Hosting events is an excellent way of fostering community in the corporate arena. It provides a unique platform for interaction among brands and customers. Educating industry professionals and thus giving them the means to advance their careers is another crucial aspect of corporate events. This is getting more prevalent nowadays as companies are breaking away from the “speech rich” events and inclining towards extensive value delivery via innovation and interaction on how to plan a corporate event.
The importance of a corporate event planning checklist is beyond description. Let’s know first how it organises corporate event planning ideas.
Why event planning checklist matters
It is optional for event planning to be a stressful and daunting process. It’s possible to have fun and experience excitement when arranging an event if you know how to make it simple. Creating an event planning checklist is unquestionably the best thing you can do to ensure your event is well prepared. A well-thought-out checklist will guarantee that you remain focused, organised, and on target. Some of the most significant justifications are as follows:
Corporate event planning checklist clears mind
When organising an event, there are a lot of things to consider. You will quickly get overburdened if you attempt to hold all of your thoughts, ideas, and duties in your brain. You can get everything out of your thoughts and onto paper by making a thorough and organised checklist.
When making your checklist, you should start by brainstorming and writing down any idea that occurs to you. Once this is finished, you may organise and arrange your jobs. A checklist that lists all of your chores in ascending priority is ideal.
Allows to organise all contacts
Communication with your event connections should be an item on your checklist. Every contact you have will be included in your checklist if properly organised. You won’t have to look for your contact information or worry about whether you’ve been in touch with everyone to make things final. Your checklist will include everything; you may cross it off after you finish each item.
Helps keep track of finance
A fantastic approach to keeping track of how much money you spend when organising your event is to include finances on your checklist. You may create a checklist that contains financial projections or precise figures. You may indicate a payment as complete by checking the box next to it. Since everything is noted and organised on a separate accounting sheet, you can quickly move all costs from the checklist to the sheet.
Helps employees
A checklist will be of great assistance to any staff or volunteers who are helping you arrange the event. They will be fully aware of their duties and the most critical tasks. An intelligent method to make sure everyone is aware of when tasks have been finished is to create a group checklist that everyone can view. You can make a group checklist by hand or with a computer program. The only thing that matters is that you and your assistants can communicate with one another and are on the same page.
Allows event manager to enjoy
You can relax knowing your event will be fantastic after creating and using an excellent checklist. You can enjoy your event Without worrying about forgetting to take care of something. Because everything will be handled, your event will go off without a hitch, and the attendees can enjoy themselves. A checklist is invaluable for giving you peace of mind.
Corporate event planning checklist
Planning events is one of the biggest challenges for an event manager. It might drive you “I am going to pull all my hair out” crazy.
Thus, this checklist has been prepared to help you avoid such circumstances and know how to plan a corporate event professionally and smoothly.
Know something before you dive into it and copy it to your word processor.
This is a template. This means it may require slight modification depending on the sort of event that you intend to plan.
So here is the checklist.
9-12 months before the event
Event goal and objective
Please clearly write down the objective behind hosting the event and what you intend to achieve from it on your event planner. This would help spearhead your and your team’s activities throughout the planning stage.
Audience size
Sit down with your team as well as the marketing team. Share the objectives of this event with everyone. Take inputs from everyone regarding the sort of marketing and lead collection goal and any other business objectives you wish to achieve through this event.
Then, decide on an audience size that would fulfil those objectives.
Venue
Most events have a long list of clients booked months before their respective events. Thus, it is highly beneficial that you do the same.
When booking the venue, please pay attention to the attached services. These include but are not necessarily limited to decoration, AV technology, food and beverage, security, etc.
The best choice would be a venue that can house 50-100 more persons than your audience size. Furthermore, it should be capable of providing as many of the services mentioned above with a flawless finish.
This way, the venue authority would charge you an overall fee, which would be much higher if you have to arrange those services from individual companies.
Speakers
The industry maestros you would invite to speak at your event are just as busy as you if you need more. So, it would be wise to contact way ahead of the event. This would improve your chances of securing them for your event before your rivals.
