I guess, almost every one of you has heard of the Event planning business which is considerably in trend these days. The reason for its rising trend is that people like to plan their event on a prior basis. Because people don’t want to deal with imperfections, they want everything to be perfect and in place.
When was the first time, you felt that you have a keen interest in Event planning? Maybe while planning a birthday party at your home, maybe managing an event at your school, or maybe coordinating an event at your college.
Whatever be the place or an objective, you did like to plan an event and you still do.
But not sure about how to start and what amount of money it will cost you. So, don’t be tough on your thoughts just go through this blog of us. You will find every little detail on how to start an event planning business with zero money.
What is an Event planning business?
Event planning refers to managing an event which can be a convention, meeting, party, ceremony, tradeshow, activity, etc. Event planning also includes planning a budget, selecting the event site, fixing a date, managing catering, obtaining permits, choosing themes, arranging different activities, and developing unpredictable plans.
Event planning is about arranging people with the event. How we can operate people in a certain way. Making the event memorable for everyone is what an event planner aspires to do.
Event planning business refers to plan and manages events with a team of event planners who take care of every little thing an event needs. Event planning is not one men’s job, it needs a lot of planning and unconditional efforts of a team.
Types of Event planning
To start with anything, we first need to know our specialized area where we can put our efforts to make the event successful. There are different types of events which are being held at different places by different people.
A one person cannot have specialised in every kind of event. If we even try, we will not end up making a success out of it because there will be going to some area of doubt.
The event planning industry is not confined to a single event rather it is wide and consists of all kinds of events.
Following are the types of events;
- Conference– You must have heard about the conference a lot of time, but barely dig out the meaning of it. So, let me state what it means. A conference is that event where a group of people gathers to discuss a topic or any subject to exchange their thoughts and ideas on the same. A conference is not generally big, unlike a convention.
Here are a few types of the conference;
- Symposium
- Workshop
- Round-table
- Seminar
2. Corporate meetings– If you are working in a corporate, you must have an idea about what a corporate meeting is. Anyways, let’s get into its basic meaning. A corporate meeting refers to that meeting where a company holds a meeting with all the employees along with its partners for some reason. Here the role of an event planner is to convert this boring meeting into interesting with their creative ideas.
- Product launch– When a brand launches its product, they held a big event for that. It is to make people aware of the new product and its related information. It helps the attendees to recognize your company better. It automatically increases your sale and generates leads.
- Company parties– When a company earns a victory, they call it everyone’s victory. So, they celebrate it with all the employees together to enjoy the victory. For that, they plan an event that everyone can formally attend. Such an event is called company parties.
- Ceremony– You know how Indians love every ceremony whether it is an engagement or wedding, we look for a better and entertaining way to enjoy the party. So, to make sure that we don’t miss anything we hire an event planner to take care of every little detail about the ceremony.
7 step guides on how to start an event planning business
Before diving into any kind of event, you must know the steps for the same. Without any preparation or knowing what it might take, would be a completely bad idea. So, we are here to make you understand how you can start your event planning business.
- Identify your speciality
When you are starting something or planning to start, you must know what you are best at. It helps you to go with a trouble-free flow. At times, it has been seen when people don’t know what they can do best instead of doing everything, they end up creating a mess.
So, the very first step is to decide which kind of event you can do perfectly with little or more resources. Deciding the type of event would benefit you in different ways and would create less workload while arranging everything because in that case, you would be preparing for one similar event.
Speciality doesn’t come with arranging one or two events. It comes with doing a lot of events. When you have done a lot of events you must have known by the time which type of event you arrange best and you love to indulge into.
Here is the list of events you can have a speciality in when you want to start an event planning business;
- Corporate events
- Entertainment evets
- Family events
- Trade shows
- Sports events
- Product launch
- Educational events
- Career counseling events
- Charity events
- Political events
- Identify your target audience
Identifying your target audience is the next step in the process of how to start an event planning business. Without identifying the target market, you cannot proceed further in this process. Before making any move, you must know to whom you are targeting your services.
When you know, which kind of event you would pursue it become easy for you to know which kind of audience you have to target.
For example, if you are planning to arrange corporate events then you must have to target the corporates for getting an event project. Your target audience would be the corporates.
When you know that you will be arranging corporate events then you will take care of the following things;
- When the corporates ask for events
- What kind of event corporates hold?
- What type of activities takes place at corporate events?
- Who are the attendees?
- How often they hold the event
You will understand all these things when you will start working on corporate events. These things are just to make sure that you continue to get projects of corporate events.
- Create a strong business plan
A lot of you may be curious to know how other event planning businesses working so seamlessly where you are just failing at your own.
It happens when you don’t go with a plan. Without any plan, you would only see failure. So, to grow you must have a solid plan to follow throughout your event planning journey.
You can start making a plan by researching the niche you are going to follow, watching other businesses working on the same niche, understanding the scope of work, knowing the requirements of the market, etc.
