Five Questions Corporate Event Planners Fail to Ask
Planning an event is a big deal. Planning a corporate event is an even bigger deal. Your guests’ enjoyment and happiness isn’t the only thing at stake – your brand’s image is too. You could hire one of the most exceptional corporate event planners who understands your brand better than you do, but if they fail to ask these five event planning questions you could end up with an event that both you and your guests fail to remember.
What are the marketing objectives?
Corporate Event planners are sometimes so involved in the logistical aspects of the event – finding venues, recruiting staff, choosing menus and entertainment – that they forget about the medium to long term goals the event is trying to to achieve. Corporate events, whilst they should be thoroughly enjoyable for attendees, can be instrumental in working alongside the marketing strategy to achieve marketing goals or objectives. Is your brand aiming to grow its customer base in the Western Cape by 20% by the end of 2016? Little sense then holding the event in Johannesburg. The objective needs to be kept in mind at every step of the planning process.
What are the marketing messages that need to be conveyed?
Your brand’s marketing message runs parallel to and helps achieve your marketing objectives. If your marketing objective is to increases sales by 20% for one of your products among the 18-30 age demographic, then your marketing message needs to speak to that age group. It might then be “our product will not only solve your problem, it’s the trendiest one on the market and you’re going to love using it.” Your event must convey this. The only way to communicate a marketing message that helps to achieve marketing objectives is to gather as much information as possible about each and every one of your guests before the event.
Who are the guests?
No matter how skilled event planners are, even the best of them will create an event that fails if they don’t know who their guests are. As touched upon above, who you want to come to your event will depend on your marketing objectives. These need to be firmly in place before your guest list is compiled and personalised invitations sent out. Getting to know your guests – their age, cultural background, food and drink preferences and how they’ll be travelling to the event – will mean you can ensure your event is tailored-made to them. That said, it’s unlikely your event planner has the time or energy to start up one-on-one conversations with the hundreds of people you’ve invited to your event. Luckily, they don’t have to. They simply need to enlist the help of Event Management Software.
What should be avoided at all costs?
When corporate event planners focus solely on getting the event planned and in place, they can easily forget to take into account one of the most important factors that will influence exactly how the event is planned – the guests. By forgetting about who is attending the event, they won’t know if there is anything that should be avoided at all costs. The most perfect, smooth running event can be planned and executed, but if an element of the function – be it choice of food, location of the event or entertainment chosen – is inappropriate given who is attending, your marketing objectives and messages will not only fail, they could offend your guests and mar your brand image.
Is the event within budget?
This might sound like the most obvious question for event planners to remember, but it’s amazing how easy it is for them to forget about whether they’re sticking to the budget you set them once the craziness of the pre-event run up starts. A budget should be formed at the very beginning of the event planning process, so that whoever is organising your event can get a sense of what they have to work with. This budget must be referred back to on a daily basis – not just days before the event after they’ve paid for the venue, catering and staff.
While the above might seem like a lot to take into account and convey to anyone you’ve hired to plan your event, choosing event planners who use Event Management Software means you’ll be choosing event planners with enough head space and information to plan events that fulfil all your marketing objectives.
Find out more about how to make sure your event planning exceeds both your brand and your guests’ expectations – and you never overlook those small but significant aspects of event planning.
