Hosting a corporate event is a great way to reward current customers, attract potential client, and build a buzz around your business. There are a lot of moving parts involved in pulling an event together, but the rewards are worth the work. These six tips will help make your corporate event a smash hit:
Get Your Timing Right
Timing is crucial to the success of your event. You need to consider key dates in the community that might compete with yours. Make sure you give your attendees enough time in order to plan and give yourself and your team enough time to prepare.
Define Your Scope
Will you have refreshments, entertainment, workshops, or speakers? Scale the event’s scope to your level of experience. If you’ve never planned an event before, you should try hosting a small one-hour workshop at your office before planning a day-long event. The St. Elias Centre can handle corporate events, large and small.
Define Roles
Who will be in charge of the event? You need one person to take ownership and manage all the details, then others to help with the rest of the moving parts. Make responsibilities clear-cut so you don’t end up without chairs at your conference or no speaker in the second hour. Consider how much manpower you’ll need at the event itself, what could possibly go wrong, and what you’ll need to have on-hand to handle issues that arise.
Get the Word Out Digitally
Use social media to get your target audience excited about the event. You can tease the event well in advance, post pictures of your preparations, and invite customers to the event through social sites. Keep the social media energy high during the event by having an employee live tweet and post pictures and video from the event as it’s going on.
Develop Promotions
Market yourself or your business to potential clients when they’re at your event. You can use business cards, brochures, discount coupons, gift cards, or even product giveaways and contests. Be sure to capture attendees’ contact information by having them put their business cards in a fishbowl for a prize drawing. The St. Elias Centre can help you with your promotional needs at your corporate events.
Stay Positive
On the day of the event, be ready to accept that you probably haven’t planned for every possibility. If you stay positive, keep your sense of humour and make your customers feel welcome and happy they came, it won’t matter so much that something went wrong.
Follow these tips, and your corporate event is sure to be a success.