Every business owner that plans to expand his business should understand the importance of corporate events. It truly doesn’t matter which type of professional event you plan to organize. For instance, you can organize the event when you are hosting a product launch for 500 people. Despite that, you can organize “mini-events” where only your employees will attend. These events usually come in the form of different skill improvement pieces of training.
For both types of corporate events, you have to find the right approach. The first thing that you should know is that there are 5 important elements of every event management. Those five elements/stages are researching, designing, planning, coordination, and evaluation. Divide your event into these five elements and the organization process will be much easier for you.
The purpose of different company events is to improve the relationship with your target audience. Indeed, you can do that in more ways than before thanks to advanced technology. However, this is the opportunity that every bigger company will tend to use. Because of that, the first corporate event you organize needs to be perfect.
Fortunately, achieving good results is not impossible. There are certain tips for planning your first corporate event that we would want to share with you. Let’s find them out together.
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1. Determine Your “Why”
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This is the very first step that you need to make. The majority of entrepreneurs do not determine the purpose of the event they are planning. They are doing that because they heard it is good for their business and because competitors are doing the same. This is not enough good reason to start planning your first corporate event.
The business world is full of uncertainty and it is hard to predict something. However, you should include your imagination and try to predict which goals you exactly want to achieve. More precisely, you need to determine your “why”.
By determining your “why”, it will be easier for you to decide on one type of event.
2. Money, Money, Money
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Everything in the business world is associated with money. Entrepreneurs try to grab every opportunity that would potentially bring them money. For something like that you need to make smart investments. Well, organizing this type of event is one of the investments that will pay off in the end.
We suppose that your budget is not unlimited. When you start planning your event, put on a piece of paper every potential cost you will have. Calculate how much money you need to spend to get items, equipment, etc. After you get a current number, compare it with your budget. Are those two numbers matchable? Well, this means that you are going in a good direction.
Still, there is one small trick that we need to say. While you start turning your idea into reality, you will notice that you forgot about current costs. It can also happen that current mistakes that you make bring some additional expenses. Because of that, when you put everything on a piece of paper, add 10% more to the result you get. In this way, you will get prepared for the unexpected costs that might arrive.
3. Determine Who Your Audience Is
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Every entrepreneur needs to know in every moment who his target audience is. Their requirements and expectations are something that is helping us make better decisions.
In this situation, your audience can be everyone from long-term clients to community members and managers. Their interests and needs are something that you should follow while organizing your corporate event. However, when you know who they are, you do not know how many of them will come.
Because of that, it would be a smarter move to invite too many people than too few. Empty seats and uneaten snacks seem like irrelevant things at first glance. However, when you look closer, they can take your credibility. On the contrary, events full of people are a good marketing tool.
Finally, there is one more thing you need to take care of. The guests of the events usually talk about how they were treated in the event. This is the most important reason why you need to understand their requirements and expectations. Picking the right way to meet them is a great “word-to-mouth” promotion. Even today when the Internet brings too many opportunities, “word-to-mouth” promotion brings the best results.
4. Pick the Right Location and Design
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Picking the right location for the corporate event was always a challenging thing. As we said, you do not know exactly how many people are going to come to your event. Despite that, you need to do proper research before renting a current venue. For instance, if you heard that other businesses organized their events there, you should ask them for an opinion. Some up-and-coming hot spots might make your event even more popular.
Designing the venue is an even more difficult task that most entrepreneurs do not know how to handle. The design itself should be matchable with your brand and the purpose of the event. Logically, you need to match the tastes of your target audience as well.
This includes everything from wall colors, lights, stage, logo, etc. If this seems like a tough thing to accomplish, we recommend you ask for help. There are companies like Soflo Studio that offer event production services. It might be good to check their website and see which services you can exactly ask for.
5. Promotion of the Event
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The last step that will have you make your event successful is to find the best way to promote it. Fortunately, we live in a world of modern technology, and entrepreneurs have more options. However, this also depends on the type of event that you plan to organize.
If your corporate event is small, then you can simply send invitations to the selected guests. Yet, if you plan to organize bigger events, then the promotion on social media is the best possible option.
However, before everything, you should create an event website and put every important information there. If you don’t have time for that, you should at least develop a new landing page on the company’s website. Create blog posts, videos, and social media updates to reach your target audience.
