Whether it’s your company’s first event or the hundredth, event planning can be stressful at times. This is primarily why you need the services of a corporate event company or a professional event planner to make sure everything goes as originally envisioned by your team.
If you’re planning to share the event brief with an event agency and want to make sure nothing slips through the cracks, you’ve come to the right page! In this article, we share some of the top things you need to consider before briefing your event planner.
10 Things You Need to Consider Before Briefing Your Event Planner
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The Goals and Objectives of the Event
Before you brief your event planner about the event, consider the below points and come to an agreement with your team members:
- What is your event’s main purpose?
- How does the event fit into the overall business strategy of your company?
- Is it about acquiring new clients, retaining existing ones, or is it an internal event?
- How many sales and what profit are you looking to make from the event?
- Will you charge for entry? If so, how much?
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Approximate Budget for the Event
Providing your event planner with a realistic budget for the event will help you create the best possible outcome for your event. To arrive at an approximate budget for your event, you may want to borrow similar figures from any events you might have organised in the past, or arrive at an educated guess working with your team alongside the event planner during the briefing stage.
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Dates and Schedule for the Event
Come to an agreement with your internal teams and pick the dates for holding the event. You will also need to come up with a working draft of the event’s schedule. This is one of the most important points for your event planner to know, so it’s worth letting them know dates as early as possible so that they can begin to consider things like whether the event can be held indoors or outdoors, and which suppliers will be available on these dates.
Also Check: Virtual Events in UK
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The Guests
Come up with an estimated count of how many people you expect to attend your event in person and even how many may watch the live stream if available. This will help the event planner plan accordingly and find a venue space that will best suit your event. In case you expect any high-rank individuals or influential figures at your event, the event planner needs to know about them beforehand as well. Here are a couple more things you need to consider about your guests:
- How many of the event attendees will be traveling by car, or by public transportation, or even helicopter?
- Will any of your attendees require special parking access? (maybe for the helicopter!)
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Food and Beverages
Share exactly how many courses and meal options your event attendees would need. Try to be as specific as possible – it will save you a lot of time and money while helping your event planner zero-in on the right venue for your event. As many venues have their own preferred or specialist catering options and suppliers when it comes to both food and drink.
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Speakers and Entertainment
Put together a list of your ideal speakers and entertainment options for your event. Research what kind of speakers and entertainment options have been presented at events similar to yours, but also bear in mind that this is one of the tasks your event planner will likely lead on, so don’t be too specific and allow them some scope to find the best speakers and entertainment to suit your audience.
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Event Sponsors
Are you looking for sponsors for your event, or have already secured sponsorships? If you’ve not thought about this yet, it’s time to start your sponsor search. Here are some questions to ask yourself:
- Who are the ideal sponsors for your event?
- What kind of sponsors have partnered with events similar to yours?
- What kind of activations or benefits can you offer to your event sponsors?
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The Event Website
It’s crucial for the event’s success to maintain an online presence by having an official event website. Here are a couple of important things to bear in mind when working on your event website:
- Does your existing website need to be updated? Or maybe you need to create a website!
- Would your current website infrastructure be able to handle the increased traffic?
- Is your website mobile-optimised?
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Contact Details
If you’re planning to work with an event company, do not forget to include the contact details of the assigned point-of-contact within your company, the person who’s responsible for coordinating with the event planner. If there are multiple employees of your company in charge of organising the event, ensure there is always a leader who will be the single point of contact. From experience, we know that working with one main contact is much easier than trying to communicate with an entire team.
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Timeline
Let the event planner know when you would like to hear back or receive a quotation from them. In case you have an upcoming meeting that you need to prepare for, keep them informed. This step will help ensure you will get the required information from them on time and coordinate accordingly, as per the agreed-upon timeline. (This point will really help the event planning team, trust us!)
Final Thoughts
Needless to say, the pre-event briefing meeting is potentially one of the most important meetings that will define the event planning process itself. We’ve worked on hundreds of events across the world, with a range of clients who each have their own unique ways of briefing us. Which is why we decided to put this list together to help you the next time you’re briefing a new event planner.
We always find that the quality of the brief really is a good indicator of the event success and from our experience, companies who consider all of the above when briefing our team always achieve their goals for their event.
Explore our event services page to find out more.
