So you’re thinking about creating an event organizing business? Not only has there never been a better time to do it, but we have the expertise to help you get started.
Events lie at the heart of what we do at SpeakerHub, and our entire business is built around connecting speakers to event organizers. One of the biggest challenges of organizing an event has always been to find the right speakers, which is where we come in.
But of course, there’s a lot more to creating an event organizing business than that, and that’s where today’s article may help.
No matter what kind of business you’re working on, you’ll need to create a business plan. This outlines everything from your target audience to the specifics of how your business will operate and the amount of investment it will need. If you’re planning on working with investors or taking out a bank loan, you’re going to need a business plan. Even if not, you can check everything you do against the plan to make sure that you’re moving in the right direction.
They say it’s not what you know but who you know, and that’s particularly true for an event organizing business. A black book is a colloquial term for either a physical or digital book in which you store the contact details of your professional network. As we said earlier, a large part of your role is going to center around finding the right speakers for your events, and that’s one area where your black book is going to come in handy.
If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that online events are no longer just nice to have – they’re here to stay. Even with restrictions lifting around the globe, and governments urging people to get used to living with COVID, it’s still going to be important to be able to organize a decent online event. As a new business, being able to carry out online events will also help you stand out from the competition, especially those companies that have been around for a while and are maybe stuck in their ways.
Niching down will help you to specialize in certain areas so that you become the go-to company in your target industry. Building on this, one option is to specialize in online events, but that’s only one of many avenues that are available to you.
You can also specialize in certain industries or certain types of in-person events, such as only doing conferences or corporate team-building events. But if you’re going to do that, sometimes partnering with a company is a good idea. For example, TeamBonding can help you facilitate the best charity team building activities for your clients. By selecting and dominating a niche, you can also charge higher rates for your services, because people will be willing to pay more to work with the best in that area.
Nothing brings events to life like video footage, and so you’ll want to consider creating videos of the events that you work on so that you can show them off to potential clients. You’ll want to, slowly but surely, build a portfolio of the events that you’ve worked on, and using video to do this can be a great way to show off what you do and why people choose to hire you.
No single person can do everything, and if you try to do so, it’s a sure-fire way to burn out. There’s a golden rule that many business owners follow in which they only do what only they can do. If there’s a job that someone else can handle and that your personal expertise isn’t required for, consider delegating it to that person or even outsourcing it if you don’t have the expertise in-house. The gig economy and freelancing sites like Upwork and Fiverr mean that it’s now easier than ever to hire a helping hand.
This follows on from the last point because it’s unlikely that you’re going to want to hire a full-time accountant when you’re first getting started. Finding a good accountant is important because the finances behind running a business will quickly get complicated, especially with the event industry where there are all sorts of expenses to be paid and documented. Sure, you could do it all yourself, but why would you? Your time is better spent elsewhere.
Very few businesses reach the point at which their products sell themselves and there’s no need for them to carry out marketing. Even for those that do, they still need to get the ball rolling by launching some initial marketing campaigns to seed their messaging and get the word out. Don’t make the mistake of letting marketing take a back seat when you get busy, because there’s a risk that you’ll finish all of your client work and have to wait for your marketing to ramp back up before you can start another project.
When your events are live and in progress, it goes without saying that you’ll want to attend them to make sure they run smoothly and that you’re on hand to iron out any last minute issues. One thing that many event organizers forget, though, is to chat to the attendees to find out what they like and what they don’t like about the event so that you can improve for the future. You should also remember that you never know when one of those attendees might want to put on a similar event of their own and will think of calling on your expertise.
We hope these tips have been useful for you in planning to start your event organizing business. Now it’s over to you so that you can put what you’ve learned today into practice. The good news is that with the tips that we’ve shared, you’re off to a solid start.
As always, we’d love to keep the discussion going, so be sure to share your thoughts in the comments. You can also follow us on social media or keep your eyes peeled here for further updates. We’ll see you soon!
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