Events in a corporate environment are often staged to communicate company strategy, change internal company behavior, launch a product or service, motivate, train, or reward staff, or influence the external behavior of customers towards the brand.Often, corporate events bring company employees together, support broader marketing or sales initiatives, incentivize team achievements, or entertain senior leaders.
WHAT IS CORPORATE EVENT PLANNING?
Yet, corporate event planning goes beyond meeting planning. Although conferences and meetings may form the lion’s share of the workload, other events you may be asked to organize include corporate hospitality, client entertaining, conventions, exhibitions, and employee events—such as incentive travel reward programs, team building, motivational events, receptions, parties, and charity fundraising days.
Planning and executing a successful corporate event is no simple task. It’s typically a months-long process consisting of several stages and a variety of organizational steps.
Types of corporate events:
As outlined above, corporate events can range from company conferences and internal training seminars to team away days and client hospitality. When planning for any corporate event,Therefore, it’s best to assess them in terms of their size.
Micro events (known as ‘simple events’) are planned for up to 100 delegates and often include meetings or more intimate training sessions.These micro-events planning requirements may involve room booking, presentation facilities, breakout refreshments, and registration. However, referring to them as ‘simple events’ can be misleading, as an away day or hospitality for 50 senior managers can be as complicated as planning a conference for 500 attendees.
Small events are classed as between 100 and 250 delegates. They could be seminars, training days, or departmental conferences.Planners may need to manage a main stage itinerary, several breakout sessions, lunch, refreshments, audio-visual facilities, online registration, and transport.
Midsize events rely more on technology. They could be company-wide conferences for up to 1,000 delegates or leadership summits for important client customers to meet with senior leaders.
The budgetary considerations should include a branded website, pre-event communications, and an event mobile app. Delegates may require hotel accommodation and transport, which takes attendees to and from the venue. A complex multi-stream conference itinerary may require a pre- or post-event reception or evening entertainment.
Large-scale events often require enterprise technology tools to manage hotel room bookings, delegate flights, budgets, and online registration.These may be multi-day events so that you could need offsite activities, dinners, partner programs, an awards ceremony, or other complex itinerary planning.
Staffing, catering, registration, speaker, and delegate management must all be carefully planned at scale. Conventions, for example, can attract around 10,000 attendees and last a few days.
Event budget:
The budget can affect everything from venue and speakers to catering, entertainment, technology, and staffing for corporate events.Every event budget needs flexibility. Unexpected expenses are ordinary, and supplier costs are often estimates, so a budget and contingency reserve are essential.
After receiving supplier quotes, include all inventories, including venue hire, AV, food and beverage, hotel and transport, speaker fees, personnel costs, marketing, and service fees.Corporate event management software suites feature an event budget management solution for higher budgets, ensuring precise budgeting data collection, easy spending tracking, budget reports, and event ROI.
Event objective:
‘What is the event’s goal?’ It should be the first corporate event request question. Understanding important stakeholders’ deliverables can help you plan better and communicate with your supervisors.
After determining whether the event is to build brand awareness, communicate business strategy, reward and motivate, or launch a new product or service, you can set goals and metrics to track results and determine who will attend and their expectations.Clear event goals make planning, advertising, and sticking to your budget more manageable.
Event marketing:
Creating a marketing campaign around your event will increase the sense of involvement and investment among participants and stakeholders. Additionally, you may use it to provide important news and directions while knowing that your audience is already paying attention.
Teasers, emails, social media accounts, a branded website, and a mobile event app are examples of event marketing resources. You could also design and produce posters, flyers, pin badges, and other accessories to maintain the event’s prominence and excitement.Your marketing strategy should also incorporate on-site advertising, which includes banners, leaflets, brochures, signage, and other event materials.
Attendee engagement:
If a corporate event cannot generate engagement, it will impact the attendees’ ability to retain information.The human attention span has reduced significantly in this mobile-first, digital era. As a result, event planners must move away from ‘death by PowerPoint’ presentations to more innovative session formats that avoid information overload.
Top priorities should be using the right event technology tools, implementing feedback strategies like live polls, reconciling goals and expectations, and staying authentic.Plenary sessions should be designed for delegate participation. To do this, find more engaging speakers, use live polling, real-time Q&As, table discussions, and other methods of keeping engagement high and attendee attention focused.
Conference breakouts should be designed to provide targeted and truly interactive content for your audience. A typical event planning pitfall is to turn them into mini keynotes.
Coffee and lunch breaks, meanwhile, should be designed for networking. So, consider ice-breakers, buffet stations, and other free-flowing formats and activities to get people talking.A strong digital strategy will build community before and after the event. Online communities can be formed via social media platforms or by ensuring that your event app is available well in advance and includes built-in social features.
The week before your event is crucial for building attendee engagement for your event.To keep the energy and excitement going, create a unique countdown through emails or website updates, with engaging content such as quiz contests with attractive awards, a preview of the main keynote speakers, or other possibilities.
Final thoughts
Now You Know how to get the best out of an event and plan the best Corporate event. Team up with good vibes event management for the best venue and build the best strategies for your next corporate event.
28/02/2025