B2B Marketing Features

Andrew Ely

Internal conferences are widely accepted as an extremely powerful and valuable exercise in communicating with your employees and, if utilised properly, can have long-lasting benefits for your whole organisation. Not only can these events motivate and energise your employees, but in some cases they are the only opportunity for all of your staff to interact. However, ensuring you reap the full rewards from these events can often be far trickier than you first thought.

Unfortunately, there are no 'golden rules' to running a successful conference. Every company is different and therefore will have their own messages and possibly a number of audiences to address. Therefore, the activity a company undertakes in order to achieve these specific goals will also need to differ.  

 

Target practice 

If you are about to embark on the organisation of an internal conference, the most crucial aspect of planning any event is to focus on the messages you wish to get across during the day and to whom. Your messages may range from communicating a change of brand, or ensuring that an integrated approach is adopted across the whole organisation. Whatever the reasons, they must be recognised and used in the content planning for your event. Equally important is to know what impact you wish your conference to make upon those attending. 

Once you have established who you are addressing and the message, it is time to think about content. It is vital that you ensure your speakers communicate in an interesting and engaging manner; for example, interactive segments are a great way to ensure the audience is engaged and involved. This could be activities within presentations or team building or leadership exercises later on. If you also wish to use presentations, I would recommend that speeches are given by industry leaders and senior management. This will allow your employees to gain ideas and inspiration from their peers and industry icons. 

Again, the impact this will have on the audience is key. There is no point inspiring your staff if there is no way for this to be translated into their working day. To ensure this opportunity is not wasted, any conference undertaken should give delegates the tools to convert its messages into planned employment practices. Furthermore, any activities used during the conference should be structured to reinforce these changes. An example of this might be to enlist a core group of ‘champions' who take on the role of monitoring the success of a programme and reporting back to a senior manager.

 

Presentation skills

When all the groundwork is in place you can start thinking about the visual impact you want to create on the day. This is often underestimated, but it can be an invaluable way of getting across a particular message or simply re-enforcing your brand. For example, if you are launching a new product with a specific colour scheme, you could ensure that you really make an impact on your audience by incorporating those colours throughout the event. Creating a positive atmosphere can also have the added benefit of making you employees feel valued.

Importantly, creating striking surroundings for your conference does not necessarily mean that huge amounts of money have to be spent. On the other hand, spending money in the right places can often make the world of difference. Just by providing a visual stimulus such as television graphics, or video clips to enhance a presentation can allow the information to be more easily absorbed and help stimulate creative thought.

However, companies who value the visual impact and aesthetics of their events above all else undoubtedly have objectives that are too narrow in their scope. While there is nothing wrong with trying to create an inspiring and impressive backdrop to your event, the fact of the matter is that the ‘wow factor' is simply not enough to make your event a success. Again, even if delegates walk away from the conference saying ‘that was great', it is falling short of the mark if it has no lasting effect in the workplace. 

Businesses now realise that their most important asset is, in fact, their people.  Therefore, internal communication is essential to keeping a happy and motivated workforce. Holding internal events are key to this process and can produce great results. However if not undertaken correctly, it can be a missed opportunity. My advice if you are thinking of putting on an internal conference is to speak to an expert agency who can offer you the benefit of their experience with other companies. You can win an audience's hearts and minds with a conference; you can influence, encourage or inspire, but if you do not get the content right, the benefits can be short lived. It's not just about the ‘wow'.

 

Top tips:

- Establish a very clear set of communication objectives

- Establish who your audience are

- Know what it is that you want the audience to be thinking when they leave

- Develop the content accordingly

- Ensure that the content is delivered in such a way that the audience feel engaged with the subject matter

- Ensure that any initiatives that are developed or launched at the conference are given the opportunity to be put into practice in the workplace.