or changing events easy. 

If you're using Modern Events Calendar, for example, customers can also add their own event suggestions, while avoiding any possible clashes with other events at the time.

Also, you can use all its different features like repeating events, organizer payments, different payment gateways, plus a remarkable number of addons that will amaze you. 

Also, regularly updating your plugins ensures you are benefiting from the latest features and improvements, thereby maximizing efficiency. 

Modern Events Calendar is one of the best WordPress events calendars on the market which makes creating, managing and selling your events easier than ever. 

Attend to Speed and Performance

While plugins can add valuable functionalities to your site, having too many can slow down your website. 

So you should be mindful of your site's speed and performance. 

It helps to schedule regular site speed checks as often as you can, as various updates can affect your site’s load speed.

Enabling Payments

When your attendees need to pay for tickets through a 3rd-party website or via a telephone line, the booking process becomes more complicated.

Also, you may never exactly know how many attendees will show up at the event. 

Think of all the wasted refreshments you have planned to serve. 

Events calendars that enable customer-booking and ticket-purchasing is the obvious solution. 

It makes both booking and purchasing simple and smooth. 

You can keep track of the number of tickets being sold and easily avoid overbooking.

Market Research

Another advantage of using an online events calendar is that you can use it for market research purposes. 

You can gather your data to tailor future events to your customers.

Additionally, understanding what your customers want from an event can provide inspiration for blog posts that your audience will enjoy reading. 

You can consequently use the same solid data for your social media content.

Integrate Different Payment Gateways

Having just one or two options would be a deterrent for some site visitors and would inevitably result in fewer sales.

Different payment methods can be integrated into event calendars to cover different payment preferences. 

Optimized For Search Engines

Another great thing about event calendars is that they can do wonders for your SEO optimization. 

Links to your events calendars are being shared around the net and you are continuously adding fresh content as new events keep popping up. 

Both these are contributors to where your site ranks in search engines.

Helps Attendees Find You

What good is an event that no one can find? 

With event calendars, you can often include maps and geolocation features to enable customers to find events in their location.

If your calendar is mobile-friendly, attendees can search for your event when they're on-the-go too! 

They can locate nearby parking, accommodation, restaurants, and other facilities that they may need before, during, or after your event.

Remember To Follow Up

Send thank you emails to those attendees who have shown up and take the opportunity to request valuable feedback and testimonials. 

Feedback is essential for understanding your strengths and weaknesses from a customer point-of-view and can help you learn and grow as an event planning business.

Testimonials, too, can be an effective marketing tool for encouraging more bookings for your next event.

Conclusion

The digital era's emergence has led to a growing trend where numerous businesses incorporate digital event calendars into their websites. 

These event calendars offer a range of features aimed at enhancing business outcomes, contributing to the expansion of your event planning enterprise.

However, before choosing an event calendar for your business, you need to know about the strategies of event planning. Planning events is an attractive way for engaging your audience and converting from potential clients to actual ones.