Event Planner For Corporate Events - Melbourne Edition

Melbourne, a city that seamlessly blends culture and business, has become a popular destination for hosting remarkable corporate functions. Whether you're organising multi day conferences, team building activities, gala dinners, or perhaps a product launch, mastering the art of corporate event planning in Melbourne requires careful preparation and meticulous execution.

In this comprehensive guide, we'll look at some of the leading event venues in Melbourne and take you through the essential steps to ensure your corporate event shines brightly in the bustling corporate landscape of the city of Melbourne.

Before diving into the details, it's crucial to define clear goals and objectives for your corporate event. What outcomes do you want to achieve, and how will you measure its success?

Metrics To Consider

Every organiser is different and the key metrics they measure change too. It's important to understand what's most important to you. Is it the number of ticket sales, the number of returning guests or perhaps the growth in your database, online channels or social media following?

Who Is Your Target Audience?

Identifying your target audience is fundamental to tailor your event to their preferences and needs. Understanding their demographics and expectations will help you create an event that resonates with them.

What Will Return The Most Value?

Consider what elements will provide the most value to both your attendees and your organisation. Whether it's networking opportunities, thought-provoking sessions, or showcasing new products, ensuring your event delivers meaningful results is key.

Establishing a realistic budget is vital to ensure a successful event without overspending. Allocating funds for various aspects, such as the corporate event venue hire, speakers for your seminars, food and drinks packages and more, will help you maintain control of your spend, and understand what you have left over to cover any unexpected expenses.

Sponsorship & Branding Opportunities

Corporate functions are perfect opportunities for businesses to take on a sponsorship role, allowing them to draw eyes to the things they might be promoting, such as a new product launch, or simply to create a lasting impression by maximising exposure of their brand in the venue space.

Event sponsorship is also a great way to offset event costs, including any private hire company used or even a cocktail party post-event. Partnering with local businesses can help to not only enhance your event's visibility, but also contribute to the success of your event while offering value to sponsors.

Selecting Your Location From A Range Of Corporate Function Venues

There are so many great corporate function venues in the city of Melbourne. Selecting the perfect event venue space can significantly impact the overall experience of your corporate event. Here are a few of the top corporate function venues and spaces in Melbourne:

• Melbourne Exhibition & Convention Centres
• Metropolis Events
• Crown
• Sofitel
• Grand Hyatt
• W Hotel
• Intercontinental
• Sheraton
• Zinc at Fed Square
• The Langham
• The Glasshouse
• RACV City Club
• The Timber Yard

Many of the event venues in the Melbourne CBD come equipped with everything you need to cater to from large groups and conferences, to smaller meetings, team building events and product launches. There are a few considerations, however, when selecting the perfect venue from the very best corporate function venues in Melbourne.

Headcount & Capacity

Melbourne has an extensive range of corporate venues and spaces that vary in size, allowing you to choose the perfect venue for your group. Take note of how many people can be seated in the space, whilst also considering any breakout rooms or spaces that may be available to use within the venue.

Access & Proximity To Public Transport

Location, location, location - it's so important when it comes to selecting the ideal location for your corporate gatherings. Some of the most popular corporate event venues are situation in the heart of the city and Melbourne's CBD, but there are also a number of great venues along the Yarra River, in Port Melbourne and even in South Melbourne too.

Selecting one of the venues in Melbourne that ticks all the boxes when it comes to access, and is close to either a train station, tram or bus stop, is so important to ensure your guests can transit in for your event easily.

On-Site Amenities & Services

It's important to make sure that your selected venue in Melbourne has the amenities your event requires. That covers things like catering options, audiovisual facilities, breakout spaces or even a rooftop bar. If they can't provide all of these elements, consider bringing in external suppliers who are specialists in their service as that may be a great option to ensure you have the very best for your event.

Event Theming & Styling

Another factor to consider is the aesthetics of the venue spaces versus your event theming and styling. Having continuity across all elements will help you deliver a seamless and cohesive corporate event.

Ensuring the venues in Melbourne that you select for your events fit in with the look and feel of your event is critical to delivering a great corporate function.

Whether you are playing host to your own conference, or perhaps organising one of your clients annual general meetings, curating a detailed run-sheet for event day is a great way to help carve up your sessions and content points.

Determine Your Breaks & Session Times

Strategically plan your break times around breakfast, morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea breaks. This will allow your guests to network, recharge, and absorb the content. There's nothing better than grabbing a quick coffee from a coffee cart during the break period - it's the perfect place to reset before the next session.

Develop Your Content Pillars

All corporate events consist of some form of content, delivered in a myriad of ways, such as guest speakers, panel discussions and Q & A sessions. Design your content pillars so that they are relevant to your audience, and introduce cutting-edge insights that will be of true value to your guests.

Secure Your Speakers

Handpick some of your favourite business speakers who have a proven track record with event speaking. By selecting the leaders in their respective industry, you can guarantee that the content they will deliver will be insightful and valuable to your audience. You can also have them promote their spot across their networks, helping to bring awareness to your next corporate function.

Something to consider is to nominate a person to act as the MC or chair for the day. They should be someone with a strong personality who is good on stage, and can bring energy into the room between speakers.

