Event planning template and checklist.

Creating objectives prior to the event will help you determine if it was a success.

You can ask yourself the following questions to create goals for your event:

• Who is the target audience?
• What are the key messages?
• What should this event accomplish?
• How many attendees would I like to show up?
• How will I measure effectiveness?

Putting goals into a document ahead of time will help you plan with your employees’ and customers’ best interests in mind.

It takes a village to plan an event that leaves a positive, lasting impression on your audience.

When creating your event planning team, you’ll want to complete the following:

• Identify team members and their roles.
• Delegate tasks and action items.
• Establish important milestones and deadlines.
• Develop processes for reporting, meetings, and communication.

You may want to choose a team member to serve as the event chair and create subcommittees with chairpersons for each. You can categorize these subcommittees as speakers, venue, entertainment, promotions, sponsors, and so on.

You may need volunteers in addition to the members of your team. Help your volunteers feel welcome and involved in the event planning process so they can feel like they made an impact and spent their time wisely by helping create a positive experience for guests.

Gather cost estimates for any essential items that you need to host your event.

Some cost considerations include the following:

• Room rental
• Food and beverages
• Speaker fees
• Equipment
• Insurance
• Travel for staff

Once you determine these estimates, you will have an idea of how much your event will cost in total. From here, you can decide if you need to adjust your budget for a particular area. Perhaps you created and saved your event’s budget as a PDF to have a clean, secure document to reference. If you do need to go back and make adjustments, it can easily be done with the Adobe Acrobat online services convert PDF to Excel.

Depending on the venue’s popularity, you may need to book several months in advance.

When looking for your event venue, consider the following:

• Parking options
• Audio and video options
• Maximum capacity
• Other events happening at the same time near the venue
• Accessibility and inclusivity
• Length of time for venue access
• Equipment included with the venue
• Nearby noise issues
• Security concerns

Even if you plan everything down to the last detail, unexpected circumstances such as bad weather, speaker cancellations, and more can arise. Once you pick your venue, create a rainy day plan in case the venue, date, or time needs to shift for whatever reason.

You can begin promoting your event by creating pages on your company website that share event details. To drum up excitement, you can create a separate event logo from your regular company one. You can use the event logo across social media promotions, t-shirts, bags, water bottles, and more. You can create a tagline that will grab customers’ attention and give them an idea of what your event is all about.

To stand out, you’ll want to choose a theme that is relevant and compelling to your audience while remaining timely.

Perhaps your ideal venue is an outdoor one, and clear skies are not in the cards for the day you chose. By creating a backup plan, you won’t need to cancel the event, and all your hard work won’t go to waste.

Determine who will make the call that the backup plan needs to commence and when a final decision should be made. You will need to discuss refund and cancellation options with your vendors and decide how you will update all your guests about the new event location.

When creating your guest list, think about your target audience and key messages that will be relevant to them. Researching past company events or companies in a similar industry can help you formulate your list.

When inviting your presenters, speakers, or entertainers, you’ll need the following information:

• Presentation or speech topics
• Biographical information and a headshot
• Travel and other accommodations
• Request for speakers to begin event promotion

You’ll want to invite your sponsors and partners as well. Getting sponsorships is a huge advantage — check within your network first and explore who may be interested, then search elsewhere.

You can start building anticipation for your event by publishing an event notice on your website. Soon after, share event details in your newsletter and emails. Build media relations and promote your event through online and offline publicity to encourage people to attend.

You’ll want to consider using the following action steps in your promotion strategy:

• Develop a marketing promotion plan.
• Create goals, targets, and milestones, such as new followers or registration numbers.
• Make an event hashtag.
• Publish relevant content leading up to the event.
• Create collateral that is easy for partners to share.
• Encourage networking before the event.

By creating content well in advance, your partners and new potential customers will more likely be available to attend your event.

Event budget templates incorporate different expenses and revenue categories — expenses such as venue rent prices, travel costs, vendor fees, or income such as ticket and merchandise sales, vendor payments, and more. Creating an event budget template helps you plan an event that boosts customer engagement without exceeding the company allowance.

Here are some categories you may want to include on your event budget template:

• Venue
• Public relations
• Travel
• Event programming
• Decorations
• Advertising
• Social media

Within each category, you can create subcategories relevant to each section. Under Venue, you could add location rental, event rental, and so on. Under Event programming, you could include speakers, entertainers, and so on. Create a column for the projected subtotal and the actual subtotal to keep track of costs. Additionally, you can designate a column for comments.

Download our customizable event budget template below.

There are many routes you can take with your event timeline template. You can break the timeline template up by weeks, phases, and more. Within each stage, you can track milestones as your planning progresses closer to the event date.

Different stages could include these milestones:

• Develop goals.
• Choose a date and time.
• Set a budget.
• Select the venue.
• Make a backup plan.
• Create a guest list.

Your timeline template will give you a big-picture view of all the boxes to check in order to host a successful event. By planning ahead and implementing a backup plan, you can cater to your target audience and take some stress off your team in assembling an event.

Check our free event timeline template below.

You can create an event planning template using Adobe Acrobat. From there, you can add task timelines, schedule deadlines, and update any other sections necessary to carefully curate your event.

While event planning checklist templates will vary between businesses, there are some general items that you should include on any list. Categories can feature goals and purpose, team and project management, date and time, budget, venue, brand, backup plan, guest list, and promotion.

The 5 C’s of event planning are concept, coordination, control, culmination, and closeout.

1. Develop goals and purpose.
2. Organize a team.
3. Choose a date and time.
4. Create a budget.
5. Choose a venue.
6. Brand the event.
7. Create a backup plan.
8. Make a guest list.
9. Promote your event.
10. Evaluate your event.