When it comes to boosting your business, there are plenty of advantages to hosting an event. An event can celebrate the promotion of a new product or service in your company – or it may offer your employees a useful way to network with other experts in the industry. Some businesses even use event opportunities as a way to draw in customers and help them learn about whatever it is that company has to offer.
Unfortunately, if you’ve never planned an event before, you may be unsure of where you should start, what you can do to make the most of your budget, and how you can manage the various moving cogs of your event without potential disaster.
1. Set a Budget and a Date
The first thing any business needs to think about when setting up an event for the first time, is what sort of date they’re looking to host their occasion, and how much money they have to spend on that experience. Importantly, it’s worth remembering that there are a lot of different factors that should go into both the timing and the budgeting of your event.
After all, when selecting a date, you need to pick a time when your attendees are going to be available. On top of this, when selecting a budget, you’ll also need to include entertainment, food, décor, and marketing.
2. Look for Useful Technology
We live in the age of technology, so why shouldn’t we make the most out of it? Event apps and online management solutions give you the opportunity to set up a guest list digitally, plan every hour of your event schedule, and even send reminders to your attendees as the date gets closer. Oftentimes these applications make it easier to remember all of the different aspects that have to be covered during the course of planning and hosting a successful event.
3. Find Ways to Promote Your Event
Once you’ve downloaded the right technology to help you inform your guests about your event and what they can expect to experience, you may also want to think about other ways you can promote the upcoming date. For example, some businesses like to create reminders on social media sites with hashtags and other following incentives that keep people informed and excited about your event.
A prudent idea for getting started is to make a timeline backwards from the date of your event, and make notes of when you’ll need to send invites, reminders, and updates during the run-up.
4. Look for Ways to Make Your Event Unique
If you’re struggling to raise enough excitement for your event, it may be that you simply don’t have a unique selling point on the table yet. Take the time to think about what your event is about, then see whether you have anything interesting in place that will help you to promote your aims. For instance, if you’re hosting a technology networking event, then you may find it helpful to find a speaker within your relevant field who can come and talk about some of the latest updates in the industry.
5. Make sure everyone has Access
When hosting a successful event, it’s important to remember that you will need to pay attention to the methods others will use to not only approach your event, but feel comfortable wherever they end up. This means picking a location that is familiar, easy to get to, and full of space for all of the attendees that you have invited to come along. One of the worst things you can do is select a venue that is either too big or too small, so make sure that you check out your options in advance so that you have plenty of time to make the perfect decision.
6. Have Fun!
Finally, do what you can to promote a positive attitude in your attendees, and set a stellar and sunny impression by showing that there’s fun to be had and information to be learned. Your event should be a cogent and remarkable experience for everyone involved, so try to avoid an atmosphere where everyone sits around feeling awkward and refusing to speak to each other. Push for engagement!
Photo credit: Sebastiaan ter Burg
