How to Plan a Corporate Event? Everything You Should Know
Company event planning can be a difficult process, especially when you’re not sure how to go about it. Corporate event planning involves various parties, hence it is essential to know what it takes to plan a successful corporate event. Here’s everything you need to know about company event planning.
What is a Corporate Event?
Corporate events are basically an event hosted, organised, and sponsored by a company for their employees, clients, stakeholders, and board members, to name a few.
A company event however is more casual and mainly held to encourage team building and boost relationships among each other.
Types of Corporate Events
There are various types of company events. Below, we listed the common ones most companies or businesses tend to host.
1. Conferences or Seminars
The main reason why conferences and seminars are being held is to provide value or information regarding a particular subject or industry.
Seminars are slightly different than conferences because they are more focused on educating the audience whereas conferences are more on sharing information with each other and networking.
In terms of timing, seminars can last about half a day or simply just a single day. Conferences are usually held for longer – it can go on for days, hence why it’s usually held in hotels as well so some guests can stay in the hotel rooms.
2. Trade shows or Expos / Exhibitions
Trade shows and exhibitions are where various companies or businesses rent a spot in an event space to promote their services or products. There will be a large audience who will attend these types of corporate events, including key industry leaders.
3. Team-building Events
As the name suggests, this involves corporate team building activities that boost employee satisfaction as well as achieve the goal of the company. These corporate event activities provide a chance for employees to build a better relationship with each other.
4. Company Parties
Company parties are usually held to celebrate special occasions such as the company’s anniversaries or birthdays. This type of company event planning doesn’t require a lot of work because it’s more casual.
5. Product Launch
If your company just recently formed a new product, it’s better to build up excitement around the product once it gets released. Usually, this type of company event planning involves the members of the media, the employees of the company, as well as existing customers.
Tips For Successful Corporate Event Planning
1. Allocate a certain budget
When it comes to company event planning, the budget makes a whole lot of difference when choosing every aspect of the event such as food, entertainment, venue, and so on.
Before planning anything else, you should decide what’s the overall budget for the event. For instance, will some of the planning involve sponsorship, or perhaps the company has to fork out and fund for the full expenses?
Along the way, be sure to list down all the things needed such as suppliers and food so that you are able to plan the budget better.
2. Identify the objective of the event
Besides the budget, during the corporate event planning, you need to know what is the primary objective for hosting the event. For instance, is it purely for brand awareness, or is it to boost sales and gain potential leads?
The overall process of company event planning will be easier as every decision being made will be aligned. Hence, expectations from all parties will be met.
3. Finding A Venue For Corporate Event
The venue of the event plays an important role because first impressions always matter. Other than the main objective of the event, the budget also plays a part in choosing a venue.
If your event expects around 250 pax, you can consider places such as The Estate’s corporate event venue which allows all types of corporate event activities such as conferences, workshops, corporate team building activities, and so on.
4. Market your event
An event is nothing without attendees. Marketing should be part of your corporate event planning to get the word out there and build up some hype around it. Some of the ways to market your event would be offline or online marketing.
Examples of offline marketing include giving out brochures or pamphlets and putting up posters in major traffic places. As for online marketing, it can be through social media or email marketing.
Encouraging Attendee Engagement
No one likes corporate or company events that are boring. Without any form of engagement, the majority of the audience will not remember any information that was presented during the event. Or perhaps the event’s objective will not be met as well due to a lack of engagement.
For example, you could have a Q&A session where the audience can ask questions during the event and get an answer right away. Other than that, you can come up with various activities which require the audience to participate in order to increase the learning process.
Examples of Corporate Team Building Activities
If you’re having trouble with corporate event planning in terms of thinking about what kind of corporate team building activities to implement, here are some of the best ones.
1. Volunteer for some NGOs
Why not consider corporate team building activities which offer a good cause too? There are many NGOs who would love to get volunteers. Plan one day to volunteer at any NGOs such as pet shelters or an old folk’s home.
2. Participate in an obstacle course
You can consider a full-day activity and test your employee’s physical abilities by trying out indoor or outdoor obstacle courses that involve activities such as rock climbing or adventurous ones like flying fox.
3. Host trivia, puzzles, or quizzes
Host corporate team building activities that require the use of creative or logical thinking! Best to make it fun too, as some employees will be tired after using their brains all day at work. Usually, this means that everyone will be split into teams, enabling everyone to get to know one another on a deeper level, especially if they rarely talk to others.