How to Prepare for a Corporate Event This Summer
Planning a corporate event can take time, careful preparation, and it might not be everyone's forte. Still, someone must do it, right? With you in charge of planning and prepping for the event, you'll be pleased to know that this post has you covered with handy ideas to assist with your task.
Know the Type and Size of the Event
Before planning and hiring or ordering anything, you need to know how many guests are coming, hence the size of the event. In business, you could be planning a micro-event with up to 100 people. It might be a small event hosting about 100 and 250 guests. Mid-size could have up to 1000 people and large events can go up to 10,000 guests. The different types of business events include seminars, trade shows, conventions, team building, workshops, networking events, and charities to name a few.
Understand Your Budget
One of the most important factors to focus on is staying within the budget set aside for functions and business events throughout the year. The average company often allocates 31.6% of its total marketing budget toward events and exhibits. In addition, more than $24 billion is spent annually by U.S. Exhibitors for trade show displays, yet, 70% of these exhibitors set no specific objectives for trade show exhibits. Sticking to a budget will help you not fall short on funds while arranging the corporate summer event.
The money should cover many things like hiring a venue, purchasing, or hiring equipment to use on the day, refreshments (depending on the time of day or night, a main meal could also be served), and the catering company's fee. You may need to hire staff to help with things at the venue, perhaps hiring an audio and visual company, and of course, some corporate gifts related to the business.
Rent Restroom Facilities
Every event needs a restroom, and renting porta potties for your corporate outdoor event is vital to check off the to-do list. Knowing how many people are coming to the event helps as you could order one porta-potty per 50 guests. If you're located in Portland, then you'll know that the population is quite high. It's actually the only U.S. state to share borders with only one other state and boasts a population of more than 1.3 million. 1.3 million is a large population. Still, at nearly 67,000 residents, Maine's largest city, Portland, ME, is said to have about one-quarter of the state's population residing there.
Corporate Event Venue Options
If it's an outdoor event that requires special additions like landscaping, then finding a venue to tackle the job is one of the most important things to do. According to Method, the landscape maintenance industry saw consistent growth in the past five years. At the same time, an average annual growth rate of 5.1% between the years 2016 and 2021. This is excellent news for landscapers, and it's important to ensure the venue you rent maintains its lawn and the property's looks.
Some venue options may include an outdoor wine pairing or tasting (end-of-year function), a picnic, a luncheon, etc. End-of-year events are often the most looked forward to as they are laid back and off the work topic.
Set Your To-Do List
To ensure you've got everything covered, draft a to-do list to help remember some of the things you need to handle for the business function. The to-do list might include logistics, how the equipment and guests will get to the event, and accommodation if required. The list would also cover things like the food menu, marketing or promoting the event, the timeframe that the event will run from start to finish, and all other timestamps in between.
Now that you've gone through these ideas for planning your next business event, you may want to use some of them to aid in your real-time planning. Get people to pitch in and help because the more are involved, the better it will go, and you don't need to run around sorting everything by yourself.
