Top-level corporate event planning requires a certain skill set to pull off. You need to get Sponsors to foot part of the bill for the event. You also need to do enterprise event Marketing and take your management, analytics, and execution to a higher level. During the event itself, you need to accommodate VIP guests and influencers while also encouraging interaction among the other attendees.

With that, we’ve compiled a few articles and the best tips for corporate event planning and management to help you. As a bonus, here’s our free event planning checklist. We made it as easy to use as possible, so try it out for your next event!

Getting into the Solution Room

To event goers, the most important factor isn’t if they had fun but what valuable takeaways they got from the event. To achieve that, try the plenary format called “The Solution Room”, which has been making the rounds since 2011. The Solution Room was originally meant to be a closing session, but it can be used as a plenary at any part of an event. It provides the perfect peer support and networking environment, while also allowing flexibility due to its ability to scale to whatever audience or purpose.

Secure Your Sponsors through Marketing

Getting sponsors is one of the most important parts of the event’s pre-production. After all, what event doesn’t need extra funds? However, recruiting sponsors requires an entirely different marketing campaign. This time around, you should focus your resources on understanding your potential sponsors and showing how your event could add value to their brand. From there, you can create a plan that includes creating the proposal, selling your company and event, and report relevant data back to the sponsors post-event. This is also your chance to build a lasting relationship that could carry over to future events.

Roll out Your Red Carpet for VIPs

VIPs can take many forms, from politicians and celebrities to local influencers and company CEOs. But how do you give them the royal treatment they deserve upon arrival? First off, you need a create a VIP team to handle this. This team should coordinate everything, from the pickup at the airport to ensure that the VIP is safely lodged in a hotel. A little bit of marketing should also go a long way, as you personalize your special guest’s experience. Understand their likes and dislikes, and give them the best experience you can for their time.

To event goers, the most important factor isn't if they had fun but what valuable takeaways they got from the event.
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Make Your Post-Event Surveys Work for You

Post-event surveys can be much more than just a measure of whether the audience had fun at your event. It can be a way to foster further engagement and to prepare for the next event. This guide presents some tips on how you can make the most out of these simple questionnaires. Focus on sending the survey at the right time. Next, ensure that your questions have the right scope. Make sure to get the right pulse as well by not asking leading questions, and by building on a continuing connection.

Getting Experiential Marketing Right

Experiential marketing is all about telling a story. You create a story that touches and utilizes the five senses of the audience. After the experience, it evolves into a story that they will then use to tell others about your brand. And this story is often a digital one, shared through social media. It turns out that social media is also the perfect platform to capture the play with the senses you have concocted for your attendees. Hence you should be as immersive and meticulous as possible when planning your experiential campaign. Understand how it will play out when touched by the lens of Facebook and Instagram and you will be rewarded well for your effort.

A Primer to Enterprise Event Marketing

Enterprise-level organizations are marketing behemoths, especially when they get the experiential side of the equation correctly. However, there is a lot that goes on behind these types of events. First of all, you should have a capable technology stack to handle all the elements at play. You also need a capable team at the helm. Of course, you should clearly set the goals behind the momentous effort. This guide gives a few examples of B2B and B2C enterprise-level marketing done right, along with some best practices to emulate.

Watch These Event Marketing Metrics

Technology allows us to get almost any type of data we wish almost immediately. While this has its good points, it can also be problematic since the wealth of numbers could steer us away from the data we really need to focus on. This guide gives us the top four metrics you need: anticipated pipeline, brand impact, customer retention, and perceived quality of experience. Learn more about these metrics and how they are measured, their significance and how acing them can help your overall goals. Note that these four metrics have subsections, meaning you’re not just going to do one-off data gathering. Here’s where your analysis and mastery of your industry will come into play.

Experiential marketing is all about telling a story.
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AI and Event Apps: Are They the Future?

While it’s true that AI and apps will be extreme game-changers, they might not shake up the industry as much as you think. Instead, they will be playing along with existing techniques and services such as translation, navigation aids, customer support, and concierge. Networking is also bound to enjoy the benefits of AI profile matching, even as the options for both AI and apps increase over time.

A Productivity Masterclass

When experts share, we listen. That’s doubly true when experts share how we can all be experts by upping our productivity. Check out these tips from top psychologists, such as moving away from your desk every now and then and intentionally avoiding tasks that you can then schedule later. Also learn the “George Washington Method” which debunks the common concept of productive time, and get over your fears of making everything perfect on the first go.

Get Influencers in a Flash

Getting influencers to market your event isn’t always easy, especially when you have a non-mainstream niche. A good news is that there are so many influencers out there that there is always someone who can lend a hand. An even better news is the fact that there is now a service that can help you find influencers wherever you are, in just a matter of seconds. Check out Heepsy, which is chock-full of all the tools a marketer needs. This includes not just everything you need to know about the influencers and their costs, but also how they impact their communities. A global, organized list of 3 million influencers at your fingertips, for all your future events!

It’s the middle of 2018 already and we’re wondering if the trends we predicted at the start of the year have come to pass. What new tech have you tried out in your events and which ones do you keep on using? What big social trend made an impact on your planning and management, whether good or bad?