Next, you can reach out to people who are in the same industry to gain more ideas about what this business is. If you never seen a business plan or never made one, you can search online for the same. You will get plenty of business plan ideas there which you can start from.
Your business plan must have a defence against future uncertainties. Following are the things your business plan may consist of;
- Your vision and mission
- Your business idea
- Your marketing strategy
- Name of your marketing team
- Your business forecasts
- Know how to market your services
Before going any further, you need to understand how you can market your services. If you are offering your services at large but barely have any idea how to market them, then your business will just remain ordinary.
Maybe it would be hard for you to market your services in the beginning due to fewer funds. But as you would go further and offer your services, you will earn money which you can use to market your services.
However, when you just start an event planning business you can use the following strategies to market your services;
- Social media– Social media is one of the effective mediums of marketing your services. A lot of people who are new in their respective businesses using social media platforms for marketing their services to a wide audience. You can create a page, use hashtags, and post consistently to reach maximum people.
- E-mail marketing- Another strategy can be e-mail marketing where you can pitch people by sending emails regularly. What you need to do is to make a list of people who may be interested in taking your services and who already have taken your services. Then next, send them emails daily and inform them about your services & any discount, coupon, offers, etc.
- Word of mouth- You can tell your family, friends, colleagues, family friends, etc that you have started a business. Then, find opportunities to work for them and show them how well you are doing so that they can help you build a portfolio. Also, they would refer you to their friends further. This is how word-of-mouth marketing would be helpful.
- Price your event planning services
When you will be settled with your niche and business plan, then you need to focus on pricing your services. Without setting any price, you would not be able to see yourself flourishing in the market. Because at the end of the day, we are working for money.
The rates may vary from event to event depending on the kind of requirements a client is having. Still, you need to have general pricing information which you can quote.
Your pricing must be as per the consultation, arranging vendors, client meetings, booking avenues, and catering, approaching interior and exteriors designers.
Also, it is important to decide whether you will charge an overall amount, hourly, or a percentage of the total budget. Further, you will have to decide whether you will take any commission for hiring caterers or booking a venue.
Generally, the event planners work on a cost-plus price strategy. Once you have settled with your pricing structure, you can offer event planning packages.
Just make sure that you come up with a fair pricing structure.
- Carry out a market research
Before jumping to launch your event planning business, always be ready with your research about the market. Researching about the market cannot be a bad idea, it will help you understand how everything is going in the market.
Following are the things you can research about;
- What is the price your competitors are offering?
- What value you are adding to your customers comparing with your competitors
- What are your unique features different from others in the market?
- Understanding your competition
- What is the new trend going on in the market?
- Start your Business
When you have done with all the steps of how to start an event planning business with no money, you can proceed to start the operation of your business in the market.
To make it work smoothly, you need to advertise your business in different places, mostly at the places where events generally take place. It will help you to reach people who may give you a project which you will manage on your own.
To go with the flow, keep the following things in mind;
- Build a network of people
- Generate leads
- Build credibility
- Use online platform
- Always take customer feedbacks
This is how you will stay in the market for a long time. Try to find more ways to make your business stable.
How Event planning business can help you grow your Small business
You know how much struggle small businesses face to build themselves in the market, where other businesses are already flourishing. To cater to their hurdles, event planning business helps them to make a better way into the market.
As a small business, you have not seen many events and you barely have an idea about any business events. Because small businesses rarely hold any events. But you must have an idea of how powerful such events can be for your business. They can unleash unlimited benefits for your business.
As one of the event planning business company, We at Traffic Tail wants you to go through the following benefits of event planning business for your small business;
- Builds Awareness
Does your audience have any idea of your existence? Do your business is ideal among your target audience? Do you have any recognized image in the market? I don’t think the answers to any of these questions are Yes.
So, to have a positive response to these questions you must have to create awareness about your business in the market. And to create that awareness you can trust the event planners; they will build awareness about your small business in the market among your target audiences.
You can hire an event planner who can plan an event for your product launch or arrange a conference with industry people. This would make your business a face among new people. They will start to recognize you as one of the working entities in the market.
It will also help you create brand awareness. Your small business needs to make people recognize your brand to make profits.
2. Know what your competitors are doing
If you are running a business in the market, then you must know what your competitors are doing. Are your competitors organizing any events? If the answer is NO, then it is the best chance for you to hold an event and make yourself visible to your target audience. It would be you who will give them a competition by putting yourself above them.
And if other small businesses are holding events, then you must start it now to give them competition and make a way for yourself in the market.
For holding events, you can hire an event planner like us who will arrange the whole event and make it a big hit. You would surely be going to earn a bunch of people who will become your leads.
3. Use a Popular Face
When you are arranging an event, how you will make people come to that event, how they will make their way towards your event. This thing is being considered by your event planner like us. We will arrange a person who will be a famous personality and would become the face of the event.
