When organising a corporate or MICE event, many things need to be taken into account. Organising an event costs money, time and lots of effort (that’s why the services of a DMC save your business time and money) and, many times, the main goal of the event is easily diluted amongst other things happening at the same time. It is vital, then, to know how to set goals for your corporate or business event.
The goals of a MICE event should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Afterwards, evaluated and reviewed
What do you need to take into account?
The first thing that needs to be considered, when the decision of organising any kind of corporate event has been taken, is to define the purpose of the event. Why are we doing this? Why are we spending time and money on this? What do we want to achieve? How will we measure the success of the event? Generalisms should be avoided, so objectives like “I would like to increase sales” is to be avoided. A sound objective should be something like “I would like to increase sales by 15% in six months’ time”, where there are an objective and a deadline to measure its success. These goals should be aligned with the company’s ethos or mission and vision and should also be realistic – there is no point in reaching for the stars when we have not touched the ceiling, yet. All of these are part of the SMART goals you have probably heard before. If not, here it is, in a simple and understandable manner.What is a SMART goal for your event?
Event goals should be:- Specific: as we said before, try to avoid generalisms and set goals with a purpose. What do you want to achieve?
- Measurable: that way you will know once you have reached that desired 15% increase in sales you were after.
- Achievable: having a goal to work towards to, is motivating for the team and the management, too. But what happens when the objectives are not reached because too unrealistic? This can quickly demotivate your staff and even yourself. Keep it real and work towards something that can actually happen.
- Relevant: is it something that matters to the company? Does it add value to our mission and vision?
- Time-bound: what is the time limit to achieve this or these goals? When there is a start and a stop time, we can measure the progress between beginning and end.
- Evaluated: long term goals can easily be forgotten. However, if they are periodically reviewed, they can be evaluated and see if the team is working towards the desired goal.
- Reviewed: if we are not reaching the goal we wanted, it does not mean we have to restart from the beginning, but only review and adjust the criteria or the tools that we are using to reach that goal.
What happens after the event?
There are endless lists of events’ KPIs that can help you measure if the goals have been achieved. It is true that things like experiences or team building activities cannot be measured, however, we can rely on surveys and a change on the attitude of the employees as a way to check if the purpose was met. It is also important to analyse if things went well, if the objectives were achieved, if the budget was met, if the purpose of the event was clear and met for all the attendees – this way we can improve and take action for further events.Specific needs for your event
The definition of the goals for a corporate event until now, has been approached in a a general way. However, besides everything that has been said so far, the specific needs for each event or its participants should be added, too. Beyond the most common needs (corporate colours, translation equipment, AV systems), there are other needs that we have analysed in Meridional Events and should also be taken into account, such as:- Accessible events
- Multicultural events
- Events where attendees have different dietary requirements
- Sustainable events
- Pet-friendly events
- Events combined with Social Corporate Responsibility (SCR)
