When people think about corporate events, they immediately start planning excuses not to participate or even attend. These events are usually associated with boring promotions and, in some cases, uncomfortable team-building activities. Your event should be different—it should make people excited about being there and make them want to get up early on the day of.
Planning a successful and interesting corporate event, whether the focus is on your employees or clients, can be a tough nut to crack. A lot of money, time, and effort goes into these events and if they don’t achieve their goals, all that planning would have been for nothing. So, getting a little guidance from a media planning service or looking for hosting tips for events can help you plan the perfect event.
In this article, you get twelve carefully curated hosting tips for events and how to make them exciting and something to look forward to. Use these tips to inspire amazing ideas of your own and plan a corporate event your attendees will talk about for a long time!
1. Work Around a Theme
Before you start planning anything, you need to decide on a suitable theme for your corporate event. The theme you choose will influence what kind of venue you choose, the food you’ll serve, and every other element of the event. Keep in mind that a theme isn’t a purpose or business goal—it’s all aesthetic and mostly focused on atmosphere and decorations.
There are so many themes to choose from that it can be difficult to settle for one, so give this a lot of thinking. You can use the current season to choose a theme like ‘spring has sprung’ or ‘winter wonderland’. If you want to go all out, how about a masked ball or a glamorous Hollywood theme? Try to choose a theme that will be entertaining and enjoyed by every guest.
If you want to be very specific and go with a theme that will impress your clients or employees, spend some time getting to know them better. When you have a better understanding of who they are, you’ll find that coming up with a good theme will be much easier.
2. Carefully Plan the Entertainment
The entertainment is going to get a lot of attention from your guests—they’ll be more likely to attend the event if they know they won’t be bored. Since it’s a corporate event, there may still be ‘business’ to discuss, but that doesn’t mean you can’t offer fun activities for guests the rest of the time. It’s definitely possible to mix business and pleasure at your corporate event.
One of the best hosting tips for events like this is to consider the audience. What kind of entertainment will your guests appreciate the most? If your employees or clients are older men who enjoy golfing, they may not like the idea of a DJ and strobe lights as much as they’d have fun playing a mini-golf tournament with unique prizes.
Here are a few entertainment ideas to get you inspired:
- Live musicians or bands
- Escape rooms
- Virtual reality games
- Sports activities
- Photo booths
- Drone shows
- Magicians and comedians
- Talent shows
- Murder mystery
3. Choose the Ideal Venue
The venue of your corporate event is very important. It should be close enough to all your guests so they don’t have to travel very far to attend but also be able to accommodate all the ideas you have. The venue should also meet all the basic requirements like well-maintained bathrooms and Wi-Fi connections. Otherwise, you’ll end up having to resort to porta potty rental services and the like.
The kind of venue you choose ultimately depends on your theme, the guests, factors like offered services, parking, and your budget. If you have a generous amount of money to spend and want to host a classy event, you’ll choose a more expensive venue with special features like luxury restroom trailer rental options, for example. If you want to keep it simple, any good local venue should be good enough.
Make sure, though, that you have event planning insurance so you’ll be prepared and covered if anything unexpected happens. You never know when the weather decides to ruin your plans or if someone ends up getting too excited and hurting themselves or breaking something.
4. Provide a Memorable Culinary Experience
When it comes to hosting tips for events, we can’t put enough emphasis on planning the food you and your guests will enjoy. You can’t host an amazing corporate event without amazing food—it just doesn’t make sense! There are many ideas to get inspired by for the culinary experience of a lifetime, and you should plan it carefully to accommodate food allergies and preferences. It may be best to work with a corporate event caterer if you’re going to have many guests.
You should aim to ‘wow’ your guests with the food, but that doesn’t mean you have to offer only exotic foods and drinks. Just make sure it’s something they’ll really enjoy. If you’re hosting your event during the summer, why not contact Jarritos distributors, for example, and get a truckload of truly refreshing beverages for the day? Or get an ice cream truck to hang out at the venue for a few hours. Whatever you choose, make sure the food and drinks are of the highest quality and guests have comfortable areas where they can enjoy everything on offer.
5. Have Accommodation for Speakers and Performers
One of the more important hosting tips for events is having enough accommodation for performers and speakers that are providing entertainment at your event. If you have magicians, bands, and other entertainers at your event, you need to have a proper place for them to prepare and rest. You also have to be there to welcome them and attend to their various needs. If they’re hungry or need directions, for example, you or someone dedicated to their team needs to sort them out.
