How to organize a corporate event

Corporate events can play a big role in marketing efforts. It can put you on the map in your industry and help you find new and potentially lucrative business ventures. It’s also a way create a brand of your own and to have something that your business is known for.

Organizing these is always more difficult than you might think and it will take a long time to get just right, mostly through a trial and error process. Here are a few tips on how to do it:

The budget

The first thing to decide on is the budget for your event. This is also the most difficult part of the process especially when you’re doing it for the first couple of times. It’s important to stay on point with your decision about the budget and to stick to it no matter what even when you feel like expanding it.

The budget should also have a place for making mistake and for unexpected expenses. These will come up no matter what and you need to have at least some wiggle room to cover them. You’ll mostly need 20 percent left for this purpose alone.

The tone

These events often have a theme, but that’s less important than decide on the tone of the event, since the same theme could be approach in a variety of different tones. This is more about the overall aesthetic and knowing for whom the event is made than any details or particular features of the event.

If there are many people involved in the process of organizing the event it’s important that everyone is on the same page when it comes to how the event should look like and for whom.

A venue

The biggest expense at least made upfront and the biggest part of setting up the tone is figuring out the venue in which the event will take place. There are many considerations to take into account here, starting with the location, accessibility, and the size of the place.

Beyond that you need to make sure that the venue is suitable for the tone and the purpose you’ve envisioned for the event. IF you have a center stage the venue should accommodate that, if the event has many different sub events within it, the venue should again be made for that purpose.

Who should do it?

The big question to decide on right away is who should organize, and run your event. There are businesses out there that work on organizing and run these events and sometimes it’s best to leave the work the professionals.  This is obviosity a more expensive way to do and there are businesses who wouldn’t be able to afford it.

There are benefits to organizing a small event on your own, but this also means you’ll need to work more and to lose at least some of your time on the details of the process.

Figure out whom to invite

One of the biggest issues that you’re going to have to overcome when it comes to setting up such an event is whom to invite in the first place. That depends on the purpose of the event, how big you want it to be and what you can afford.

Have in mind that there are always two sides of this. The first is for whom the event is made and the second is who you want to meet and potently work with and therefore you want them there so that they can mingle at the event.

The event isn’t over when it’s over

The event isn’t finished when everyone goes home, at least from the point of view of the organizer. The organizer needs to have the process set up for the follow through. The follow through will help you figure out how your event was seen by those who attended and what you can improve in the future.

This process is also essential for making sure that the contacts that were made during the event actually get used and turned into a business opportunity. None of these should be left to chance and it should be a part of your plans from day one.

Conclusion

A corporate event can put your business on a map when it comes to being a leader of the industry. It’s often overlooked how much this helps in regards to marketing and how many business deals are made on such events.

Setting up an event should start with a budget and go into details about the venue you’re using as well as the tone and the purpose of the event. Once you know this you’ll know what the event needs in order to function. In the end, the event isn’t over until you get the important data on how it was received with the guests.