How Professionals Pull Off Corporate Events At Ultra-Short Notice
Corporate events often take a lot of planning. But some companies manage to put them together in a matter of days. How are they able to do this? For many project managers on the outside, it’s a mystery. Most events are months in the making.
But those on the ground know that all they need is focus and the right strategies to make it happen. Creating an event that your customers and colleagues will love is actually a lot simpler than you imagine in advance. Here’s what you need to do.
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Write Down The Goals You Want To Achieve
First thing’s first: you need to write down the goals you want to achieve as part of your corporate event planning. No matter what event you host, you need to set out your aims and ensure that your planning decisions reflect these. If you don’t write down what you want from your corporate event, you’ll ultimately get a poor return on your investment. You could have many goals in mind. These could include:
- Motivating employees;
- Improving employee satisfaction;
- Lowering your staff turnover;
- Telling customers about a new product;
- Training employees;
- Providing media opportunities to learn about your product;
- Branding to audiences who haven’t heard about you yet.
The list goes on and on. Once you write down a goal that you want to achieve, attach a metric to it so that you can work out whether you are getting value for money or not. So, for instance, if you are marketing a product, try to connect sales to the event itself to calculate the ROI.
Promotion and image elevation is one of the most common goals for corporate events. But if you are using your event to do this, it’s important that the event is executed well and resonates with your target audience. Make sure to do your homework and get some more about event branding strategies to know which ones to incorporate. Also, keep in mind that with a short-notice event, your branding strategies may need to be adapted accordingly. For example, you may not have time to create custom merchandise or promotional materials, so consider using digital methods such as social media and email marketing instead.
Corporate Events at Short Notice: Send Out Your Invitations Early
The next step is to send out your invitations at the first available opportunity. Don’t delay. The longer you leave it, the greater the issue of low attendance you’ll face. Remember, just because you’re ready for your event at short notice, it doesn’t mean that everyone else will be.
There are many things that you can do to prevent low attendance from ruining your event. The first is to use Facebook, messaging apps, and SMS to reach out to your guests. This way, you can communicate with them in multiple ways to get them to put your dates into their diaries.
If you are reaching out to employees, then a simple email will usually suffice. Obviously, you don’t want to compel them to attend, but you can point out the benefits of doing so, such as training, networking, entertainment, food, and so on. Doing this will encourage more people to show up on the day and take part in the festivities.
You should also assign a person from your team to invite attendees that you care about the most. Some people are more valuable than others, so it is a good idea to have a dedicated party manager in these situations, finding people and then getting them to show up. Usually, these professionals are much better able to communicate to guests why they should be a part of the event. For instance, they may benefit from fun corporate entertainment.
Keep Your Contractor List Simple
While you might want to hire dozens of contractors to contribute to your corporate event, some might not offer the lead times that you require. For instance, you might get contractors to work on various segments of your event. However, if they all offer different deadlines, then some might not get everything done in time.
Just pick a contractor that can take care of every part of the event management process for you. You want somebody who can manage a tight deadline while working on multiple aspects of the event simultaneously.
It helps greatly if you can correspond with a single person managing the event on your behalf. So, for instance, it makes it easier to organize an event if you can talk to one individual about audio, video, catering, the venue, and the transport. Trying to get multiple people to link up is time-consuming and adds tremendous complexity to the operation. Streamline as much as you can.
Enlist Volunteers
If you’re part of an organization that can afford to take people away from their regular work, you might also want to enlist some volunteers. This way, you can take the burden of planning off your shoulders and shift the responsibility onto other people. Find employees, friends, and associates who are able and willing to take on specific tasks and want to help you.
Give them tasks that allow you to clean up your to-do list and get things done faster. Fewer things will slip through the cracks when you have multiple people on the job, and your event will be a greater success.
Find Ready-Made Food Solutions
Getting food for a corporate event at short notice can be challenging, but some caterers provide such short-notice services. They aren’t usually as good as having on-site caterers who bring their kitchen equipment with them, but they are still an inexpensive, quick fix that you can use.
Aside from it, there are food trucks which are an excellent option for corporate events. Food trucks are mobile and can be set up quickly, making them an ideal choice for events that require a fast and easy setup. Plus, food trucks provide a variety of cuisines, so guests can choose what they want to eat, and the food is often prepared fresh on the spot, ensuring quality and taste.
You can read more on food trucks in Tampa and their offerings; plenty of resources are available. With a little research, you can find the perfect food truck to cater your next corporate event.
Professional caterers are great because they provide options for people eating restrictive diets, such as gluten-free. This way, you don’t have to worry about meeting dietary or allergy requirements. Most catering companies have this aspect of their work on auto-pilot.
Corporate Events at Short Notice: Make It Interesting
It would help if you made getting people to attend your event on short notice enjoyable. If you don’t, there’s no incentive for them to turn up, and you’ll struggle to get the numbers you want. To make your event enjoyable, add a theme. For example, you might entertain your guests to motivate them to participate.
Guests are most likely to show up if you provide a mixture of fun and value. Offering free training or products and combining that with music or dance can help attract more people to your cause. Indoor adventures, trivia games, and even seasonal activities can work wonders to bring in the punters.
Focus On One Thing At A Time
Professionals also make a habit of focusing on one thing at a time. They don’t try to multi-task their way through the organization process. Concentrate on one thing at a time improves the quality of your work because it takes advantage of how your mind is supposed to work. It is challenging to concentrate on many things at once. Expert planners work sequentially through tasks, getting things done in an order that makes sense.
Corporate Events at Short Notice: Simplify The Event
Hosting a complicated and extensive event at short notice is more challenging than a small and simple gathering. Furthermore, it is also often unnecessary for fulfilling your objectives. You don’t always need a significant, complicated corporate event to serve your brand.
If the event’s purpose is a corporate training, the actual prep you must do is minimal, especially if you plan to invite people to train staff from external agencies. The same applies if the goal is to entertain customers. Usually, you only need an entertainment option available at short notice to come and fire up the crowd.
Setting up a corporate event rapidly helps your enterprise become more agile. All of a sudden, you are better able to meet your business’s immediate needs instead of waiting a long time to work things out.
