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How to choose the right venue for your event

Choosing the right venue for your event is crucial to its overall success.

Once you know the type of event you are planning, and how many guests you intend to invite, you will have an idea of the type of venue you’ll need. Be sure to also consider the theme and style of the event, and that the venue reflects this along with the guests expectations.

Once you’ve got the logistics sorted, you will be armed with enough information to start researching venues. When it comes to choosing a venue, consider the following:

Location

The event location needs to form the basis of your decision making. Make sure the location is accessible by transport and has good parking access, along with accommodation particularly if the event goes over a few days. Ensure that the venue is in a location that is sensible and accessible for the majority of your guests to get to, an element of excitement about the venue always helps too.

Catering

Food is such an important element to any event, so whether you choose to have canapes, a sit down meal, or a cocktail option, make sure the venue can offer what you want. Find out what specialties the chef can provide that can give your event a point of difference. Always ensure you have catered for any special dietary requirements of your guests too.

Atmosphere

How the venue or event space looks and feels is a big part of an event atmosphere, and the message you want to convey. If you want to impress guests at a gala dinner with modern decor and a sophisticated ambience, you will need to look at more contemporary venues.

Services and accessibility

Consider your event audience and who are you are targeting, be it families, corporates, or gender specific events, and try to pick a venue that would best support their needs or expectations. For example, families may need access to baby change rooms, or children’s entertainment and enough room for children to run around in, whereas corporates would be expecting an up-market bar service or cocktail party. Be sure to also consider the ease of access to the event space for anyone with special needs, this includes parking, distance to walk, amenities, and ramp access.

Size and capacity

Your expected guest numbers will give you a good idea about the size of venue or event space you should be looking for. Many venues have a selection of spaces of varying sizes, and it will also change based on the type of event you are having, for example a sit down or standing cocktail style event.

Technology access

Ensure that the venue will be able to handle the audiovisual requirements for your event. Many venues will have an in-house AV team, such as AVPartners, who are able to make your lighting, sound and visual ideas come to life! This might include anything from setting up a stage and microphone for speeches, to a colourful and brightly lit ballroom with your logo projected onto the walls.

Make sure you visit the venue personally to see it for yourself, and to put yourself in the shoes of your guests. At AVPartners we couldn’t be more excited to show event planners through our venues, and to let them experience our state of the art technology first hand.

Contact us today to see how our venues can make your event a success.

How to plan a product launch event

A product launch is an event which promotes the launch of a company’s new product. A product launch will aim to introduce the new product to your target market, promote your brand, build brand awareness, boost customer loyalty and drive sales.

Here are a few simple steps for planning a product launch event.

  1. 1. Choose your venue

    When choosing your event venue, the size and location will depend on how many people you expect to attend, your target market and target location. Some additional factors to consider when choosing your venue should include decoration potential and audiovisual accessibility.

  2. 2. Find a food and beverages vendor

    Providing food at your event will provide a drawcard for potential attendees and will make the event more enjoyable for your guests. If the product you are launching is a type of food or beverage it’s important to ensure your product is the feature of the event and all other accompanying food and beverage products highlight your feature product. If you need to acquire an external vendor, considering a sponsorship partnership is a great way to offer food and beverages at a lower cost.

  3. 3. Decide on your theme and develop your event messaging

    Your launch product should be reflected in your theme, event messaging, decor and colour scheme. For a product launch event, the event messaging will reflect the launch product and should tie into your conversion goals for the product and event. Your event styling, including the colour of your decorations and event lighting, should echo the colour and aesthetics of your product. This will help reinforce the memory of your product for your event guests.

  4. 4. Get the word out

    Marketing and promotions are some of the most important components of a successful event. Prior to undergoing marketing activities for your event, it’s important to decide who you would like to attend your event as well as define your marketing objectives. Are you interested in getting media coverage for the event? If so, you might want to consider investing in some public relations for the event. Would you like the event to be invite only? If so, you will need to arrange invite distribution and RSVPs. A few effective ways to promote your event include through social media, event listing sites, pamphlets and flyers, and through media outlets in the lead up to the event.

If you would like some help planning your next event, talk to us today.

How to hold an eco-friendly event

Planning an eco-friendly event can seem challenging, especially when sticking to a tight budget. Often there are higher price tags placed on eco-friendly products and services forcing event planners to choose cheaper, less environmentally friendly options.

With a smart plan in place, going green doesn’t have to break your event budget. There are many strategies to reduce the environmental footprint of your event while keeping costs down. The most important way to minimise costs while planning an eco-friendly event is to have an eco plan in place covering all facets of your event.

Here are a few things to consider when planning an eco-friendly event.

