Setting Event Goals as a Corporate Planner
As a corporate event planner, it’s your responsibility to take your client’s idea and turn it into a reality. One of the primary ways you successfully do this is by helping your client determine their event goals.
Your client wants to hold this event for a reason – and that reason is the ultimate goal for this event! But many clients have trouble articulating exactly what their goals are. As the corporate event planner, it’s up to you to figure out what that ambition is. This way, you can then build a strategy for how you plan to make that goal to come to fruition.
With some clients, you’ll find that they come to the initial client consultation with their goal already in mind. Other times, they may only have a vague idea of what they wish to accomplish. In cases such as these, you’ll be able to rely on your professional training to guide them in the right direction and develop appropriate objectives for their event.
Let’s delve a little deeper!
Common Corporate Event Goals
When it comes to event goals, there should be no room for misinterpretation. They should be straightforward and provoke action. For instance, perhaps your client wants their event to:
- Welcome new business associates
- Celebrate a company milestone
- Persuade consumers to invest in their products
- Secure new clients
- Build brand recognition
- Generate company revenue
Notice how all of these goals begin with a verb. Your client’s event goals should be action statements that reflect what the business itself is going to do, and in the same breath, what that action will simultaneously achieve.
Pro tip: Many clients will be greedy and try to have three or four goals for every event. While it’s not uncommon for an event to have more than one goal, you need to be careful here. Each event should have one single, primary goal. Events can have secondary goals, but these need to complement the primary objective. For example, an event whose goal is to generate revenue can serve as a great branding opportunity! That same event probably shouldn’t be used to welcome new business associates, though.
SMART Goals
As a corporate event planner, you need to make sure that all event goals are ‘SMART’. They should be:
- Specific. This means they have a specific outcome, which should be achieved by a specific date.
- Measurable. If you can’t tangibly measure the progress and overall success of an event goal, it’s not a strong enough goal.
- Achievable. While corporate event goals should challenge you, they shouldn’t be unrealistic. It’s not in your client’s best interest to set the event up for failure – and it’s not in your best interest either, as the corporate event planner. Instead, aim for event goals that can be reasonably achieved.
- Relevant. Everything should be directly correlated to the company’s goals. This includes all event goals, and your event concept as a whole.
- Time-Bound. Schedules and deadlines are everything in the world of corporate event planning! When setting any event goal, ensure to have a timeframe in mind for measuring its success.
Ways to Measure Success
After your client’s event goals have been ironed out, you can then figure out how to measure the success of the event itself. Much like identifying your client’s goals, determining your methods for measuring success should be done in the earlier stages of the planning process. If you fail to do this properly, the event could wind up being a disaster.
This can seriously damage your professional reputation as a corporate event planner, so it’s critical to put the right amount of time and consideration into this step!
If you’re looking for ways to measure event success, there are luckily a number of great resources at your disposal. Here are just a few examples:
- Profit/ROI (return on investment)
- New client acquisition
- Employee productivity metrics
- Guest experience surveys
- Social media mentions
- Guest attendance
When it comes to an event’s success, keep in mind that not all goals will garner immediate results. If an event’s goal is long-term, then success may be measured over weeks or months. Common examples might be an event whose aim is to get new customers, or one to increase employee or client retention, etc.
Those kinds of results won’t happen overnight, and that’s okay!
Once you’re armed with your client’s event goal(s) and know how you intend to measure their success, you can then start creating the concept of the event. Stay tuned, as we’ll explore this in further detail in the coming weeks!
