Corporate events are hosted to meet various business needs. These events may be held in the form of award ceremonies, business conferences, team building events or product launches.
In addition, organizations have seen the need to create collaborations and strategy alignment across different departments/units through the planning and execution of a well-thought-out event.
Additional reasons for corporate events include improving morale, adopting new business models and introducing or reinforcing existing policies.
Over the years, The Zone has worked efficiently in hosting events and helping organizations morph these events into memorable experiences, thereby supporting the realization of corporate objectives.
This article outlines six (6) simple and highly effective tips to serve as a quick guide for corporate event planning.
6 Highly Effective Tips for Corporate Event Planning
Set Goals and Objectives
Planning and execution are easy when you have clearly defined goals and objectives. An event must achieve what it sets out to achieve, and this clarity must remain constant all through the planning phase to avoid a deviation from purpose.
Do bear in mind that there are stakeholders (attendees, sponsors and planning team) who share in the goals and objectives.
Therefore, ensuring that these goals are achieved not only guarantees the success of your event but also helps in keeping your goal promise to the event stakeholders. In setting goals, remember the SMART principle:
- Specific– Goals expectations must be specific and defined. Avoid setting generic outcomes.
- Measurable– Goals must be measured by a defined target number or quantified achievement.
- Attainable– Create achievable goals. Avoid overpromising and wishful projections when planning an event.
- Relevant– Always keep in mind the underlying aim and purpose of the event. Ensure that the set goals connect to the purpose.
- Time– Set a timeframe and have an endpoint.
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Create A Budget
Setting up a budget prepares you for all expenses and prevents you from going over the top. The total amount of the budget available can impact every aspect of corporate event planning, including the choice of venue, catering, entertainment, etcetera.
Do an internal background check where possible to ascertain if a similar event had occurred in the past to have a clear understanding of the budget and other resources you may require for successful execution.
Keep in mind that your event budget must have certain degree of elasticity to make provision for unanticipated expenditures that may arise during the cause of planning.
Therefore, accurate budgeting must have a contingency fund. There is a need to effectively manage costing whilst ensuring proper negotiations and pricing.
Choose a Suitable Venue
You would not purchase a shoe purely for the aesthetics without checking to see if it fits. Similarly, choosing a venue mainly because it looks nice on the website without checking to see value propositions could be detrimental.
You have to find answers to questions such as: Does this venue suit the purpose of my event? Can the venue satisfy the desired capacity? Is it within my budget? Is the location accessible? Will I get event support? Is there event technology in place? What is the standard of service like?
Ability to answer these questions will go a long way in helping you choose a suitable venue. When choosing a suitable venue, check for an acceptable level of safety.
This is essential as you have a duty to keep your guests safe. Therefore, be sure to take all necessary steps to avoid any form of harm.
Create a Marketing Plan
The first and most crucial step before planning an event is having a marketing plan. To build brand awareness, increase customer engagement and generate good leads, you need to develop a compelling event marketing strategy.
By building a marketing campaign around your events, attendees and stakeholders will feel more invested and involved, which may pave the way for your partners and sponsors to promote engagement that can increase their return on investments.
Some companies may participate and attend as hosts, participants or sponsors. Social media serves as a great tool to promote your corporate event to build the excitement of your attendees until the day of the event. Corporate events with consistent marketing campaigns will always be unique and more attractive to their audience.
Plan to Manage Attendee Engagement
Keeping your guests engaged during events plays a vital role in the overall success of your corporate event, with full understanding that participants’ expectations and needs differ significantly based on their age, occupation, belief and interest.
In addition, with the COVID-19 pandemic disrupting the normal flow of events, event organizers are forced to adopt new ways of executing events.
The attention span in humans has reduced drastically in this digital era, and if corporate events cannot generate engagement, it will impact the attendee’s ability to retain information.
Using suitable event technology tools and being creative can attracts and holds the attention of your audience. Some creatives along this line include launching an appealing and productive event online, assigning a great host to engage your audience, preparing exciting content, organizing polling during events, hosting interactive quizzes, and leveraging event gamification for virtual meetings.
Create Follow Up Metric
A unique way to close out a successful corporate event is to follow up after the event is over. Create a follow up metric to reach out to your attendees once the event is over.
Endeavor to include those who participated in the execution and success of the event in the appreciation outreach campaign. Gathering feedbacks shows duty of care which contributes to building meaningful relationships.
It is advisable to do this within 24hours after the event is concluded, so that the attendees are able to remember highlights, share experience give recommendations or testimonials in the spirit of the event.
We have provided you thus far, essential tips to guide you in planning successfully for your next corporate event. As you set out in the planning, remember to start by creating smart goals and having a budget.
You also need to decide well on a suitable venue; have a marketing plan for your event; have a clear execution plan and engagement plan and create a follow up metric. This guide provides key tips that are often neglected but are truly paramount to the success of an event.
As experts in planning and hosting events, we recommend this guide to help you and your planning team. Feel free to refer to this guide regularly.
Choosing a suitable venue does not have to be difficult. The Zone ticks all the boxes for an ideal corporate event space. At The Zone, we are committed to providing a state of art facility as well as ensuring excellent service to our clients. Visit www.thezone.ng