Tips for Planning and Hosting the Perfect Business Event
Planning a business event takes a lot of work. But it’s well worth the effort!
Business events are great for reaching your target audience, networking with other business leaders, spreading brand awareness, and fostering creativity among your employees.
At the very least, events are great opportunities to show your team members that you value all their hard work!
Whether you’re planning a staff appreciation event, trade show, industry-specific seminar, conference, or product launch, check out the following tips from Bloc to ensure everything is perfect!
1. Appeal to your audience
2. Book a venue
3. Prepare handouts and workbooks
4. Include your branding
5. Hire a great catering company
6. Promote your event
7. Collaborate with other businesses
1. Appeal to your audience
First, think about who is attending your event. Is this for your staff?
Or are you trying to attract your target customers and spread brand awareness in your community?
Once you know who is attending your event, you’ll be able to make decisions that will appeal to your target audience.
For example, if you’re trying to drum up customers for your furniture-selling business, you could host a home furnishing and decoration workshop.
If you want to encourage your staff to collaborate more effectively at work, you could plan a team-building event.
Importantly, think about the values of your attendees. EventMobi explains that you can engage younger demographics by using technology before, during, and after your event.
For example, you could incorporate technology into your event registration process and deliver event-related schedules, workbooks, and other handouts via apps rather than printing out physical copies.
2. Book a venue
One of the first things you need to do is book a venue.
The earlier you book your venue, the better.
In fact, many event planners recommend booking a venue several months to a whole year in advance.
Why?
This gives you plenty of time to find a great venue in your budget, so you can keep expenses under control.
Plus, you’ll be able to get started with planning all the other elements of your event without the time crunch of a fast-approaching deadline.
You have several event venue types to choose from.
Make sure your venue matches the overall theme or purpose of your event.
For example, renting a warehouse may be great for a trendy office party, but not so much for a professional conference. Hotels with large conference halls are ideal if you’re expecting guests from out of town.
Do some research and look for venue options that make the most sense for your event.
3. Prepare handouts and workbooks
To keep your event engaging, consider preparing handouts to give to your attendees.
You can hand out information packets, workbooks, how-to guides, or any other informative documents that will help your guests follow along with speakers or remember your business after the event.
And if you want to save paper, you can share your handouts with guests via email.
PDFs are best for document sharing. When you need to add pages to PDF files, look for free online software to get the job done.
You can also use these online tools to reorder, delete, or rotate pages in your PDF.
4. Include your branding
Creating branding material for your event will ensure everyone remembers your business when they go home at the end of the day.
You can create all kinds of fun branding materials, both to display at your event and to hand out to guests.
For example, Color Reflections suggests branded banners, cupcakes, light projections, wrist bands, and free swag.
You could even create a media wall at your event, showcasing posts featuring your business and encouraging attendees to tag your business in their own posts.
5. Hire a great catering company
Food is an important element of your event.
Not only is food a great ice breaker among strangers who may be meeting at an event, but great food will keep your guests talking about your event long after it’s over.
You can also use food to set the mood for your event.
Burgers and fries, for example, set a casual and relaxed atmosphere.
A fancy buffet featuring exotic appetizers, on the other hand, will make your event feel more formal.
To ensure the food at your event meets your expectations, do some food tastings with your caterer.
Street Directory suggests talking to your caterer about your cuisine preferences, presentation ideas, and any guest dietary restrictions they will need to keep in mind.
Be sure to share your honest opinions with the caterer.
They want your feedback so they can ensure you will be happy with the final product!
6. Promote your event
If you want guests to show up at your business event, you must promote it!
While promoting your event to staff might be easy, getting the word out to customers is a little more challenging.
Try offering early bird registrations to gauge your guests’ interest in advance so you can determine which marketing approaches you will need to take in order to get more signups.
Digital marketing is key for advertising events, especially if you’re targeting younger demographics.
If you have an email list, use it to get in touch with customers about your event.
Direct people to a specific landing page about the event so those who are interested can easily find the information they need.
7. Collaborate with other businesses
If you want to reach an even wider audience, consider teaming up with other businesses to collaborate on one big event.
This is a great opportunity to boost your brand awareness.
At the same time, teaming up means your business gets to split the cost of the event with other companies.
It’s a win-win!
Try to find businesses that complement your own.
For example, if you run a local restaurant, teaming up with a local craft brewery is a great way to add value to your event without creating competition for yourself.
Business events are great for forging professional relationships, keeping your employees engaged, and enhancing brand awareness.
Start planning your event far in advance to ensure everything goes off without a hitch.
Keep in mind that you can always hire an event planner if you need help putting all the pieces together.
If you’re hosting an event for the public, advertise your event on Bloc, an app that connects events with locals looking for entertainment.
Check out our website to learn more about advertising on Bloc!
