Conferences are an effective way to deliver a message or information at a larger scale with ease. No matter if you’re arranging a conference for your company’s employees, or it’s a public event — it can deliver valued information concisely.
Depending on the size, your conference could be pretty hefty on your wallet — so you need to make sure you’re arranging it the right way. However, that’s not possible without making accurate estimates of the costs involved in it. Well, not anymore; here are some contributing factors that add up to the budget of your conference.
The Venue
When counting up the expenses of a conference, the venue is the highest valued variable. Its cost can vary a lot depending on the type of venue you choose. For example, if you pick a venue in an expensive metropolitan area, it’s going to cost more. However, if you pick something out of the metropolitan boundaries, it will cost less.
The size of the venue also plays an important part. If you choose a big hall with more room and accommodations, it can boost up your conference cost by a good bit. You should think about the decor as well. A venue that has greenery or various plants that grow with LED grow lights will look much better than a dull one. The arrangements you have for refreshment also need to be considered.
Food and Beverages
You cannot invite people to your event and let them go home with empty bellies. Depending on the duration of your event, you will have to make different types of arrangements for their refreshment. For example, if the event is only one or two hour-long, coffee, water, and soft drinks would suffice. However, if your event is longer than that, you will have to arrange a meal. If your event is all day long, get ready to arrange breakfast, evening snacks, and dinner. Coffee and water (or other beverages) are unavoidable.
Presenters
Depending on whether you have speakers/presenters within your company, or you need to hire external ones, this accommodation could be costly. Having in-house speakers will be very cost-effective; try to find people within your company who are experts in the topics being discussed at the conference. Who knows, perhaps someone might be an expert in education while the other in current mortgage rates.
While hiring a third-party speaker or presenter, don’t shy away from hiring new talent looking to build a reputed name. However, make sure you’re hiring talented individuals, not bad eggs.
Staff
If your venue doesn’t have in-house staff included in their package, you’ll have to hire various types of people to manage your event. These include security guards, helpers, greeters, behind the scene workers, and others.
It’s not always necessary to hire all the types of staff mentioned above, but you should consider this accommodation anyway. Figure out and decide which of these staff members you need for your event.
Equipment
You need various pieces of equipment to conduct your conference. If your venue doesn’t include LEDs, projectors, screens, and monitors, you’d have to arrange them on your own. Moreover, you will also need to hire professional operators to operate these pieces of equipment. If your conference includes simultaneous translation, you’ll also need to get simultaneous translation equipment — and related staff to handle it.
Advertisements
Depending on the type of conference you’re arranging, you’d also have to pay for advertisements. If it’s a public event, you might have to run paid promotions on social media platforms like Facebook. Moreover, you may also need to print banners and make them visible to the public.
If the conference is only for your employees, the advertisement will be much cheaper. Most of the time, you can print invitation cards and distribute them among your employees and you’ll be good to go. Email-based digital invitations could also work pretty well — but they are not as compelling as invitation cards.
Final Words
Conferences are a great way to address the public, deliver information, or send a message. However, they could be pretty costly and you need to plan your conference’s budget carefully. There could be several types of costs involved in arranging a conference. However, the costs I mentioned above are the most notable ones. If you keep these accommodations in mind while setting up your conference, you can make sure you don’t run into unforeseen budget circumstances.