As the world gets back into gear and things start getting back to normal in the corporate environment, venues and delegates alike are ready for the return of conferences.
So, in this blog, we’ll provide some of our top tips for planning the perfect conference.
We’ll explore everything regarding the perfect location, booking the right kind of speakers, sustainability when it comes to marketing materials, and embracing digital marketing techniques such as social media.
Let’s start with the most important aspect of all – the location.
Top Tip #1 – Pick the Perfect Location
The style of your venue is something that’s always been important when it comes to conferences, but now more than ever you need to consider practicality as well as visual appeal in order to make sure your delegates feel safe at your event.
This means taking into consideration the amount of space within the conference room area and whether or not you can comfortably cater for social distancing and properly consider delegate flow. Clear pathways need to be marked out and space needs to be available to make sure your delegates feel secure, so that they can enjoy your conference in full.
Then there are the different areas of a conference, from exhibition spaces to designated catering and networking areas. You should ensure that these areas are separated from one another to avoid too much close-contact mingling and to aid delegate flow, and it’s best to have specifically designated spaces to match these requirements.
Top Tip #2 – Make it Sustainable
Next up on our top tips is sustainability, and making sure you hit the mark from an ecological perspective. The headline here is fewer paper brochures and leaflets from exhibitors and encouraging the use of digital tools instead.
This can include many innovative pieces of technology and ideas, from QR code-based leaflets or posters on an exhibition stand for individual exhibitors, to digital business cards where the recipient receives a text with all the info they need. And from an organisers point of view, why not try online delegate brochures and agendas so you don’t need to hand out lots of paper that may not be disposed of correctly after the event?
Sustainability is a hot topic this year and for good reason, so it’s all about encouraging an eco-friendly approach, whether it’s from members of your team or the conference exhibitors showing off their stuff.
Top Tip #3 – The Perfect Speaker
Your conference is nothing without the perfect speaker, so you need to make sure they tick all the boxes. They need to be relevant, engaging, and entertaining as a standard requirement, and they should always provide the perfect personality for your audience demographic and conference purpose.
It can be a minefield to arrange yourself, but luckily for you, Bien Venue can handle booking the ideal speaker for you with our event management services. In fact, we can take care of everything from booking the perfect speaker or compere to audio visual requirements, liaising with suppliers and sponsors, as well as project management timelines and organisation in general.
Top Tip #4 – Manage Your Delegates
Which brings us neatly onto another vital aspect of conference planning – delegate management. This comes in the form of transportation and accommodation for delegates, and providing them with a service that makes them feel welcomed and wanted at your event.
At Bien Venue, we provide this service and can act as a first point of contact for enquiries relating to your conference or event. We can help put together programmes, manage delegate payments and registration, not to mention manage VIP guests, making it our mission to take care of the smallest of details before, during, and after your conference.
We essentially take care of everything you need to make a success of your event, making sure your delegates are kept in the loop and are happy with what it is you’re offering.
Top Tip #5 – Utilise Digital Event Marketing
Social media can change the outcome of your conference and having a strong social media strategy is essential in today’s digital world. People live their lives on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, so you need to cater for these platforms when you’re planning your event.
But we can take care of that for you, too. We can craft social media campaigns to hit your target audience, create and promote Facebook events to help spread the word, and utilise a plethora of other useful digital marketing tools and techniques to make sure your conference is a success.
Top Tip #6 – Use an Expert
The best advice we can give anyone planning a conference is to always to use an expert, which is exactly what we are here at Bien Venue. We’ve got years of experience in the event-planning industry and can handle any and all aspects of planning the perfect conference for your delegates.
With support before, during, and post-event and everything handled from sourcing equipment to speakers, risk assessments, venue sourcing and accommodation, theming, branding, digital marketing and more, our experts are here to make a success of your conference.
To find out more about the services we provide, visit our services pages, or drop us an email at sales@bvevents.co.uk and one of the BV team will get back to you and get the ball rolling.
You can also make a start yourself by using our Free Venue Finding Tool to explore the various options we have available for your conference, with venues across the UK to match your requirements.
Bien Venue are a boutique creative agency who specialise in a free UK venue finding service. It’s not just workshops, training, conferences, or off-site meetings we can arrange and venue search for but also away days, residential training events, awards ceremonies, networking, roadshows, hybrid events, summer parties, Christmas celebrations, private dining, team building, incentives, employee engagement hampers and virtual activities. We also offer accommodation booking platforms for both corporate bookers and event specific allocations of bedrooms
Our re-identified strapline alongside ‘Our Team is Your Team’ is ‘Event Management – Professional, Pro Active with a personal touch’.
What does Event Management mean to us?
We see event management as any part of the planning process from conception to delivery, it’s not just the onsite event management we specialise in but also the pre-planning and logistics plus post event. Our flexible approach means you can pick and choose which of our services you would like to use or just use our free UK venue finding service.