One thing to do before contacting guest speakers is to research them thoroughly. Get as much information about them as possible from both online and offline resources. This time-intensive step would help you choose the speaker best suited for your event objectives.
Food and Beverage
This is one of the crucial aspects of your event. This can incline valuable and rich clients towards your company for future business.
A suitably crafted menu and appropriate drinks also help project a sophisticated image of your company. That, coupled with extensive value and info delivery through your event, can convince those industry giants you have been trying to add to your client list.
Budget
Now that you have decided upon the most significant and money-extensive aspects of your event, you can ballpark your event budget within a realistic and suitable budget.
Do allow some flexibility when deciding this. Since you might need to make last-minute changes, you should have enough wiggle room to cover for that.
Event Date
Setting the event date this early would help you plan everything promptly. This would also motivate you and your team to put in the best effort in a well-synched fashion.
Security and Attendees
Unless you want your attendees to be exposed to unpleasant (and harmful situations), this should be taken very seriously. These situations can include harassment, breach of privacy, etc.
Talk to your venue authority clearly regarding these issues. If you sense their security team needs to be improved, get this service from a specialized company. Remember. A smooth and rich experience from your event would go a long way for you, your company, and your client!
9 months before the event
Securing sponsors
Audience research
Theme, format and aura
Entertainment
Securing Sponsors
Are there brands that would like to have exposure to your attendees in exchange for monetary compensation or service? Just like your speakers, research a list of suitable sponsors in advance. Ensure their business objective aligns with yours and they have a positive image in the industry with an adequate standard of corporate social responsibility.
If you are interested, you can take a quick look at 10 Creative Ways to Provide Value to Event Sponsors
Audience research
Get as much data as you can on your probable audience. It must include demographics, range of positions in the industry, challenges they are facing, plans, etc.
To gather these data, it is highly recommended to have a carefully formed questionnaire. This would also act as a means of advertising your event.
Another part of this research is checking each attendee out as they register for your event, especially for prior offences and felonies. If issues like these arise, verify them by contacting the proper authorities. If the risk seems too high, nullify his/her registration. Do inform that person with an appropriate excuse.
Theme, format and aura
A driving theme for your event would facilitate your marketing strategy and strongly impact your attendees.
This could be best practices in the industry, emerging trends, areas of development, etc.
Along with the event theme, deciding which format you would host your event is essential. Would it be a daylong event or last for a few hours? Would it be more conference-like with limited attendee interaction, or would it require enhanced participation from all?
Deciding upon this would give you enough time to focus on all other details.
Aura involves the decoration at your event venue. This decoration should enhance the visual perception to the maximum while perfectly aligning with your event objective and attendees’ expectations.
Entertainment
Hour-long or day-long series of industry-relevant activities would leave your attendees bored. To mitigate this hindrance, it is paramount that you arrange appropriate entertainment for them.
This can include stand-up comedians who specialize in contemporary issues with high engagement. Or go for a dance performance with music that falls in the preference range of your audience.
After choosing the form of entertainment and professional, have a well-rounded contract in place. This would insulate you from any unpleasant scenarios down the line.
6 months before the event
Custom website landing page
Promotion plan
Content creation for promotion
Performance measurement metrics
Invitations to VIP guests
Ticket pricing
Custom Website Landing Page
This is the spokesperson for your event. Thus, every small detail of your event landing page should be data-based to ensure maximum return on investment.
Promotion plan
Sit with your or your client’s marketing team. Have multiple sessions with them planned? Discuss the exact method of how you intend to promote your event to the relevant people in the most innovative of ways.
Content Creation for Promotion
This comes hand-in-hand with your promotion plan. Are your promotions going to be video intensive? Or would you go for an image and text-based format?
Your in-house content team should coordinate closely with the marketing teams involved and follow an agile and continuous feedback-based methodology.
Performance Measurement Metrics
Hosting an event is not the end of the story. You have to decide upon the parameters that would indicate if your event was a success or a failure.
Metrics would depend on the respective industry and event type. Some suitable ones could be attendee turnover, lead generation, collaboration with brands of particular market representation, the monetary value of the connections established, etc.
