4 Considerations When Budgeting For Your 2018 Events

It’s hard to believe, but 2018 is right around the corner! When budgeting for the next fiscal year, it’s important to consider any corporate events you might wish to employ as part of your marketing strategy. Leaving room in the budget for events should be a key part of your financial plan for the new year.

Here are four key considerations when your company budgets for next year’s corporate events.

1. What will it cost?

Before you get too far along with your planning, sit down with your corporate event planner and discuss what you hope to achieve with next year’s events. Outline the scope of your proposed events, as well as any specific ideas you might have in mind, like location or theme (remember, if you’re hosting your corporate event in a major city like New York, Los Angeles, or Boston – venues book early). Your event planner can get you some preliminary estimates to help fill in the blanks in your marketing budget. Without a general sense of the cost of your events, it can be difficult to plan how much room you’ll need to leave allocate for them in the budget.

2. What are your larger-scale goals?

Your company should consider corporate events from the perspective of how they fit into larger corporate goals. If you have a ten percent growth goal for 2018, how will your corporate events contribute to achieving it? If you hope to open a new office in the new year, will an event in the new location’s home city help to drive business and enhance employee camaraderie? Having a clear direction in mind is key before you drill down into the specifics of what you’re looking for from your corporate events.

Discussing your goals with your event planner is also a good idea, as they have experience in planning corporate events of all sorts and might be able to offer some great suggestions.

3. What other marketing tactics are you employing?

Before setting aside funds for events in 2018, you should determine where else you are planning to allocate your marketing dollars. Advertising, social media marketing, and branded events work well together as part of a comprehensive marketing plan. Look back at what has worked and not worked in the past for your brand, and use that information to determine what percentage of your marketing budget should be put towards events.

4. Determine your event type ratio.

Corporate events can mean a lot of things, depending on who you ask. Branded launch parties, employee retreats, and corporate lectures, among others, all fall into this category. Many companies will choose to plan a variety of these events in 2018. Knowing their overall corporate goals, however, is key in determining which percentage of their budget should be put into each event category.

Feeling like employee retention is a weakness? Perhaps a corporate retreat should be your fiscal priority. If your company is working like a well-oiled machine, maybe spending more event dollars planning a lecture series for clients in your industry would be a better use of funds. Branded events, partnered with micro-influencers, can also be a great tactic if you’re trying to get your product in front of potential customers. Prioritize which sorts of events are most important to meeting your corporate goals before you get too far into planning.

Before you finalize your financial plan for 2018’s corporate events, talk to your event planner about how your goals, funds, and vision might come together in the year. Cheers to your best year of events yet!