If you’re planning on starting an event planning business, then there are several things you should consider first. In order to help you understand how to start your new business, this guide puts together crucial information that can help you.

From doing your research to marketing your business, here is everything you should do before starting your event planning business.

1. Write Your Business Plan

When business owners don’t write down their business plan before launching their event planning business, that business is likely to fail. Indeed, this has already been seen many times in the industry. When you create your business plan, you’re putting together essential information about what your business entails, what your business goals are, as well as how you can reach them.

To write a business plan that you consider successful, first look at the business plans that have been created by other successful event planning businesses. You should also consider networking with other entrepreneurs in the event planning industry, who you think may be able to guide you.

You can make use of the templates and resources available online to write your business plan, but this is just the starting point. As you grow your business, you’ll need to keep updating your business plan as well. This turns your business plan into a handy guide that you can turn to when considering the future of your business.

2. Create A Marketing Plan

Anytime you enter the event management business, the marketing budget you create will be high. This will usually be at least 30% of your total business expenses, if not more. If you think this is a lot of money, consider that you’ll need:

  • A business website
  • Fliers and brochures
  • Business cards
  • Online ad placements
  • Digital marketing
  • Networking and traveling expenses

If you want to make money, then you’ll need to spend money first. In the early stages of running your business, your main priority should be securing a customer base. When you prove that you can deliver great events that are memorable, your clients are more likely to hire you again, as well as refer your services. This is when your marketing costs will start reducing.

3. Mission And Vision

Right at the beginning, write down what your boundaries are, regarding what you’re willing to do. When you’re just building your business, then rejecting clients can feel hard. But you don’t want to end up working with clients who take up more of your time, without offering you value in exchange.

You should also consider investing in small business event insurance. This is as running a business leaves you open to certain risk factors, such as getting sued by dissatisfied clients. When you have small business event insurance, you can better protect your business as well as your finances. If you would like to learn more about small business event insurance, then click here.

4. Write An Elevator Pitch

To effectively secure new clients, you’ll need a good elevator pitch. Spend a lot of time writing your elevator pitch, so you know exactly what to say when you meet potential clients.

While the name of your event planning business doesn’t have to be catchy, it does help in ensuring that people remember the name of your business.

5. Doing Market Research

When you do your market research, you’ll be able to determine how your business stands out from your competition. Do you charge the same rates as others in your industry? Or are you charging too much or too less? When you know what your competition is like, you’ll be able to position yourself better in the market, against them.

6. Learn The Local Tax Laws

Knowing what the local tax laws are can help you ensure that you abide by them. This can save you from needing to pay penalties. You should also do your research on what legal structure you want for your business. The legal structure of your business has tax implications as well.

If you choose to run your business as a sole proprietor, then you and your business will share the same legal entity. This means that if a client sues your business, they’ll be suing you directly as well. But there are other legal structures that you can choose for your business, that allow your business to be a separate legal entity. Doing your research on what these are can better help you to decide what kind of business structure would suit your event planning business.

Conclusion

Running an event planning business is a lot harder than it looks. You’ll need to do market research and competition research, and analyze the information you gather to understand how to better position your business in the market. You’ll also need to decide what business structure you want for your business, write a business plan, create your elevator pitch, and more. Even before you officially launch your business, you should do the six things mentioned in this guide first.