Skip to content
A successful corporate conference blends strategic planning, the right venue, and engaging experiences to inspire attendees and achieve business objectives.
Your choice of venue, layout, and technology directly impacts participation and learning.
This guide is a practical resource for planners seeking to host impactful corporate conferences.
Plan a corporate conference that keeps your audience engaged and delivers results. Learn how to choose the right venue that supports networking, presentations, and comfort, and design a professional, impactful, memorable experience.
Define the Objectives of Your Corporate Conference
The first step to planning a successful corporate conference is to have a clear goal. Your goal will establish your conference direction and purpose, guiding the decision-making and planning. With a clear goal, you align content, clients, stakeholders and teams. All leading to one defined measurement of success.
There are many conference goals/objectives, for example, education, collaboration, or lead generation. The objective will influence the conference venue and format decisions. For example, for an educational objective, you will want to hire a venue such as an auditorium or a large conference space that can provide classroom-style seating, staging, and clear AV for presentations. For a collaboration objective, you can choose a venue that encourages participation and fresh ideas, utilizing outdoor spaces and multiple breakout rooms to build and collaborate on different ideas.
Align your conference design and venue features with a measurable outcome. Define what success looks like for your conference; this will be driven by your objective: is it engagement level, learning retention, lead generation, collaboration outcomes, or the number of attendees? All your venue and event elements should align with your objective and outcome, including design elements such as room layout, lighting, acoustics, and technology. Evaluate post-event data using statistical metrics and gather feedback via surveys.
Choose a Venue That Enhances Productivity and Engagement
What makes a venue conducive to focus and participation are elements such as natural lighting, comfortable seating options, flexible layouts, great technology and friendly service.
For all conferences, especially long-day conferences, ensure the venue has:
- good acoustics so information is heard clearly
- sufficient lighting to see presentations
- accessibility to essentials such as clean bathrooms
- easy parking.
Think outside the box and incorporate innovative ways to keep your audience engaged. Host at a unique venue to foster a fun, interesting, and interactive event design that promotes connection.
Navarra Venues has a portfolio of five iconic locations, from waterside views to castles, manicured gardens, classic ballrooms and country views. These venues are perfect to encourage innovation and connection. We provide flexible seating and staging, with over 50 spaces to suit any conference objective and size. Every venue ensures professional AV, internet, indoor and outdoor spaces and breakout rooms. Renowned for first-class service, food and drink, Navarra Venues provides your conference participants with an unforgettable experience.
Prioritise Technology and Connectivity
High-quality AV equipment, Wi-Fi, and hybrid meeting capabilities are all essential for a successful conference. Ensure you visit your intended venue before locking it in. Confirm the internet is reliable and all essential AV equipment is working as expected. Ensure the sound is clear; check the microphone and presentation tools, such as projectors.
Tip: If possible, go to the venue the day before or hours before the conference to ensure all the tech works to your needs. For example, make sure all required microphones are working and set to the best volume for clear hearing. The audio is clear through the speakers there are no echoes. This will give you some time to troubleshoot, if needed, before the event.
Work alongside a professional event venue that provides on-site technical support and backup systems to help with a smooth and seamless conference.
Design a Layout That Encourages Collaboration
Depending on your conference objective, your layout will vary. There are a number of conference layouts to select from, depending on your objective, including classroom, theatre, boardroom, banquet, cabaret, U-shaped, breakout, and cocktail-style setups. Each style offers a different objective; for example, the theatre style, rows of seating facing the stage, is ideal for large audiences and presentations. Boardroom style is a single table, great for intimate executive meetings and discussions.
Incorporating break-out areas is a great way to boost interaction, allow for open ideas, collaboration and information retention. Break-out rooms can include a rotation of topics, discussion groups, workshops and break areas.
The spatial design impacts engagement and networking, creating the atmosphere for the right engagement, information retention and open participation. The design of the space creates a flawless event. Your conference should have a clear flow of movement, including different sessions, dining and facility use.
Enhance the Attendee Experience with Comfort and Flow
Simple factors such as signage, temperature control, catering placement, and rest areas affect overall event satisfaction. These simple factors, as stated, enhance the visual appeal and overall atmosphere of the venue and conference, enhancing participation excitement, leading to higher engagement and participation, and overall event satisfaction.
Pre-event, ensure you have a run sheet that maps attendees’ movement throughout the day to prevent congestion and fatigue. For example:
- break up a long, theatre-style presentation with breakout groups for discussions, questions or sharing of ideas.
- follow a long presentation or idea session with a coffee/snack break
- utilize outdoor spaces for fresh air and add cocktail-style seating to encourage interaction between participants.
- we encourage movement through the day to prevent congestion and fatigue, and increase open discussion and information retention.
Remember that the way your event is presented is a reflection of your company and brand image. Ensure every element is thought through and incorporated at a professional standard, for a positive brand perception.
Include Opportunities for Networking and Interaction
As already noted, how you lay out your conference will depend on your event goal. Another element of your goal is to identify whether it aligns with a formal, structured style or a casual, informal style. A formal networking structure is organised and premeditated with roundtable discussions, speed networking, and topic-based discussions. Planning for these activities is a great way to ensure that people interact at a formal function. An informal networking structure creates a comfortable space for people to interact, such as coffee breaks, lounge areas, meals and social events. It’s a natural and authentic way for people to connect. A great and dynamic event will incorporate both forms of networking.
Create opportunities for networking and interaction in your event layout, for example, networking lounges, interactive breakout sessions, seating style, and social events within the conference, such as a post-event dinner or party.
Any type of networking and interaction you can provide to your conference adds value to the company and participants alike. Providing a chance for colleagues, business partners or like-minded people to come together and build connections and ideas. Networking increases impact, information retention and creates a positive impression.
Navarra Venues’ flexible event spaces accommodate both formal and casual networking settings in indoor and outdoor spaces.
Incorporate Branding and Theming into the Conference Space
Visual branding, stage design, and digital signage reinforce corporate identity. Use brand colours, lighting, and branded materials to maintain a cohesive look to your conference. Use your brand guidebook when planning your event presentation to strengthen a professional image to attendees, keeping the brand top of mind throughout the event.
Navarra Venues supports conference styling and theming requests. Packages include event signage, business packs (notebook and pen), and event coordination to assist with room layout and set-up.
Measure Success and Gather Feedback After the Conference
Provide a way to keep in touch with attendees and follow up post-conference, this can be through email, survey, or engagement data. By keeping in touch, you are hitting another touchpoint for your conference goals, increasing ROI and audience retention. Collect feedback and results through an online survey or via measurable, actionable tasks, for example, the number of sign-ups or added social media followers.
The insights you receive can improve future corporate events. For example, participants in a survey can answer yes or no to enjoying an activity or whether they found it insightful and what they would change for next time.
Gathering feedback allows you to optimise for your next conference, an insight into what keeps your audience engaged, content and speakers relevant to give your next conference the best chance at hitting your ROI.
Plan Your Next Corporate Conference with Navarra Venues
For a conference that converts, ensure your audience stays engaged with a well-thought-out event. Keep audiences engaged by first clearly defining your goal, style and structure. Pick the perfect venue to customise and plan for a well-flowing event that isn’t static, with breaks and discussions. The conference venue needs to be up to professional standards with technology, connectivity and facilities. Don’t forget to incorporate your branding for an overall cohesive conference. Finally, don’t forget to do post-event surveys to optimise your next conference.
Navarra Venues is a trusted partner for professional and results-driven corporate events. Explore our Corporate Events page for more information.
