This Is How to Effectively Plan a Corporate Event

Did you know 80% of marketers believe that events are critical to a company’s success? 

If you work for a corporation, holding an event can be a great way to engage existing and potential clients. Yet, if you’ve never planned a corporate event, you may not know where to begin. 

Keep reading, and you’ll learn exactly how to plan an event that your guests will talk about for years to come. If you’re looking for a new way to engage your audience, you’ll soon discover why events can be a brilliant option. 

Let’s begin!

Finding a Venue

Finding a suitable venue for your corporate event is probably one of the hardest parts of this task. 

To begin with, you need to figure out what your estimated guest numbers will be. Once you know that information, you then know how big your venue will need to be.

When choosing a venue, you also want to think about travel arrangements. For instance, if you pick a venue that’s next to a major highway, it will likely be a lot easier for people to reach the event. 

Additionally, if people will be flying in from other states, you may want to choose a venue that’s near an airport. You might also want to ensure there are plenty of hotels next to your chosen venue. 

Note that if you choose a venue in a ‘good’ area, you will likely pay a premium price. Yet, it’s often worth paying this price, as choosing a good area will make it more likely that your event will attract lots of people.  

That said, there’s no harm in trying to negotiate the price when talking to the management team of a particular venue. After all, they will want your business, and so if you’re planning a big event, they will likely budge a little bit. 

If you want to add some weight to your negotiations, you may want to get multiple quotes. In doing so, you can then mention these quotes when negotiating with a given venue.

If you do this, a particular venue might drop their prices, just so that they can be competitive.

Planning Your Event

You need to have a thorough understanding of what will happen during each hour of your event. In doing so, you can make sure your event runs smoothly, thereby ensuring that attendees have a good time. 

Plus, if you have this information, you can give it to attendees when they arrive. 

If there are going to be any ‘quiet’ periods during the event, you may want to come up with something that people can do during that time. 

For instance, if there is a period where there are no speakers, you might want to dedicate that time to networking. Following this, you might tell people to go to a certain area during this time, so that everyone can network. 

You can write all this information down on paper, though doing so can be cumbersome if your event is complex. 

Thus, to make things easier, you may want to invest in corporate event management software.

Such software will provide you with a centralized location for all the data associated with your event. This will then make it easier for you to manage all the moving parts associated with your event. 

Marketing Your Event

Marketing your event can be a challenge, but it’s something you need to focus on, or else nobody will turn up. 

Sending an email to your existing customer base is one of the best ways you can start marketing your event. If you invest in some email marketing software, such as Mailchimp, it’s relatively easy to send marketing messages in bulk. 

If there’s a price associated with attending your event, make sure you mention this in the email. Additionally, if there’s a limit on the number of people that a given person can bring along, you also need to mention this. 

If you want to provide people with a little more context, you may want to create a web page dedicated to the event. 

This webpage can be part of your existing website, and it should mention the following: 

• The date of the event
• The location
• The purpose of the event
• The price
• Local hotels and airports
• Potential guest speakers

By listing this information, it will be a lot easier for people to figure out if the event is right for them. Marketing your event also becomes easier, as you can now just direct people to this webpage.

Amplify Your Marketing With Ads

Once you’ve sent out an email to your existing audience, you need to think about how you can attract people that aren’t aware of you.

One approach here is to mention the event on your company LinkedIn page. You might ask employees to post the event on their LinkedIn timelines as well. 

If you want to amplify your marketing, you may also want to consider running some LinkedIn Ads. So, you might create a LinkedIn Ad campaign that targets high-level people within your industry. 

If you don’t know how to do this, consider reading some of the documentation that LinkedIn offers. 

In doing so, you might also come across some case studies that explain how other companies promoted events with LinkedIn. 

If you want some further advice, there’s also the option of speaking to the ad team at LinkedIn. Provided you give them plenty of information about your goals, they should be able to create a campaign that’ll help you get results. 

Do You Know How to Plan an Effective Corporate Event? 

Planning a corporate event is not easy, but tackling this challenge is a lot easier if you break the task down. 

If you want to get things right, you may want to consider attending a few events before hosting your own. You can also use custom event rental software to help you track all the ins and outs easier.

If you do this, you will be able to identify the difference between a good and a bad event. You can then use this knowledge when planning your own event, thereby increasing your odds of success. 

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