Events hosted by your business can be an efficient way to serve multiple purposes. Among these purposes could be introducing new products/services, lead generation, customer or employee appreciation, networking or improving your overall presence within your community. Regardless of your reason and motivation, follow these tips to make your even memorable and successful.
  1. Set Your Purpose/Goals Seems obvious, but there is no other way to start planning and prepping for an event than to have your main purpose and goals in mind. This will help you decide on details. You should also have a process in place to measure the goals set by you to determine success.
  2. Set Your Target Market Regardless if you are trying to reach new or an existing audience, make sure and have guidelines in place that help you narrow down who would be the most interested in your event. Targeting the correct people will increase the success of your event goals. Guidelines for your audience could include things such as business or personal interests, demographics and geographical location.
  3. Determine The Best Day And Or Time This will be easier to determine once you have your target audience pinned down. Your audience should have enough in common that you can easily determine what would work best for the majority. Once you have your market, you could also continue to do a bit of market research via surveys or social media polls to help narrow down more details as well.
  4. Logistics Now that you have a rough idea on the basics, you can start to plan out the finer details such as budget, food, drinks, entertainment and how you will spread the word. Other things to consider is if you will need extra help, if an RSVP will be required, how you will gather your guests information.
  5. Other Vendors Sometimes including other vendors or businesses can greatly increase the success and outcome of an event. While you still want to make sure your goals are at top of importance, it’s been proven that extra motivation or learning about more than one thing will increase the attendance and interest in an event. Try to mix it up as far as subjects as well, if your topic or goals are more business oriented, try to partner with someone who offers something a bit more social or laid back.
  6. Follow Up Now that the actual event details are taken care of, you will want to think about how you will determine success and if you had the outcome you had hoped for. This will be determined tremendously based on goals. Some goals that are pretty easy to track are sales, increase in following and sign ups for services or newsletters/information. For other areas, it might not be as simple as analytical tracking. If your goal is more to make an impact or gain recognition, this will take more follow up. Gathering information from your audience and sending follow up emails or surveys are a great way to gain insight in to all goals regardless of what they are.
Have you planned or held a business event before? We would love to hear about your trials, errors and successes in the comments!