Hosting a corporate or networking event holds the potential to significantly elevate your business profile, expand your audience, and increase your visibility within your industry. However, it's crucial to avoid being the subject of negative discussions. Instead, aim to be the example of a successful event that others aspire to emulate. This means you need to put time and effort into ensuring that your event has everything your business and your attendees need. This attention to detail is what can really elevate your next event. Here are 5 tips that help you to achieve just that.
By Team Savant
Image: Kate Trysh
Research is Key
Hosting an event without clear aims or objectives can lead to a lack of impact. It's essential to understand the why behind your event, what you aim to achieve, and who your audience is. This understanding will guide you in creating an event that fulfils its purpose and leaves a lasting impression.
Value
Your event should be designed to offer value to its attendees. Whether you're networking with other businesses or inviting clients and customers, the focus should be on how the event can benefit them. By offering value, you show your attendees that their time is valued and that your event is worth their participation.
It might be that you explore partnership opportunities with peers and other businesses; for potential customers, you might have product demonstrations or taste tests for products and services; for current clients, you can show them new plans are working on, offer training or other ways your company can add value to what they do.
Create A Talking Point
This is vital to help you get the conversation flowing and ensure everyone is engaged. Now, this could be something fun and unique, like a calligraphy workshop that helps people learn calligraphy and gives them an activity to participate in they can discuss during the event. Or you might have a calligraphy team personalising gifts and products for attendees to take away. There are multiple options for you to incorporate bespoke calligraphy services into your event so you can create a talking and a focal point to pull the entire event together.
Meaningful Conversations
The point of the event is to drum up interest, correct? This means that you need to be able to initiate meaningful conversations with all attendees based on the reason for holding the event. You can do this by researching the industry and other guests or even arming yourself with as much knowledge as possible to answer questions. It can be a good idea to create a list of talking points that can open up dialogue so you are armed and ready to make a good impression. Don't forget to let others participate in conversation so you can expand conversations and really get to understand others and their wants, needs and reasons for attending your event.
Follow Up
Lastly, it's not enough to pull off a spectacular event; you need to follow up with attendees to continue the relationship. If it was a networking event, calling or emailing them to thank them and get feedback is a great way to keep communication open. If you hosted an event for customers or the general public, sending follow-up emails, discount codes, etc, can be a great way to reach our base and thank them again for their attendance on the day. This keeps your business fresh in their mind and brings them back to you.