Choose the Right Date for Your Event.

It sounds like a really simple task, select a date for your event and start planning and organising. A lot more thought needs to go into how you select the date, or series for dates to hold your event. Careful selection will help maximise your ticket sales revenue and ensure the event is financially viable.

So much hinges on the date you select and it should be one of the first considerations in planning your event. It’s the starting point essentially and without a confirmed date you cannot book a venue or artists so try and narrow down a few alternative dates. The following are some key considerations in selecting your event date:

Competition. 
Conduct some competitor research and determine other events that are attracting the same audience you propose for your event. For a business event aimed at Accountants for example check other events scheduled throughout the year that also target Accountants. For seasonal outdoor events like summer music festivals in the UK you are limited to weekends from May to September. That limits the number of dates to select from and if you have a particular music niche or theme try and avoid dates that clash with music festivals targeting the same fan base. Undoubtedly the music festival season is highly competitive and customers will have a choice or at least 4 or 5 festivals to attend every weekend throughout the summer. If you are a new event fixing the right date becomes a primary consideration. 

Venue and Location. 
Is your desired venue available for your proposed dates, are there alternatives? And what other activities are planned around that venue for your planned dates. 

Artist Availability. 
Presumably you will have a list of artists you want to book, again you are probably competing with other events to book so check how your proposed dates fit with the availability of your preferred artist and if possible, make a provisional booking. 

Holidays or other Significant Dates. 
Consider what effect any public holidays may have on audience attendance, this can work both ways, if you have a holiday themed event you are going to attract a certain crowd, balance that with holidays where potential customers will plan to stay at home or are traveling elsewhere on vacation. 

Popular Sporting Events.
Many event organisers have no interest in sport, however, a major sporting event could impact on potential ticket sales. Booking a date that clashes with a key football World Cup match for your countries team, or Wimbledon finals day for example can have disastrous effect on sales. There are numerous stories of events booked on dates that clashed with the FA cup final and the organiser wondered why attendance flopped, they had no interest in football and continued to plan and book the event for the same date. Equally you wouldn’t book a music festival in Northamptonshire close to the Silverstone race circuit on the weekend of the British Grand Prix, not only will you lose potential customers the traffic logistics could turn into a nightmare. 

If you use an event management software solution like FestivalPro you get great functionality for planning your events including recording all key dates and calendars for scheduling. The guys who are responsible for this software have been in the front line of event management for many years and the features are built from that experience. The easy to use FestivalPro platform features dynamic calendar scheduling that makes planning and task allocation smooth and easy.  

Photo by ready made from Pexels

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