If you want to build a successful company, then you’ll need to develop relationships that last. While a lot of that focuses on customers, you also have suppliers, investors, and others to think of. How can you keep and maintain these relationships?
While marketing will be the natural first step in this, you’ll also need to think about throwing events. These can be worked into your marketing and sales strategies while being a cost-effective way of developing loyal customers.
Coupled with this, you can show employees and other key stakeholders how valuable they are to the company. Regardless of whether you’re throwing a product launch for your loyalist customers or celebrating a milestone with stakeholders, you’ll need to throw an effective event.
Many people mightn’t have experience in throwing a corporate event, especially if they’re first-time entrepreneurs or small business owners. How do you throw and plan a corporate event?
Because of how popular they are, there are multiple lessons to be learned from past events. Learning from others’ mistakes and successes can be vital in the planning stages of your event. It also means that several steps have been developed and refined for throwing a great corporate event.
While virtual events might have been common recently, they’re taking place much more in person. Here’s how to throw a corporate event.
Steps To Plan A Corporate Event
Know The Purpose Of The Event
Once you’ve decided to throw an event, you have to decide what you want to accomplish. To do this, you should ask yourself why you’re throwing the event, alongside what expectations you have. That will then help you determine what your goals are.
If you’re throwing a small product launch for several dozen customers, for example, you could have several goals. One is to reward customers for their loyalty, while another is to generate a certain amount of buzz for the product. Encouraging influencers related to your business can help with this.
Once you know what your event’s goals are, you can then determine how to achieve them. That will affect your overall planning, making this your essential first step.
Have A Realistic Budget
Determining a budget is vital, although it can be more complicated than you’d think. That’s because there can be a few unexpected costs associated with the event. Some things might also cost more than you’d think.
If it’s your first event, then you could be unsure how much to budget for it. Getting a rough figure can be relatively easy, especially if your business already has a relationship with certain suppliers.
Once you have a rough figure, it’s worth adding an extra 10% on. That will give you a little wiggle room if costs add up faster than you thought. If you don’t end up spending it, then you can see it as savings.
You shouldn’t go too cheap with food and beverages, however. These can be integral to your event’s success, making them some of the more important things to spend money on. It’s always wise to call a few vendors and compare prices and level of service. For example, Durham Catering, who offer corporate event catering County Durham, has been in business for many years and could be a starting point to do your price/service comparison.
Know Your Audience
You’ll need to know who will be attending the event. Will it be your company’s managers, executives, and other employees? Or will it be influencers and potential customers for your company? You’ll need to plan your event differently depending on the answer.
Different groups will have different needs and desires for an event. Knowing what these are will let you cater to them. Your goals for the event will play a role in this, so you’ll need this information to plan your corporate event properly.
Choose A Theme & Format
Once you’ve determined who your audience is and what your goals are, you’ll need to pick a theme, topic, or message to base your event around. You can then use this to plan the event’s format.
If attendees will be your company’s management and employees, for instance, and you’re celebrating a milestone, then a dinner might be recommended. Follow this with a presentation celebrating the accomplishment and how the business got there would also be needed.
Other elements you could incorporate into a format, depending on your audience and goals, include guest speakers. For example, you could hire a sports star from a reputable agency to speak at your event, have panels, conduct question-and-answer sessions, and more.
Pick The Right Location
Once you know how many people should be attending and what kind of theme you want, you’ll need to figure out where the event will occur. In some cases, this could be obvious. In others, however, it could be much more difficult.
After all, it’s one thing to know what corporate and private event space in Kansas City, MO, or anywhere else might be big enough. It’s quite another to know whether or not it’s available and in your budget. You’ll need to put research into finding the right place for a specific event.
It could be easy to pick a place that you’ve heard good things about. If you haven’t visited and spoken with the premises’ owners, then you won’t know whether or not it’s right for you. There are multiple factors you should consider.
Is it close enough for people to attend? Is it large enough for your potential attendance? Will the location take care of food, or will you have to? Know the answers to all of these, among other relevant questions, before booking a location.
Plan The Day’s Logistics
There will be a multitude of logistics to manage on the day of the event. From food and drinks to the workers required to staff the event, every detail requires careful coordination. It’s essential to determine whether the venue provides catering services; if not, arrangements must be made with external suppliers. Moreover, transportation needs should not be overlooked, regardless of the event’s location, whether it’s in New York, Ottawa, or Los Angeles. Guests need convenient transportation options to reach the venue smoothly. Ensure you select a city with robust transportation infrastructure. For instance, if the event is in Ottawa, securing Ottawa bus rental services will facilitate seamless transportation for guests to and from the venue.
The same can be said for photographers, florists, audio-visual engineers, and your entertainment too! Getting plans for travel in place for the day and ensuring that they’re able to get to the venue comfortably is essential. The last thing you need at the last minute is a supplier having to drop out because they can’t get there with their equipment easily.
Promote The Event
If people don’t know about your event, then they naturally wouldn’t attend. As such, it’s time to start promoting it. That’s worth starting as early as possible. There can be multiple ways of going about this, including social media and email.
What one works best, however, will depend on your potential audience. That makes it important to plan out your marketing strategy for this ahead of time. In some cases, personalized postcards can be a recommended option, although this wouldn’t be optimal for time-sensitive responses.
Email, however, may be the best option. Designing an attractive email will not only make the event appealing, but encourages a quick response.
Analyze Where You Could Have Done Better
Once you’re done promoting the event, it’s time to actually have it. Should you have planned everything right, then everything should go smoothly. Afterward, you’ll need to look back and analyze how it went. Could things have been done better? Did anything go wrong? Did anything go wrong? Did I hire a wohler audio monitor to keep sound quality control?
Determining these and knowing how to avoid them in the future will make sure that they’re not duplicated in other events. You can do a lot of this by getting feedback from everybody who attended.
While this could be done on the day, you can also choose to email them in the following days. That lets them enjoy the event itself without putting them under pressure when being asked for feedback.
Wrapping Up
If it’s the first time you’ve thrown a corporate event, then you could find yourself making mistakes. Following each of the above steps should make sure that these are minimal and the day goes as smoothly as possible.
You should see each event you throw as a learning experience. If you make mistakes with your first, then you’ll know to avoid them in the future. As long as you can plan effectively and learn from mistakes, then your events should keep getting better and better.