Corporate Event Planning Tips for Beginners

Sometimes spending money on hiring a professional event planner will deplete your budget and take away money that could be spent on further elevating the event itself like the food, or the entertainment. It is important to remember that those attending will not remember whether or not you hired a professional event planner. They will remember the quality, enjoyment, and professionalism of the event.

With that said, if you find yourself planning an event on a tight budget, below is a few tips for throwing a successful corporate event without the help of a professional event planner.

Determine Your Budget First

Like most things in day to day business life, money plays a huge role in the event planning process. Before ever deciding or thinking about what to include you must first figure out your budget. It will be the deciding factor in most all event decisions and activities. Also, being mindful of your budget from the start can make event planning go much smoother. Figuring out a budget will help to eliminate the need for a lot of changes and revisions to the original plan. It is important to remember that a low budget does not translate to a poor event. Figuring out a budget is only meant to help streamline the process and aid you in putting the event together as a whole.

Use Event Planning Software

This process can be further streamlined with the use of downloadable software, iPhone applications, iPad applications, and online membership websites.

The most popular software for managing the entire event process is a software called “Eventbrite“. It allows you to create an event page, manage attendee check-ins/registrations, and basically everything else you can imagine.

If you are in need of a more “Desktop Application” type tool, you can also check out EventPro Planner Software, which assists with the administrative side of planning and managing an event that can be installed on a PC or Server like any other application.

You can also search a huge selection of apps to find something that may be better targeted towards your needs. Each corporate event is different and a specialized app may be of better help to your specific needs.

The Planning Basics

The budget is the first thing to get in line as mentioned. Event planning software can help take care of a lot of the rest. However, there are still several things that you need to 100% take upon yourself. Everything can not be streamlined with the help of software/apps. These things include the food/catering, cosmetics, venue location, and presentation of pertinent business endeavors.

Use Slideshows

Slideshows are a must for the business meeting portion of the event. All professional corporate event planning companies recommend the use of slideshows for a reason. They are a sleek way to present the business portion of the event in a quick, summarized, and attention-grabbing manner. If your event includes a business message that must be conveyed in your corporate event, it is strongly recommended to compress all business-info into one straight-to-the-point PowerPoint presentation which can be presented in the form of a slideshow. This is to help not to BORE your audience, as if they are bored… They are not listening….

Great Food Is A Must!

Nothing screams unprofessionalism louder at an event than poor food and catering. Having an event properly catered should be at the top of the priority list for any type of corporate event. People love to eat, as simple as it sounds, it is 100% true.Good food is something that no one who attends will forget. Great food will also increase the attendance and popularity of your future corporate events.In order to make this come to life, a few key considerations have to be taken into account.

The first key consideration to take into account is the region in which you are hosting this event. Think about the regional foods that are popular. Then do some research to see what companies cater events in that regional style. Choose 3-4 different main foods, to get a good mix of food that is sure to please every last person at the event. You can even use Facebook Polls to get an idea of your attendees tastes. Be sure to include regional favorites as well as a few “comfort foods” to suit different people.

Also, the food portion can be spruced up to a highly entertaining degree. Below are some cool food accessories that can make your corporate event highly memorable.

Some Ideas for Cool Food Accessories

- Drink Pouring Ice Sculpture
- Fondue Fountain
- Flower Shaped Fruit

All of these food accessories can be obtained at low cost and will be worth every penny in the end both in taste, and entertainment. Speaking of entertainment, it is also a crucial part of the event planning process.

Provide Entertainment

Entertainment is something that can NOT be left out. Several corporate event planning guides list this as optional, but if you want to throw a 5-Star event then this is mandatory. This will undoubtedly be every attendees favorite part if properly orchestrated and planned out based the attendees.Great entertainment will make a corporate event one that people will never forget, but does not have to break the bank. Depending on the personalities of the people who will be attending you will want to pick something you think will appeal to a large percentage of attendees.Some common forms of entertainment are the hiring of musical bands popular to your particular region, comedians, celebrity impersonators, DJs, magicians and much more.

Those are just a few of the ideas for entertainment at a corporate event. You may pick one of those, or something completely different, or a mix of the suggested options. This decision ultimately depends on the personality of your attendees, and your events theme.

Remember, the entertainment does not just have to be at a specified time, use entertainment to create an atmosphere, and even try to integrate the entertainment with the more “boring” parts of your event, to keep everyone’s attention at MAXIMUM!

Pick an Appropriate Venue

This is the most important part of successful corporate event planning. You must pick a venue that is suitable for every segment that is planned on event day. For example, if you were throwing a corporate event for a the launch of a new golf club you would want to choose a golf course as the venue in order to see the product in action rather than an auditorium. Venue is completely dependent on the genre of the business and the purpose of the corporate event.

Theme

The Theme of a corporate event should be in line with the goals of the event overall. The Theme is what will make the first impressions which are of course very important. It is recommended to go with a theme that compliments the business genre.

There are many other details that go into planning a successful corporate event but this is a few key steps on your way! Follow these above steps, and use the tools provided, and you will be on your way to planning your successful corporate event!

For more event planning and entertainment resources from David Thomas and Shows In A Box Click Here.

2 Responses to Corporate Event Planning Tips for Beginners

Leonie says:

April 10, 2013 at 12:04 am

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as long as I provide credit and sources returning to
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- David Thomas says:
  
  April 10, 2013 at 6:48 am
  
  Sure!

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