Know-How Exchange : Strategy

I would begin with people you know from your HR days.

(Wait, you HAVE planned meetings/events before right?)

Word of mouth is the best way to start an event planning business.

Start visiting venues and getting names of banquet directors and and caterers and things like that. You'll get a lot of good education from them and you'll need them when you land an account. You won't have time to search for venues. You'll need suggestions right away.

Michael

Given your field, you have a geographic niche.

Here are some more questions to get you thinking:
For-profit or non-profit? Public or Privately-owned? Are the parties for morale-building? Client-building? Associated with a convention? Service or product? Centralized or distributed locations? Age of company? Industry?

Since you've already planned events for some corporate and religious retreats you can start out by targeting companies that are most like these companies. You can develop your stories around how you helped them solve their event planning issues in a way that will resonate well with your initial target market. Hopefully, these organizations will be willing to provide references.

This strategy should make starting your new business much easier and help it feel much more natural to you. Later, after you've established the business, you can move into new niches.

Good luck!

Melissa

I was a corporate event manager for several years. Your target group of small companies may not be right. Large companies outsource event planning at least as much, if not more, than small companies. Small companies are less likely to host corporate events, and the events the do are smaller. Sometimes they have an office manager or a sales assistant plan their events.

How long have you done event planning? I would recommend working in the position for at least a few years before starting a business. I'm not trying to sway you from your passion, but each time you do an event (no matter how hard you work), you learn a bunch of things from making mistakes. It's a lot better to make these mistakes under someone else's wing. When you are running the show, if it's not perfect, the client may leave you forever. And in this business, you want lifetime clients because of the effort in securing new clients.

In any case, planning a corporate event for 50 people is much different than for 3,000. Also, the range of responsibilities can vary for any size event. For example, some event planners only do logistics and contract negotiation. Some do event strategy, securing speakers and sponsors, managing a vendor showcase, and even helping to create the content for sessions.

I've done the planning and I've hired planners. In my experience, there are many planners that can do logistics. But not a lot of planners that understand business objectives well enough to manage the event (and budget) like a marketer would do. So, if you are able to combine the event planning with your particular business strategy experience, that could be a great niche. For example, how about incentive events & travel?

The first thing is to develop a strategy and an action plan. Providing you have those already I would recommend:
1) Look back to your College mates and in which business they are now and if they fall into your strategy put them at the top of your list.
2) Have your tried your social network on the web?
3) Are you a member of a Club. Golf? Tennis? Pick the name of the business people there.
4) Talk to your father, uncles, aunts, sisters, brothers, cousins and if they have business acquaintances try them too.
5) Look at the advertisers in the newspapers. They believe in marketing communications and your business falls into that industry. Get the name of their Marketing Managers and put them in your list too.
I guess the above gives you a good beginning,
Good luck!

Hello,
I would start by further defining your target market, even developing a specific industry or seasonal niche. For instance, if you have contacts in the hospitality or event-planning industries, ask them specifically which types of events they see on a frequent basis (ie: biotechnology and high-tech companies are always setting up conferences and events for their employees, clients, prospective investors, etc.)

Once you have that list narrowed down, find out who you know in those fields, and who you know that can connect you to others in those fields.

Develop a strong profile with a large contact list on a social networking site such as LinkedIn or Facebook, and leverage those relationships.

Promote your portfolio of photos and testimonials from past events you've planned (even if you weren't paid for them) on those sites, or utilize a photo-sharing site such as flickr to link to from your profiles.

Go back to your past contacts, and see if they can get you in the door with any referrals. I would also suggest joining a professional networking organization such as BNI to further develop your referral business.

And every time you plan and implement a new client event, take plenty of photos, ask for testimonials from the clients, and continue to promote through the avenues mentioned above.

I hope this was helpful for you,
Melissa

If interested in getting a name out, our Littleton Public School has a Coffee and Klenex the morning the kids return in August, it could be considered a donation to a non-profit (our PTO). email me for more info if interested....... ltbomy@comcast.net

Network (which is where I failed), Look at www.dtcbpw.org, www.campexperience.com, Colorado Chamber of Commerce, www.successabwa.org, realtors do events and may use your service to make an open house more special