Planning (and pulling off) a successful corporate event is no mean feat. To your guests and stakeholders, the day should feel smooth and seamless. Yet with so many moving parts to take care of—budgeting, staff, catering, drinks, entertainment, branded goody bags, marketing, and more—your job as the planner can feel anything but.
But with the right approach, planning a corporate event doesn’t have to feel like spinning plates. The process can be broken down into steps that each call for specific actions. By laying all of this out, you can keep tabs on your progress and ensure things stay on track.
At Kindred, our events team has hosted hundreds of events that have gone off without a hitch. Here’s our complete, step-by-step guide to planning corporate events to help you with yours.
Contents
The 5 P’s of event planning
Product: what type of corporate event are you planning?
Setting your objectives: what do you want the event to achieve?
Price: Setting a budget
Place: Finding the perfect venue
Catering and drinks
Entertainment and AV
Promotion: marketing your event
People: running the event
Attendee engagement
Goody bags
Measuring success
Corporate event planning checklist
The 5 P’s of event planning
The principles of event planning can be broken down into 5 P’s: product, price, place, promotion, people. It’s a useful framework for laying out the essential elements of your event and identifying what success looks like for each.
- Product: what is the event you’re running and what do you want it to achieve?
- Price: what’s your budget, costs, ticket fees, revenue targets, and profit?
- Place: where will you host the event?
- Promotion: how can I market the event and sell tickets?
- People: what is the role of everyone in your team?
In the sections below, we’ll explain how to nail down each of these elements and put them together as part of your event plan.
Product: what type of event are you planning?
The planning process will look different depending on what type of event you’re looking to run. Hosting a conference for over 100 people is a very different beast to a shareholder meeting for 15 people, for instance. Below are some common types of corporate events, along with some key planning considerations for each.
Conferences
Typically larger in size, conferences can be a little more challenging to arrange than other sorts of corporate events. That’s simply because there’s more moving parts to manage — perhaps you need to source speakers or programme multiple sessions that take place in different spaces (like a breakout session). Not to mention simply taking care of more people once the event is in full swing.
If the event is open to people outside your company, there’s also the matter of marketing the event. We’ve covered this in more detail below!
Here, brilliant planning is absolutely essential. Usually, conferences take months to arrange, so ideally you want to leave yourself enough time to have everything sorted. You’ll also need to make sure everyone on the team is coordinated and knows exactly what they’re doing: we’ll share how we do this in sections below.
Networking events
In our experience, the key to a successful networking event is having elements of curation and structure. You want to make sure that everyone in the room has a relevant connection to each other—for instance, people from the same industry—and to create a format where meeting new people feels easy rather than awkward or scary.
Practically speaking, you’ll need to have a space big enough to fit everyone, with space to move around. Our Hall is perfect for this: we have sections with standing tables, plush sofas, and plenty of open space.
You might also consider refreshments like canapes and a welcome drink.
Product launches
Looking to celebrate the release of your new product? Events like this usually involve talks or presentations, plus mingling and perhaps some entertainment to round out the evening. Think about how you want to present your product: is it something people can hold or touch? Will you give out samples?
You might want to look for a venue with a stage and that can handle your AV needs. Branding will likely be a consideration, too. You could have a bespoke cocktail menu or goody bags giving our branded merchandise, for instance.
Team-building activities
Activity-based events like this vary widely, depending on what you want to do. A scavenger hunt will probably take more planning than a seminar, for example.
Here, start with what the activity is (game of human bingo, anyone?) and then decide what you want to happen before and afterwards. Will there be drinks and canapes or will everyone head home after the session? Then, find a venue that can accommodate that.
Board/shareholder meetings
Typically, these will be more intimate affairs—a spacious meeting room that has just the right ambiance is ideal. You’ll likely want to think about AV for presentations, along with catering. For instance, having lunch sent up to the room along with coffee and pastries.
Our Butterwick room is a popular choice for meetings like this: it’s a bright and sophisticated space that’s fully AV-equipped and can accommodate up to 16 guests.
Events like this can be fairly straightforward to plan. You want your guests to feel comfortable, in a space that feels fitting: think sophisticated and polished, while being warm and inviting. Our Library is a popular spot for important meetings for this very reason.
Company-wide meetings
Depending on how big your company is, this could feel a bit like planning a conference. Your responsibilities will be to find a space that’s comfortable and can accommodate everyone—especially if the meeting will run for the entire day.
You’ll need to arrange lunch and refreshments, and likely have breakout spaces for people to take a break or run smaller sessions.
Setting your objectives: what do you want the event to achieve?
This is arguably the most important question you’ll contend without throughout the entire process: what does success look like for your event?
By pinning this down right at the start, you can make sure your efforts are focused towards achieving it.
The more specific you can be here, the better. Do you want to boost company morale, hit a particular revenue target, or boost your brand awareness? We like the SMART method for setting objectives:
- Specific: what exactly do you want to achieve?
- Measurable: which metrics will you use to measure it? Post-event survey results, ticket or product sales, uptick in web traffic?
