Business events are a great way to connect with your business partners, employees, and other stakeholders. Various companies organize business events for various purposes. The goals could be to launch a new product or service, opening up a new store, making an announcement, or simply networking. The benefits of organizing a business event are many, but the single most important benefit is that you get to forge strong personal relations. These tie-ups can go a long way to make your business bigger, stronger, and more profitable.
The first steps
As stated before, business events can have numerous objectives. Before you organize one, ask yourself this important question; what is this event for? Your goal could be to launch a new product or service or any other activity. Once you have settled this question, identify your target audience. Business gurus define target audience as the set of people whom you are targeting with your messaging. If you are launching a new service or product, your guests could be your dealers, distributors, influencers, and other key people.
If your event is open to all but you want guests to register themselves, you may consider tying up with ticketing platforms such as Eventbrite WordPress, but this may not be the best decision.
If you already have a theme in your mind, you might like to contact an event planner. This planner should work in tandem with your main pointsman.
Identifying a venue and media amplification
In parallel, you should also identify the right venue for your event. If it is a formal party, it is better to tie up with a reputed hotel or a conference hall in your area. You could arrive at a cross-marketing arrangement with your venue to save costs. This means that you don’t have to pay money to your hospitality partner. You can promote your partner’s name or his property in your event marketing collaterals.
If you run a business, then you should market every new initiative of yours, and this applies to your business networking event as well. Market your event as well as you can. Choose your media channels depending upon your organization scale. Small startups that are reaching out to the local community can work out mutually beneficial deals with local radio stations, newspapers, etc. Bigger organizations have better resources so they can reach out to the national press and tv networks, as well as market via social media.
Budget setting, and setting up a team
No event can be successful unless it has a dedicated team. This team should be given a clear mandate, authority, and budget. Since most events are marketing in nature, it makes business sense to have people from the marketing and sales functions in this team. If your event is about financial products, consider taking input from your finance team as well. All projects run on budgets and the same holds true of business events as well. Draw up a well-considered budget for your company event and stick to it.
