How To Plan A Small Business Event

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Business events can have a great impact on advertising, especially for a small company. These events are a chance to present your company to the industry and to the world, but also to set up long-term business relationships. It is where most partnerships are started and the company event itself is what seals the deal for the most part. 

It is not inexpensive to set up such an event, but there are ways you could cut costs and still keep all the impact that you have planned to make. 

The Objective 

The first question to ask yourself is what the goal of the event is. Once you know that, all other parts of managing an event will fall into place. For instance, if you plan to use the event to establish your business within the industry or within the area, the event will have to focus on the general audience and on presenting your business in a favorable light. However, if the goal is to establish business partnerships, it can be smaller and less advertised. 

Of course, it’s possible for the event to establish more than one of these goals at once, but that is something to plan for as well. 

A Budget 

Organizing an event means you need to worry about a lot of moving parts at once and have a contingency plan if something goes wrong (and something always will). All of that means you’ll need to set up a budget beforehand and do whatever you can to stick to it. 

It’s impossible to plan a corporate event with such precision that you know exactly how much you’ll need to spend, so it’s best to leave out at least 10 percent of your budget for unforeseen expenses. 

Venue 

Choosing the venue is going to set the tone for the event, both in terms of its aesthetic and its organization. The venue needs to be close enough that you can easily organize carfare for your guests and get a steady supply of food and drinks. However, it should also be a bit outside of commotion that’s usually distracting in a busy area. 

The venue should also accommodate your needs in terms of space, needed appliances and gadgets, as well as theatrics if you plan to set up a stage and have a few speakers or a Q&A at the end. 

You can rent an event space online using websites like getspaces.com or various other sites out there. Compare prices and qualities before booking biz venues.

Refreshments 

Regardless of how formal and structured the event is going to be, you’ll need to leave out some time for the guests to mingle and talk to each other freely. Start by setting up a corporate alcohol delivery from Sydney and finding a caterer that will suit everyone’s dietary needs. 

These are there to provide a comfortable and easy-going atmosphere for the guests to talk and establish future business relationships. It’s rather important for this part of the organization to be as smooth as possible because a lack of refreshments or a bad delivery will be noticed if not commented on. 

Marketing 

The event itself is a marketing tool since it will be the reason your business is talked about. However, the event also needs to be advertised if you want to achieve this effect. How to do it very much depends on for whom the event is made. 

If the event is just for those who are working within the industry, the marketing campaign can be small and only focused on the publications oriented towards the industry itself. However, if the goal is to establish that your business has arrived to the market; don’t hesitate to go big, it will pay off. 

Feedback 

In the end, when the event is over, your work isn’t done until you get the feedback from those who participated. This can be done in the form of a simple survey covering all the aspects of the event you have hosted. It should be brief but informative. 

You won’t get a response from everyone who came, but you don’t need to, in order to extract useful information. This feedback is there to help you make future events better and more organized. It is a survey you need to prepare based on what you know are the downsides of your events. 

Plan Your Small Business Event Right 

A business event could mean a lot for establishing a company in a new market and in a new industry. These events are there to signal that your business is open for cooperation with others working in the same field. 

The event needs to be planned for the purpose it’s meant to serve. Sometimes that’s simply marketing the company, but often it’s about a much narrower set of goals such as finding potential business partners and laying the groundwork for future deals that might be lucrative to your company. The way the event is organized could be how your partners measure the professionalism of your company.

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