- Attainable: is it realistic that you’ll achieve this goal?
- Relevant: do your objectives for this event align with your overall business objectives?
- Time-bound: what’s the deadline for achieving the objective?
Here are some examples:
The goal is to increase profit on our events. The objective is to generate 25% more revenue from ticket sales than the previous event, by the day of the event. We will measure this through sales figures.
My goal is to build awareness around a new product. The objective is to increase traffic to our website by 20% following the event and to get 100 people to sign up to our email waitlist. We’ll measure this through website views and sign ups.
I want to increase team morale. The objective is to have a 10% uplift in positive responses regarding views on the company within our post-event survey.
Price: setting a budget
Having the right budget for your event is one of the most important ingredients to its success. It should include all your expenses as well as streams of income, and will help make sure that the objectives you set are realistic.
Sometimes, you’ll need to pitch a budget to someone in your company and other times, you’ll be given a number to work with. Either way, the place to start is by listing out all your expenses. These come in two flavours: fixed and variable costs. The former don’t change and will already be known, like a venue rental. Variable costs change depending on how many guests you’ll have. For example, refreshments will cost more if you’re catering to a larger group.
Fixed costs could include:
- Venue hire
- AV & entertainment
- Insurance
- Security
- Marketing—though some choose to treat this as a variable expense
While your variable costs might be:
- Food and drink
- Goody bags
- Speaker fees
- Staff costs—though you’ll need a fixed minimum number of people working to pull off your event
Pop all these down in a spreadsheet and voila: you’ve got your projected expenses. From here, you can shop around for different suppliers to try and adjust the figure as needed.
If one of the aims of your event is to turn a profit, you can use your expenses to determine how you’ll price your tickets. Consider how many tickets you’re aiming to sell when doing the maths.
Update your spreadsheet as your planning rolls on so you can make sure you’re on track.
Place: finding the perfect venue
Your venue should set the right tone and atmosphere for your event. With corporate events, this usually means that it should feel sophisticated and uplifting, while being comfortable and having enough space for everyone.
But there’s other considerations you should weigh up, too:
- Location. Is it easy enough to get to? For example, Kindred is a few minutes’ walk from Hammersmith tube station, which is connected to four underground lines. Plus, it’s about 30 minutes from Heathrow airport by tube for any international attendees
- Accessibility. Will all your guests be able to move around the venue with ease and comfort? All our spaces at Kindred are fully accessible, for example
- Capacity. Will you be able to comfortably (there’s that word again) fit everyone in?
- Layout. Will the space accommodate the event you’re wanting to run? For instance, if you want a dancefloor, you’ll need to have enough floor space. Are there enough rooms for your breakout sessions?
- Cost. Does this make sense with your budget?
- Facilities. What’s included in the hire package? Some venues do their own catering, for example
Catering and drinks
Now, it’s time to decide what you’re going to serve your guests. This will depend on what type of event you’re running: is it a standing canapes and drink affair or will there be a sit-down meal?
Some venues (like us) do their own catering and will have menus for you to choose from. Usually, payment is per head—to give you an example, if you want to have three different types of canapes served to your guests, we charge £14 per person.
A private dining setup for a large event will usually have a set menu with a fixed price per person. For example, in our plated menu option, the lead booker would create a menu with two starters, three mains, and two desserts for their guests to choose from.
If in-house catering isn’t offered, you’ll need to bring in an external company to handle it. Remember: the food should align with the event’s tone. If the event is a little more formal, you might lean towards a menu that feels elegant; if it’s more about building team morale, you might favour crowd-pleasing dishes.
Next: drinks. Your schedule for serving drinks can help to give structure to the event. You might offer a welcome drink followed by wine with dinner, topped off with a cocktail to round out the event—or simply have unlimited tea and coffee during the day but beer and wine come 5 o’clock.
Some venues, including ourselves, will give you the option of creating a bespoke drinks menu to reflect your company branding.
Entertainment and AV
Whether you’re after a swing band or DJ set—or perhaps a tarot card reader—the entertainment you choose should make sense for your event. Some venues (again, like us) have a directory of suppliers they can connect you to, while others will allow you to bring in external entertainers.
If the event will run late into the evening, check with the venue regarding their late licence fee and whether you’ll need to pay for additional staffing fees for security. Venues may also be able to provide their own AV engineer for an additional cost.
Other requirements like projectors, microphones, and being able to play your own music can be catered to by most venues. This is something you should be able to find out from their website or during your first meeting with them.
Promotion: marketing your event
Marketing your event well can be the difference between you hitting your objectives or not. Here, you want to get your event in front of the people you’re hoping will attend, and make it as easy as possible for them to book tickets.
As with any marketing campaign, you should start with your audience. Consider who they are: where do they live, which industry do they work in, what are some of their interests? Once you know exactly who you are talking to, you can focus your messaging.