Additional Entertainment

Depending on which of the Melbourne venues you select, you may want to incorporate some additional entertainment. This could come in the form of a live performance, an interactive exhibit, team building activities, or an engaging exercise that everyone can take part in.

This is a particularly good idea for full day events and conferences, as they can help to break up the content-packed sessions.

There are times when the quality (or quantity) of the food and drinks can severely impact the overall guest experience. Whilst the content should be the key focus, ensuring guests are well catered for is important in order to keep them in the venue and away from wandering the Melbourne CBD in search of lunch.

Food & Snacks

It's important to ensure you have all allergy and dietary requirements covered, the most common being vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free. Asking your guests pre-event is a great way to understand what the mix is for your group. If you have short break times in your schedule, opting for pre-portioned food items over self-service large platters is a quick way to speed up getting food to everyone.

Having some form of snacks on hand throughout the spaces (or at each table) is important, just to curb any cravings. Opting for healthy options such as fruit and nuts are guaranteed to keep your guests full whilst eliminating sugar and energy spikes.

Tea & Coffee

All corporate events in Melbourne have to have coffee as part of the offering. It's a city renown for impeccable coffee, and whilst many of the corporate event venues provide an in-house service, you should opt for Melbourne's best.

Coffee carts are perfect for Melbourne corporate events, as they offer an extensive range of beverage options and packages, give clients the opportunity to brand and theme the cart, and they can access most corporate function venues in the Melbourne CBD and surrounds.

Alcoholic Beverages

If your event runs through into the evening, or perhaps you have a conference that concludes late in the afternoon, you may want to consider including an alcoholic drinks package. Whilst it may not be for everyone, most corporate function venues will offer this service and it's a nice way to unwind in the space afterwards.

AV & Tech

Your audio-visual and technology component for your event must be the very best. Whether that means using the venues in-house team, or hiring Melbourne's best supplier for AV, a technology fail is simply not acceptable these days. It pays to do some research to ensure you select the very best corporate function venues that have the latest tech and spec available.

Once you have locked in your venue, speakers, catering packages and run-sheet, it's now time to promote your Melbourne corporate function.

Design Your Invitation

Design a visually appealing invitation that incorporates your events theme and purpose. Include important information like which Melbourne venue will play host to your event, how to get there, your guest speakers and what time it commences.

Develop Your Contact Target List

To help you sell tickets and fill seats, determine your ideal buyer personas and develop a number contact target lists. Using information and data points such as the business/company they work for, their job title and function or department they work in, will help you get your invite in front of the right people.

Broadcast Across Your Social Channels

Leverage social media and your owned channels to generate excitement and anticipation for your event. Make sure to share which corporate event venues your events are taking place at, any relevant news or updates and promote what packages are still available for sponsorship.

Implement A Paid Advertising Campaign

If your budget allows, consider launching a paid ads campaign to generate interest and ticket sales. Using platforms such as Meta can help you get your event invite in front of your buyer persona, through the use of targeting and re-targeting.

The day of your event has arrived! Everyone is excited and can't wait to get into the event spaces for the first speaker. Here are a few things to keep top of mind to ensure the day runs smoothly.

Guest Registration

Ensure you have a team of staff working the registration table. You want to get guests into the venue space as smoothly and quickly as possible. As host, you should appoint someone to tackle any questions your guests have, so be prepared to point out things like wifi connectivity, location of toilets and key break times.

Attendee Engagement

Whether it be a short business meeting, or full day conference, attendee engagement throughout is paramount. Encourage your guests to utilise the venues spaces to break away when they need to get a breath of fresh air, and promote the benefit of networking and connecting with sponsors and other delegates to get the most value from their time at the venue.

Contingency Plans

Back up microphones, spare batteries, a back-up guest speaker - these are all great things to have prepared should the worst happen and their be a delay in arrival or a tech-fail. Working with the venue if you have an issue is the best piece of advice as they are the experts in venue hire and host countless of events within their venue.

After your event, it's time to evaluate and take on any feedback you've received to make improvements for your future corporate events in Melbourne.

Seek Feedback & NPS Scores

It's important to gather an extensive range of feedback from your guests, to find out things like whether the venue and space provided was adequate, whether the food and beverage catering was of high quality, and what they thought of the content and speakers.

Determine Improvements For Your Next Corporate Event

Take all of the feedback you've received, and with your team, decide on any action steps for change that can be applied to your upcoming corporate events.

Review Metrics Against KPI's & Goals

Take a look back at the original goals you set during the preparation stage. How did you go? Measure the events success against those goals, evaluating attendance, engagement, NPS and other relevant metrics you want to include.

Hosting a successful event doesn't just come to down to selecting the best of Melbourne's corporate event venues. In fact, it takes meticulous planning, attention to detail, and a commitment to delivering exceptional value to your attendees. Keeping this top of mind will have you organising Melbourne corporate events that will be the envy of others.

Make your next corporate event a success by including a coffee cart in your event catering mix. Coffee on Cue are specialists in event coffee, working within a range of event venues in Melbourne and passionate about bringing people together to network and connect.

We work in most of the leading venues in Melbourne and offer a range of packages to suit any event. You can get a quick price estimate here with just a few clicks.