7 tips to reach success in the corporate event planning industry | Corporate event planning always felt like an interesting option for people looking for lucrative and not that conventional career routes. So, if you are interested in traveling, handling logistics, and organizing entertainment you will be glad to know that now when COVID-19 looks like slowing down and the business world gets back on track, event planning finally gets back on track and opens up the way for breaking in into this lucrative industry.
However, even though the corporate events industry is projected to experience a dramatic surge in the following period, favorable circumstances alone don’t automatically guarantee success. Let us take a look then at a couple of tips that should help you break in into this lucrative piece of the market and start your event planning company.
Pick a niche that suits your sensibilities the best
Most people tend to look at the corporate event industry as the narrow area mostly concerned with conferences, seminars, and trade shows. The truth, however, is that this industry is much more diverse and your overall success may depend on the niche you choose. Some of the most popular ancillary positions include office support, marketing, and sales, meeting management, education and training, and communications. All these options are still concerned with corporate event planning albeit in a more indirect manner.
Get an appropriate certification
Unlike some other industries, event planning does not offer any type of formal certification that would provide you with the necessary credentials to start your own logistics gig. With that in mind, getting any kind of standardized training the areas like hospitality and public relations does give you a certain advantage over the direct competitors. Putting aside the fact you will acquire practical knowledge you will be able to use in your career, getting a degree demonstrates grit and resilience that will be more than appreciated by your future employers.
Develop a unique style
This move might be divisive since, unlike standardized inconspicuous solutions, an event marked by a strong visual or thematic flavor will inevitably put some people off. But, the ones that find your approach appealing will more easily be turned into profitable repeat customers. So, find some gimmick that will set your company apart and start building up this loyalty. Whether you are going to utilize striking light up numbers, some specific type of location, a form of entertainment, or event structure is up to you. As long as you put out something unique you can’t go wrong.
Organize events with specific key goals and objectives
One of the neat ways to find that unique value proposition we just talked about above is to build your actions not so much around the content but rather specific key goals and objectives. Most corporate events like meetings, conferences, and even parties are organized with some objective in mind. Your goal should be to learn how to break these overreaching goals into SMART objectives (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) and offer your clients tangible, actionable results they can use for further development.
Look for sponsorship
Such relationships work to the benefit of all involved parties and they make budgeting so much easier. So, try to find a sponsor that will either back up your events financially or provide some assets you need to put them together. Even if you are not able to find these sponsors, developing mutually beneficial long-term with various vendors, contractors and performers will open the doors for lucrative discounts, joint marketing actions, partnerships, and all other forms of cooperation that can make your company run smoother and more efficiently.
Develop a healthy level of standardization
Standardization produces more effective utilization of resources, reduces production costs, allows for better quality control, and improves customer satisfaction. All these things can be emulated in your industry. Putting events together from scratch every time you get a similar request is slow and wasteful. What you should do is to write down the plants for different types of events and set agreements with vendors in place long before the clients come knocking at your doors. These plans can later be easily put into motion according to current demand.
Spend some time working in the industry
Practice makes it perfect. Unfortunately, your future company can’t allow itself to learn from its own mistakes. Because of that, it is highly recommended to spend some time working in the industry before you start your own gig. Developing your unique style or penning the standardized event plans for different scenarios is much easier when you have a safety net in form of the payroll beneath you. Also, first-hand experience can’t be augmented by any sort of formal training so this is, by far, the best way to cut out your professional skills.
We hope these few tips will help you get a general idea about what it takes to make a big break into the corporate event planning industry. Now when people have finally started traveling and meeting again, the event market is expected to experience considerable growth. Whether you are going to be able to leverage this favorable situation to your advantage or not depends entirely on you. The road ahead is long and tiresome but now you at least know where to start.
