Newbie to corporate event planning?

Yes, you can hire an event planner to do it but we all know it’s not that easy when planning a corporate event. There’s a lot of internal coordination to do. Here’s how you do the part you don’t like.

Corporate events are what helps you build your relationship with your valuable partners, customers or any other shareholders of your business. We often see multinational organizations put together massive events that are fancy and flawless. What we don’t is that, these are an outcome of really good planning. We mean REALLY good.

Whether it is a smaller scale event or an event for a larger audience, Here are a few things that will make your event the talk of the town. Let’s dig in.

1. Always plan ahead.

This may not seem practical all the time, but try to always have plenty of time to plan all aspects of the event.

2. Understand the objective of the event.

Why are you hosting this event? Once you identify what your prime objective is, you can then decide what kind of an event is best suited to achieve this objective.

3. Define your audience.

This is a very important step in the planning process. Are you targeting the C-level, senior, middle, or lower management, executives, or partners or maybe the BFSI sector? When you have that information figured out, you will be able to organize a more insightful session with content that suits your audience.

4. Define your budget.

Let’s be realistic here. You can’t have 1000USD and plan for a 3,000 USD event. Key is to spend extra to achieve the main objective and less on embellishments. For an instance, if you are hosting a virtual conference, spend a little extra to host without delays on a clear screen

5. Follow a project timeline.

This can be as simple as having the task, due date, and person responsible for the task. Else you can find really cool tools nowadays that streamline and simplify the most complicated details. Most importantly, stick to deadlines!

6. Select a topic/theme and format.

At this point a lot of the event planning is completed and it is time for the most interesting part. Selecting the event theme/ topic and decide on the format. Your corporate event need not be a typical industry focused boring seminar but can be immersive whilst being insightful. Introduce a dress down dinner party at the end. Find a theme that suits your guests, decorate, get everyone to dress up and jazz it up.

7. Choose the best location.

Best location need not be the most expensive in town. Look for a venue that helps you deliver your vision to the audience. Look for a venue that’s convenient and provides an atmosphere where attendees feel comfortable.

8. Logistics for the day.

You need not worry about this part if your event is handled by a planner. If you like to do the planning, remember, your vendors are your allies and play a major role in determining the success of the event. Including audiovisual engineers, caterers, photographers, entertainers etc.

Make sure you have a list of vendors with contact details and what their responsibilities are. Allocate responsibilities to your team members and have them as point of contacts.

9. Event promotion.

If it’s an event for a selective crowd sending out invites might get you the attendance, however it is not enough. In this digital age a variety of promotional activities are suggested to get the maximum participation. To name a few would be promo videos, social media posts and blog posts.

Sponsorships are also a great way of attracting a quality audience for your event. Consider it a win-win situation.

10. Execute, evaluate, and celebrate success.

Once you have successfully hosted the event, it does not end there. Follow up on payments to make to vendors, post-event team feedback and most importantly gathering attendee feedback. You can get guests to fill out a form, the old-fashioned way or digitalize the process. This information will help you identify your weak and strong areas to host the next event even better.

You are now set. Break a leg!