Then, think about which marketing channels would be the most effective. These will likely be a mix of your owned channels (that you have control over) and your paid channels (that you pay to use, like ads). For example:
Owned channels
- Website
- Social media
Paid channels
- Social ads
- PPC ads
- Influencer partnerships
- Direct mail and OOH
It’s always a good idea to make use of your owned channels (depending on the resources you have within the team, of course). Decide which information you want to post on which channel, including links where guests can instantly book. You could supplement this with paid activity, for example running an advert that leads to an event listing on your website.
A good marketing campaign has a clear, compelling message that grabs your audience’s attention. Consider: what value will they get from attending your event? Can you summarise it in one sentence? You want people to understand what you’re selling and why it’s great at a glance. It’s okay to use short, simple copy—in fact, it’s often better. The most important thing is that your comms are clear.
Strong imagery is also essential because this gives people a sense of what the event will be like. Choose something that communicates this while being visually interesting—for instance, a great shot of guests enjoying the venue during a previous event. If you’ve got the resources, video content can also be very successful (and will generally perform better on socials).
You might also need to create some printed materials to have around the space on the day, like programmes or leaflets. Be sure to account for printing time so you’re not caught short.
People: running the event
If you’ve worked in events before, you’ll likely have heard of a run sheet. This is basically a rundown of what should happen and when, as well as which member of the team is in charge of each task. For those who have never used one before: it’s essentially a detailed spreadsheet.
The sheet is a summary of what’s going to happen so that everyone can stay on track. People in your team should be able to look at the sheet to check they are doing the right thing at the right time. Though everyone should understand what is expected of them before the day.
Your run sheet will help you to coordinate everything on the day and ensure it runs smoothly.
Attendee engagement
The day has arrived and the wheels are in motion behind the scenes to pull off an amazing event. Your next task is to engage your guests.
You want to make sure they’re retaining the information that’s being given during the sessions, rather than feeling drained by yet another PowerPoint presentation. Ideally, this will have already been addressed when designing the event schedule—for instance, breaking up talks with fireside chats and workshops.
But if your guests are flagging on the day, it might be possible to make the sessions more interactive by adding in audience polls or other participation elements. Or simply by having more breaks and snacks.
Don’t forget to collect attendee feedback! A simple feedback form is usually enough to do the trick. “Simple” is the key word here: you want to make it as painless as possible for your guests to give feedback. You could have three questions that ask people to rate the event from 1-5, plus an optional free-form section at the end, for example. Polling during sessions can also give you an idea of which content they found most interesting.
Goody bags
When done well, a goody bag leaves guests with a positive impression while acting as a kind of memento of the event. Too often, goody bags are thoughtlessly stuffed with wares that your guests aren’t interested in—and usually end up straight in the bin.
The trick is to include things that people will genuinely find useful and/or that they will enjoy. Like a small sweet treat or travel-sized gift from a sponsor (this could be discounts or samples, for instance). You can include branded items provided that they are useful: your guests might use a notepad or water bottle but probably not a tshirt with your logo on it.
Goody bags are an extra cost so you should think about what they will add to your event. They’re a chance to thank your guests and leave them with a positive impression, while giving your sponsors an opportunity to engage with them. Though they may not make sense for all types of events—they may be unnecessary for an internal company meeting, for instance.
Measuring success
Once it’s all over, it’s time to reflect on the event and see how it stacked up against your objectives. Your SMART objectives should specify which metrics you’ll use to measure success.
To see whether you hit your targets, you’ll need to collect data from your event. This could include:
- Ticket sales
- Product sales
- Profit
- Attendee feedback
- Email signups
- Increased social following
- Improved NPS following event
- Brand mentions on social
- Success of marketing efforts (conversion rate, CTR, reach, etc)
You can also use these insights to analyse what worked and where you could improve. For instance, you could figure out which marketing channels performed best to streamline your costs for next time, or use attendee feedback to tailor the program more to their interests.
Corporate event planning checklist
Here’s all of the above summarised into a checklist for your next event.
- Product: determine what event you’re running and what you want it to achieve. Set your SMART objectives
- Price: set your budget by working out all your fixed and variable costs, as well as your streams of income. From here, determine ticket costs (if applicable)
- Place: find the perfect venue.
- Is it easy enough to get to?
- Is it accessible for all your guests?
- Is it big enough to accommodate your event?
- Is the layout appropriate for your event?
- Is it in line with your budget?
- Does it have the facilities you’ll need, such as in-house catering?
- Catering and drinks
- Plan your menu and drinks offering, as well as the timings for when they’ll be served
- Entertainment and AV
- Secure speakers or other entertainment acts
- Arrange AV requirements with venue
- Promotion
- Determine which marketing channels and messages you’ll use
- Execute the above
- Organise any printed materials you’ll need during the event
- People: running the event
- Assemble your team and allocate responsibilities
- Create a run sheet that’s distributed to everyone
- Assess attendee engagement throughout the event
- Goody bags: secure gifts for goody bags (if applicable)
- Measuring success
- Collect data to evaluate your event using your SMART objectives
- Review what went well and what could be improved
- Update stakeholders