When people would know that a famous personality would be going to attend, perform, or speak at your event, then more people will come to your event.
If they will get a memorable experience at your event, they will be going to recognize you for a long period. It will benefit your small business to get the recognition it needed. They will get associated with your business and brand for a long period.
All of this is the job of an event planner, who arranges a personality or manages the event so gracefully that it would leave a mark on your audiences.
4. You get free publicity
If an event planner performs his job perfectly, your event may capture the heart of your audiences as well as it would captivate the attention of the media. In such a way, your event has chances of being picked up by a newspaper or news channel.
A good event planner knows how to make news into the media, so that your business may get publicity. Local media starve for news, so your event can feed that news to them.
Even a little publicity can do wonders for your small business. You can hire us for any event planning, we know how everything works outside the office.
5. Surety of Return on Investment
You must have gotten an idea from the above points that the event you are holding would only give you benefit. In such a case, whatever money you are spending on any event would return a profit to you.
You should not see any event as a waste of your time and money, because it is worth all the efforts you are putting.
Be sure that your event would create wonders for your small business, don’t hesitate to take that step.
If you are not sure about any event planner and how they would work, so you can find us at Traffic Tail we would not disappoint you. We have given ultimate profitable services to our clients, whose businesses are flourishing in the market.
Benefits of Event Planning business
You don’t realize your worth until you have been given support by facts. So, making it clear that the event planning business is no less than any other business, you need to understand what benefits this business is providing to society. See, do you think people would spend their time fixing a light for the event, booking a hotel, selecting a theme, or booking a catering? I think, you already know the answer. That is No. It’s a job of a different person, who takes care of all such things, who plans and organizes the whole event, which is itself a tremendous task.
So, without wasting any further time let’s dive into the benefits of this profession. Here is the list of benefits;
- Event planners have your vision– Don’t you think the people who are organizing your precious event have a vision the same as you want them to have. They work on your vision. They try to make your vision come into reality. They turn your vision into a successful party as you want them to.
We at Traffic Tail, assure our clients that we don’t cross their vision and provides the ultimate results.
2. Make things look better– There is this psychological trick which they know only to arrange things in such a way that it looks better. How they coordinate all the colors in the hall with the curtains rolling over and how they plan the activities to make the environment light. They make everyone feel special by treating them in a certain way.
They know that an event becomes successful when the people attending the event are satisfied. So, they thoroughly focus on that aspect.
3. Ultimate Passion– If an event planner is working on your event it is not because he loves his job but because it is his passion to follow what his heart calls. They bring their passion to the event. They have not started an event planning business because they want to have a job but because they want to follow their passion. They are highly passionate about whatever they do.
They don’t make this work as some sort of stress rather they enjoy the process which shows in their work. They don’t only save your time and energy but also give life to your event.
4. Ready for all the contingencies– The way the event planner works is impressive. They prepare themselves for all the future contingencies which may or may not happen. Their way of work is smooth as well as innovative. They use their experiences to each event they take and never shy away to accept what might happen against all the odds. They apply all the lessons they learn from their previous event in their present event to make it go better than the previous one.
- Satisfies your customer’s expectations– The event planner’s entire focus remains on a customer’s outlook. If a company is hiring an event planner, it must be for satisfying its customers and attracting more towards their organization. So, to make sure this wish of their employer an event planner focuses on making the customer satisfied with the event and its services.
To assure this, they put all their efforts to make the event a big hit. They arrange everything a customer may like. They ensure that there must not be any stone unturned to find faults in their event planning.
From the above benefits, you may have gotten an idea about how crucial the services of an event planner are. If you have been worked with a few event planners and not satisfied with what they are doing, you can contact us anytime. We would not let your expectations down.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. What is needed to start an event planning business?
You need the following things to start an event planning business;
- Find your specialty
- A strong business plan
- Need to know the audience
- Do market research
- Market your services
Q2. How much money do you need to start an event planning business?
You can start your event planning business with no money. For that, you can read our blog “how to start an event planning business with no money” at Traffic Tail.
Q3. What are the benefits of the event planning business?
There are so many benefits of an event planning business, a few of them are given below;
- Make things look better
- Work with passion
- Satisfies the customer’s expectations
- Ready for all contingencies
- Work on a vision
Q4. How an event planning business benefits small business?
An event planning business helps a small business in numerous ways. Following are the list of benefits;
- Build brand awareness
- Use a popular face
- Gain publicity
- Surety of Return on Investment
- Know what your competitors are doing
Q5. What types of Event planning are there?
There are different types of event planning, like;
- Conference
- Ceremony
- Corporate parties
- Corporate meetings
- Trade show
- Product launch
Q6. What does an event planner do?
An event planner does numerous jobs such as booking a venue, booking catering, selecting a theme, arranging lights, arrange fun activities, work on a list of guests, arrange media, etc. An event planner is a multi-tasker.
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