Invitations to VIP guests
There would, of course, be those persons whose attendance you would sacrifice your family for (don’t take it literally). Have elegantly designed invitation cards that go well with your event theme.
Ticket Pricing
At this planning stage, you are in an excellent position to fix your event ticket price. Like all other aspects discussed above, it should be based on authentic data.
How much do similar events cost? What value are you delivering to your attendees? How many sponsors have you managed to secure? What benefits are you offering them? What would be unique takeaways for your attendees? Write these down clearly on a large whiteboard when deciding the ticket price.
2-3 months before the event
Checking for RSVPs from your invited guests
Audiovisual and any other relevant technology
Acute scheduling
Paid promotion on search engine and social media
Checking for RSVPs from your invited guests
Check the RSVPs you have been sent. Put them in a separate Excel file that only a few select people can access. You don’t want your guest list to be leaked in any way before the event. If any guests have yet to forward their RSVP, have your team contact them to know its status.
If your venue authority provides these services, then that is fantastic. If they don’t, hire a company specializing in this area. Have your tech team set these up in a way that (especially the virtual reality component) enhances the sensory perception of your event.
Acute scheduling
Every part of your event should be on your schedule along with their projected duration. It should also include any contingencies in case there are any mishaps.
Paid promotion on search engine and social media
Now that all the contents are prepared for promotion, it is time to push them out to the targeted people. Search engines like Google Bing and social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram would be fantastic media for this purpose.
Your audience research determines where your potential attendees spend the most time.
The information would let you execute effective marketing of your event.
2-3 weeks before the event
Last-minute promotion with “Fear-Of-Missing-Out” element
Last-minute check of every detail
Have speech scripts ready
In-event responsibilities distribution and rehearsal
Last-minute promotion with “Fear-Of-Missing-Out” element
Nothing motivates a person to act more than this fear (or any fear). If you have seats to fill at this planning stage, put this strategy in play.
Last-minute check of every detail
Speakers, VIP guests, attendees, food and beverage supply, necessary backup arrangements, and every other aspect of your event must receive a thorough check from you and your team. If everything goes well, you guys will enjoy the fruit! And vice versa as well!
Have speech scripts ready
You may not need to be reminded about this, but this is one of the things that have the potential to go wrong.
Have your content writers thoroughly review every word. Have those readout and ensure those have the intended impression. These speeches should be well-suited for their purpose and position in the event.
The speech at the beginning and the one in the middle must have a different tone and length.
When writing these, the audience’s mood at that time of the event must be considered.
In-event responsibilities distribution and rehearsal
There would be a whole host of responsibilities that need to be attended to during your event. As the event planner, it is paramount that you have a detailed list of every one of them with proper categorization. Then, assign each one of these to the appropriate teams.
Along with distribution, rehearsing your teams in smoothly carrying out each responsibility is as important as hosting the event itself! While rehearsing, you will likely come up with scenarios you did not anticipate. Thus, rehearsal would enable you to make your event planning well-rounded and cater to all possible needs of the attendees.
An event planning checklist ensures clear organization, aids in keeping track of contacts, helps manage finances, assists staff, and allows event managers to relax and enjoy the event.
An event planning checklist clears your mind by getting ideas onto paper and prioritising tasks, preventing overwhelm during event preparation.
You can easily access contact information by communicating with event connections on the checklist, ensuring you’re in touch with everyone and finalizing arrangements.
An event planning checklist helps track expenses by incorporating financial projections or actual figures, allowing you to mark payments as complete and transfer costs to a separate accounting sheet.
An event planning checklist aids staff and volunteers by outlining tasks clearly, ensuring they understand their responsibilities, and promoting effective communication within the team.
Last words
There is a saying among soldiers. The harder you train, the easier you fight. The same can be said about the corporate event planning checklist as well. The more thorough your plan is, the more you and your attendees will enjoy the event.
This only emphasizes how long you must be prepared to make your event an ultra-success! So, brace yourself, plan carefully, and make sure you enjoy the process thoroughly!
Aren’t you interested in knowing corporate event ideas now? Check out twenty of our favourite corporate event ideas for you to enjoy alongside your staff.
