Planning a corporate event can seem like a really daunting task without a clear plan. Which is why we want to walk you through exactly how to plan a corporate event, in clear and consise steps.
Start by defining your event objectives:
When you first start planning your coporate event, you want to figure out what you want to get out of your event. Some examples of event objectives are:
Motivate your team
Launch a new product or service
Celebrate the company
When you've figured out what your event objective is, you can start planning the perfect event to achieve this, but this has to be the first step.
Set your budget:
The next most important step is to set your budget. Your budget will define everything from your suppliers to your venue. So this is a vital step in planning your event. Once you have your budget everything else will follow.
During this step, you want to allocate your budget to different sectors of your planning. Things like venue hire, catering, marketing, and any potential contingencies you might need for your event; such as a miscelleneous budget.
Choose a venue:
Consider your event size, as well as your guest list when you start looking for venues. As well as this, you need to consider accessibility and the needs of your guests when looking for somewhere suitable. Other things to consider are the ammenities and the location of your venue. Keeping these things in mind as well as your budget, should mean you find your perfect venue.
Develop a timeline:
Create a detailed schedule with key milestones like booking your venue, sending invitations, confirming vendors, and finalizing all the logistics of your event.
Identify your target audience:
Along with drafting your guest list, you want to identify your target audience. So determine who you want to invite, including employees, clients, partners, or potential customers. When you're deciding this, go back to when you set your event objectives and use this to determine your taregt audience.
Create an event theme and format:
Select a theme that resonates with your company culture and choose a format that fits your goals, like a conference, workshop, gala or networking reception. This will help tie all your planning in together and make your event seem cohesive and elegant.
Marketing and promotion:
When marketing your event, you want to utilize carious marketing channels like email campaigns, social media, company intranet and targeting advertising to promote the event and drive attendance.
Supplier selection:
Find and contract reliable suppliers for catering, entertainment, audiovisual equipment, decorations, and any other necessary services. If you're struggling to find the suppliers for you, the best bet is to hire an event planner, as they have connections and can get you the best suppliers for the best deal.
Plan event activites and programming:
Design engaging sessions, presentations, breakout groups, networking opportunities, and entertainment to keep attendees involved. This also helps with teambuilding within a company. We recommend mixing groups of employees up so that everybody mingles with everybody.
Manage logistics:
Arrange transportation, parking, registration, check-in process, and any necessary accessibility accommodations. These are all factors that can impact a guests experience at your event, so it's important to take care with everything you set up. If a guest has a hard time from the start of your event - this could make the overall experience negative, and this is what we want to avoid.
On-site execution:
Assign roles to your team to manage event flow, address issues, and ensure smooth operations on the day of the event. This is even more important if you aren't having an event planner (even though we'd highly recommend it) - you want to make sure everything flows nice and smoothly from the get go.
Post-event follow-up:
Send thank-you notes to attendees, gather feedback through surveys, and analyze event data to identify areas for improvement. This serves as market research to help you when it comes time to plan your next event.
If you need help planning an event, enquire through our website!
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