On that note, you should also have accommodation available if your event is in a location that will require guests to travel for more than half an hour to get there. If you’re serving alcohol, it’s a good idea to have somewhere for folks to sober up. Alternatively, you can arrange for transport and drivers so no one has to drive home after drinking.
6. Make Your Event Dynamic and Interactive
Your event needs to be a far cry from the stiff and uninteresting corporate events that people are used to. For this purpose, you should try your best to make your event interactive and dynamic, and give your guests a unique experience. Another one of the best hosting tips for events is to avoid having your guests sitting in one spot throughout the entire day, and that ties in neatly with this tip. Switch the direction of your guests’ attention, keep them engaged, and have them moving around a bit so everything feels truly dynamic and exciting.
A good way to ensure the event is interactive and dynamic is by serving food in one area, having several spread-out activities in different locations, and entertainment in a dedicated space. Make it easy for your guests to move from one activity to the next while they’re mingling with other guests.
7. Hype up the Event
If you’re looking for hosting tip events that focus on getting people interested in your event, this is it. You have to go beyond sending out invitations to your guests and really make a buzz about it. Social media is a great way to hype up an event and get your guests super excited about what you’ve got planned for them. You can share short teaser videos of the event, post images of the venue, discuss the dress code and menu, and even ask for song requests. All of this will make your guests feel a lot more involved in the event and make it hard for them to stay away.
8. Consider Current Trends
One of the best ways to make sure your corporate event is one to remember for months (or even years) is by checking out the latest trends. Trends are popular because people really like or enjoy them, so they can be an indicator of what your guests will want. You’ll have to research other corporate events similar to yours and determine what people liked and what they didn’t really appreciate. Also, look into the up-and-coming technologies that are used and think about ways to incorporate them into your event. Ask other organizers what they felt were the most successful activities and ideas they used and get inspired by what they did. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box, though. You may just influence the next trend!
9. Don’t Forget About Promotion
Naturally, you’re going to have to promote your corporate event, especially if it’s aimed at your clients rather than your employees. Good hosting tips for events that are focused on clients or customers include going all out—don’t just use social media shares to get attention. Plan to have pamphlets that are distributed to your clients. Consider wholesale large format prints that will cost less and be far more eye-catching than smaller options. Put up billboards and posters too, if you want to reach a wider audience and attract prospective clients and customers. You can even go as far as hiring advertising time on your local radio station to get even more people interested.
10. Capture the Highlights
For most people, having the memory of a fun event is enough, but if you ask anyone, having a photo or video they can smile about later is better than just a memory. So make sure that you record the day’s activities and give people a way to look back and recall all the fun they had. Hire a photographer and videographer to capture all the highlights and make a compilation of photos and videos that everyone can view later. During the event, ask guests if they want to pose for photos and make short videos and be part of the merrymaking.
11. Stay Connected After the Event
While most hosting tips for events are focused on the event itself, you need to remember to stay connected with your guests afterward as well. You may have made many new connections on this eventful day, and not reaching out to them later would be a mistake. Staying in touch will also let your guests know that you truly care about them and whether or not they had a great time at your event. You can send follow-up emails (be sure to personalize them), and maintain a level of communication that won’t annoy them but ensure they don’t forget about you and your event.
12. Ask For Feedback
Last, but not least on our list of hosting tips for events, is getting feedback from your guests. Even if you’re confident that everyone who attended had a fantastic time, you should still ask for feedback so you can determine which ideas were the best and which ones will need some polishing for future events. You can also ask your guests to leave reviews so others can see how things went (this also gives you free promotion!). Make sure to get the feedback shortly after the event when their feelings about it are still fresh in their minds—don’t let those good memories fade!
Plan the Event of the Year!
Well, there you have it—eleven awesome hosting tips for events that won’t be boring or dull and will leave your guests feeling happy that they attended. With the tips shared here, you can plan a fantastic event that everyone will remember for a long time and look forward to any future events you may plan. You can plan the event of the year, even if it’s only a big deal for you and your employees or clients. Just don’t forget to hire a business cleaning service to tidy up afterward so you don’t leave behind a mess when all the fun is over!