Every single year trends come and go. This really shouldn’t come as a surprise to many, but it seems to always skip the minds of managers, directors, and executives.
Honestly, everything in business has its own time. Sure, when you get into the correct thing early, you are massively advantaged. But when you stay doing the wrong thing for long, you also miss out on a lot.
It’s like fashion. One year the blue crocs are trending, the next year, anyone in blue crocs is now broke and unstylish. No offence to anyone who owns blue crocs, crocs in any color are amazing.
The point is, trends come and go. It is all the same in the corporate world of event planning and management. To be at the top, you need to keep up.
That’s why today I’ll be taking you through the latest trends in corporate event management and planning that can be applied to your upcoming event in Uganda.
If you want to keep your events looking fresh, unique, and attractive, Here’s how.
Why Even Bother?
It may seem like just another unnecessary event planner’s obsession, but no. When you host guests that have been to 3 separate book launches in the past year, and your book launch has the same flow, same people, same music, same management. You just won’t stand out.
So here’s a few strategies to hosting corporate events that are currently trending in 2024.
In Person Events
Now before I even start here, I want to make sure you understand that we are not completely outing online events. Their time efficiency, ease of access and set-up, as well as cost benefit are unbeatable. However, we’ve come to an age where emotional connection outweighs all of those combined.
After the Covid 19 pandemic that had us all locked up at home attending work calls in nice shirts at the top but casual shorts hidden below, virtual events seemed like the new normal.
But recent trends in event hosting have shown the value for in-person events is regenerating.
Naturally as humans, we understand each other best when face-to-face. When building a brand with your corporate event in Uganda, you need to make sure you understand your audience and they understand you.
There’s no better way to do this than in-person where you can see all the smiles, laughs, confusion, annoyance, and every other emotion wired into our human brains.
Inclusion and Diversity
We get bored easily. Accept it or don’t, it’s the truth. No matter how much you love attending conferences or seminars, if it’s always the same people talking about the same thing, it doesn’t take many events before you’ve had enough.
Your event may be great, but if it isn’t diverse, it is boring. Just like we mentioned in our article on How Corporate Events Influence Business Success, events are for networking. Networking is about expansion into connection with new cultures, backgrounds, professions, and races of people.
If you want to host events that people truly enjoy and look forward to in 2024, focus on diversifying your guests.
You have no excuse unless your event is the exclusive type. But still with an exclusive event, you can diversify the attendees. If your event is not exclusive, you really must try to invite people from all walks of life that are relevant to the event.
It makes things way more interesting for both you and your guests.
Attendee Participation
Everyone wants to have a hand in the bowl. Whether building a new marketing strategy for the business, deciding on which new offices to relocate to, or picking colors for a product. Every employee and customer seeks engagement.
In 2024, this is all the same at corporate events. Your attendees don’t want to sit for two hours listening to your rant about leadership and twiddling their thumbs.
No. They want to get involved. So get them involved. Plan fun discussions, games, and even polls to give your audience a sense of participation at the event.
When someone has a hand in your corporate event, they value it more as its success can be partially attributed to their participation.
It takes all the pressure off you, and increases your audience’s engagement. A win-win for both you and the audience. So why not?
Collecting Data and Feedback
To put it straight, not collecting any sort of data from a business related event is becoming old-school.
Whether you send out a poll, conduct interviews, quiz your attendees, analyze conference sit-through rates, you must collect some sort of data before, during, or after a corporate event.
Though this is a growing trend in the world of corporate event management, you should be doing it more for the business than to keep up with the trends. Let me tell you why.
We make decisions based on information. Information is data that is processed and given context thus allowing us to make key decisions. For example, 15 people turn up to your book launch. That’s your data. Your information would be that you had a low turn up because you had initially planned for 60 people.
You can then clearly understand whether the event was a success or not and can use this information to improve future events.
Maybe next time you should promote the event to a wider audience, host it closer to the city, or pick a weekend day when people are not caught up in the weekday Kampala hustle.
Whatever decision you make, you’ll need data. So don’t skip this vital aspect of corporate event management.
Education and Value
You should already know this one. But I’ll throw it in here anyways.
Are you adding any kind of value to your event guests?
When someone shows up to a corporate event in Uganda, they’ve already given you one thing. That’s their time. Of course, they may pay for a ticket as well, and other little things. But money can be made back, time can not.
Whether they take a day off from work or drive across town to attend, they’ve invested time. And just like any investment, if the returns are not higher than the investment, it counts as a loss.
This is why in 2024 corporate event planners have shifted towards focusing on how they can maximize the gains of the guests from attending their event. It’s pretty simple. Think clearly why your audience shows up. And give them exactly that and more.
If they showed up to learn how to build mobile apps, show them exactly how. If it was to network, set up the event in a way that there are endless networking opportunities.
When it comes to adding value to your audience, you must never disappoint.
Sustainability
With the growing and globally concerning climate change crisis. It has become increasingly important for businesses to invest in sustainability.
A corporate event may be the only time that certain attendees interact with your brand in real life for months. If they clock into your event and find that you are still stuck to printing long hand books and serving food in non-reusable plastic containers, they associate your brand with ignorance towards planetary conservation.
So try to put a bit of effort into planning for an eco-friendly event. Host it in a space supplied by renewable energy if possible, share documents with attendees digitally instead of printing, supply reusable glass jugs and glasses for water instead of plastic bottles.
Not only does being eco-friendly help the planet. But it looks premium as well. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have a luxury looking glass than a plastic PET water bottle.
Now You’re in Check!
There you have it. Your top trends to help you with hosting and managing a corporate event in 2024.
Now you definitely have no excuse for falling short on your upcoming event. But in case you want more clarity on how to plan your event. Take a quick look at our Ultimate Guide To Corporate Event Planning In Uganda.
Maybe you’d rather get someone else to handle the ropes for your upcoming event. Now you’ll have an excuse. If the event falls short of expectations, it was “The work of an external planner”.
Well that’s where Tellit Events comes in. Except you can completely throw your excuse out the window. We take the burden of planning, executing, and managing any corporate event in Uganda, and we do it to absolute perfection.
Sounds like something you’re up for?
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