Is your annual virtual summit budget for 2022 getting better for you? With these 3 steps, we show you how to maximize your budget and make sure that you’ll get buy-in from key stakeholders in your organization for your Virtual Summits.
It’s getting to that part of the year again. It’s time to start putting concrete plans in place for the year ahead and to have any chance of doing this you need to start thinking about your virtual summit budget. Your annual virtual event budget is the total budget that you have for the upcoming year. It is your lifeline that makes sure that your plans for the year ahead turn into concrete actions.
According to the 2019 Event, Marketing, Benchmarks and Trends report it’s estimated that businesses are spending almost a quarter of their marketing budget on live events. This is a considerable chunk of any budget and for this to be approved you’re going to need to demonstrate its value to the CEO, and more importantly to the CFO. With this article, we will show you the critical steps to understand your annual event budget so that you can get the most out of it.
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3 Steps To Create Successful Virtual Summit Budget 2022
Do your homework on the best virtual summit platforms
It can be a daunting task tracking all of your past performance from the last year especially if you are doing an organizing a virtual summit for the first time, but it is essential to do so. Historical data provides a benchmark for your budget and will set the new boundaries for the year ahead. It’s important to ask yourself a lot of questions. Where was your expenditure going? Did you overspend or underspend in certain areas? Did you hit the metrics you wanted to achieve?
Identifying all of these points will make it a lot easier to see where your annual event budget has been going and, more importantly, where it should be going. Moreover, it means you’re much less likely to repeat previous mistakes because you’ve already dedicated the time and effort to pinpoint what they are. Here, it can’t be understated how important it is to have the right tools and processes in place to ensure that you’re able to monitor and analyze all of your finances and metrics. If you are conducting first-time virtual fairs Or virtual summits, you can write the expenditures Vs Their replacement items. For example, the speaker’s travelling & accommodation cost is not necessary for virtual summit platforms or virtual fairs software. You need to increase your Digital Marketing Budget by replacing Offline advertising channels.
What are you going to achieve by collaborating
Now that you’ve identified your virtual summit platform’s successes and failures, it’s time to start thinking about the year ahead for your virtual summit budget 2022. Although planning your virtual event budget for a whole year can feel like a daunting task, it is important to identify what you want to achieve and how you are going to reach these objectives.
If you’re looking to launch a 2-3 days Virtual Summit you need to envisage how your budget is going to get you there. First, look at the bigger picture and work your way back into smaller, more achievable steps. By doing so, you segment your budget so that you can effectively allocate your funds into the most valuable elements of your budget. In other words, you’re effectively building a roadmap of how you’re going to reach your goals.
Before we move on, it’s also important to mention that your annual virtual events budget is only a forecast of what you expect to spend for the year ahead. Events change and expenses can come from anywhere, and that’s why your budget must be flexible. A good rule of thumb is that the more time and effort you put into your budget, the more likely you are to be prepared for any eventuality, avoiding any major hiccups further down the line.
Getting buy-in from the executives
You’ve reached the final hurdle. Now, it is time to pitch your budget to the executives. Your budget and vision go hand in hand because without the former you’re never going to have the latter. When pitching your budget to the executives you must present them with tangible results. They need to see metrics that can be easily measured instead of the more intricate details which outline how you’re going to reach these objectives.
In most organizations, to seek budgetary approval you will need to run this past the CEO and CFO. What they want to see is an attribution that your budget will bring to the table and what they don’t want to see are any surprises. That’s why you must have all bases covered when you present your budget by providing a clear and objective-oriented plan.
Set yourself up for success
Everything that you spend within your virtual summit budget 2022 should be an investment. It should be going towards providing real ROI to your organization. Your annual virtual summit platforms or virtual fairs software budget provides a great starting point of your vision for the year ahead, not just for you but also for key stakeholders who know a lot less about event planning than yourself.
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