Impress on less

When going ‘green’, style doesn’t need to be compromised and costs can be cut, while still impressing your guests. Utilising reusable decorations is a great way to make your event more ‘green’ and will help cut costs at the same time. The type of lighting at your event should be considered when it comes to eco-friendly event planning. LED lights are highly efficient, cost effective and are much more eco-friendly than traditional lighting methods. The use of LED lighting at your event will help reduce power consumption and as a result will reduce your event’s CO2 footprint.

Reduce waste

Maintaining a wise waste management strategy will help make your event more environmentally friendly. Global food waste is responsible for a massive portion of the earth’s annual CO2 emissions. By carefully managing food waste at your event, you can help reduce global CO2 emissions. Utilising an organisation like OzHarvest, which redistributes excess perishable food will help make your event more eco-friendly while at the same time feeding people in need. Food redistribution organisations often work on donations, meaning it doesn’t have to cost much to manage your food waste wisely.

Choose your vendors carefully

Choosing eco-friendly vendors can make a big difference. Choosing all local vendors reduces the need for long distance transportation of goods and services, reducing CO2 emissions and pollution caused by vehicles. Selecting caterers that use organic food products also has a lesser environmental impact.

Keep things digital

Avoiding paper tickets and invitations will help reduce the environmental footprint of your event. Avoiding the use of paper can be achieved by ensuring your event exclusively provides e-tickets or online invitations. Keeping your marketing methods online will also reduce the use of wasteful and environmentally harmful products such as plastic and paper. Not only does the decision to go paperless make your event more eco-friendly, it will save printing costs.

If you would like some advice on planning your next eco-friendly event, get in touch with us today.

How to make your event stand out from the rest

Ever wonder how you can make a lasting impression on your event guests? How you can make your event memorable and stand out from the rest? The answer is relatively simple. Following a few steps to maximise convenience for your guests and to create the ‘wow’ factor will have attendees walking away with the experience firmly imprinted in their memory.

Here are a few ways to make your event stand out from the rest, for all the right reasons.

Define and amplify your event messaging

First things first, what is the purpose of your event? What would you like your guests to take away from your event? Your event messaging should be apparent prior to organising your event and should remain at the forefront of your planning process. Making sure your event messaging is not only clear to you and your team, but ensuring that your guests understand their role in the event and why they’re attending, will guarantee that they leave with something more than just a party favour. Amplification of your event messaging can be made through marketing and promotional efforts prior to your event and can be reinforced on the day through speeches, decorations and styling.

Simplify the ticket sales process

Ensuring ease of the ticket sales process is one of the most obvious however often understated components to the event planning process. At a time in which the majority of internet usage is utilised via mobile, ease of availability is increasingly important for event ticket sales. Maximised user experience through a mobile friendly ticket merchant is the first step to any successful event and will set the scene for a pleasant event experience.

Beautify your event space

What colour scheme will best reflect your event messaging? What type of centrepieces will wow your guests? Special consideration should go into all visual aspects of your event, big and small. Including customised lighting to match the theme or style of your event is a simple yet hugely effective way to make a difference to the overall look and feel.

Choose the right entertainment

Choosing event entertainment can mean the difference between a good and bad event. Choosing the right entertainment for your event will of course depend on your budget, however some considerations should be made prior to booking. It’s important to consider how your entertainment reflects your event messaging, how the entertainment suits the demographic of your guests, and how it enhances your event theme or style.

If you would like some more advice on how to make your event stand out from the rest, talk to us today.

Apps for event planning

Planning an event is a huge and complex undertaking, with countless tasks to keep track of, tight deadlines and multiple stakeholder demands.

Thankfully, with the use of digital technology, the enormity of event planning becomes a whole lot easier.

And with most solutions now offered through apps, you gain the added convenience of accessing them on your smartphone or device, while on the go.

Here are our favourite apps for event planning:

Eventbrite – a ticketing website and app that allows you to go paperless through online event registration and ticketing. The app allows attendees to show their tickets on their phone, and for hosts to quickly scan at the door, with the attendee list updated in real time.

QuickCal – an intuitive calendar app that lets you create events using natural language, for example, ‘event starts @5’. It gives you reminders, shows you multiple calendars and provides views of upcoming events.

Scanner Pro – go paperless with your documents and receipts by scanning them into the Scanner Pro app. It scans documents with a snapshot and converts them to PDF, ready to email or save.

Super Planner – don’t stress about running out of drinks or overcrowding anymore, Super Planner calculates venue capacities, staffing, and catering to avoid these kinds of issues.

Asana – a task management app, Asana let’s your team collaborate seamlessly together. It allows for project teams to allocate, organise and manage tasks or communicate directly using chat functions.

What apps can’t you do without when planning events?