Taking the right steps to start your party planning business off right is essential. The success of your business depends on it.
To be a party organizer, you have to love your job passionately. Although the task is tedious, the best reward is the moment the customer tells you how happy they are, if not how satisfied they are. If just knowing that you made someone happy makes you happy, then this job is for you. Here are some tips to help you get your business off to a good start and live this new experience to the fullest and serenely.
MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE QUALITIES REQUIRED FOR PARTY BUSINESS
Before starting a party business, make sure that your personality is in line with party entrepreneur activity:
You know how to invest yourself personally, and you are passionate:
Setting up a business in events requires significant personal investment and passion.
You are rigorous:
You have to be rigorous and organized to reach your objectives and make the party successful.
You know how to resist stress:
There can be coordination problems, and the customer can be stressed. Your role is to calm things down and make the clienteles relax.
You are creative:
You have to use your imagination and surprise your customers!
You are resourceful:
When you are in charge of party organization, you should not be afraid of thankless tasks, such as looking for missing provisions, replacing an absent service provider, etc.
You have excellent interpersonal skills:
You work with people from different departments (marketing, operational).
Define your niche
Organizing events is not just about the wedding, birthday, or cultural festivals. There are also educational, commercial, or commemorative events. Choose your niche carefully, which should really suit your tastes. Being passionate is vital to practice the Party organizer profession. It requires a lot of hard work and dedication. You can choose to target just one type of event, such as baby showers, trade shows, or fairs. It depends on your degree of specialization and, again, your taste. Remember to research the market before you start so you can determine the best niche for the region you are targeting.
Get the right qualifications.
Once you’ve defined the niche that interests you, find out about the training courses to follow to carry out your project. It includes qualifications in management, commerce, business creation, and organization of events. You can train in a school and online, depending on your availability, means, and desires.
Do market research
The events industry is very competitive. Therefore, it is essential to carry out a complete market study to develop your commercial strategy. Write a business plan before setting up your event or party planning business.
This will allow you to highlight data essential to realizing your project (marketing budget, communication, and quite simply your needs to start without risk).
Target your customers
To start a business, you have to start by being interested in your future customers. Are you going to target professionals or individuals? Don’t hesitate to create typical profiles of potential customers. It will allow you to develop your marketing strategy better: knowing who you are targeting is essential. As it makes you able to understand your target consumers’ needs better or even offer them original solutions that are still little developed on the market. On the contrary, classic formulas are more suited to their way of consuming.
Get started as an event planner
The marketing part is essential: promoting your business and your activities, through all types of networks and media, will help you build a vital address book. Social networks and online media are to be favored in many cases. Don’t hesitate to use professional networks such as LinkedIn to promote your business. Also, create a website, and don’t forget to include a page dedicated to comments and testimonials. Do the same on all social networks where it is possible to engage customers in this way!
Make sure you have reliable partners
When you are an event organizer, you inevitably use suppliers and partners. Surrounding yourself well is essential because it shows your customers that you are serious and will impress them. Caterers, photographers, musicians, florists, architects, etc., are all professionals linked to the event industry that you should contact to create your “partners and suppliers” address book.
Event organizer: define your prices
It is surely one of the most difficult steps because setting a price means knowing the event’s cost clearly, even before sometimes having organized one. So be sure of your sources and expenses to establish quotes and financial plans. You will surely have to readjust your rates with experience, new partners, and rising prices. But never underestimate these rates on the pretext of attracting more customers. It is not necessarily a sign of seriousness, and you may also lose out by working a lot for little.
Also, define if you set standard rates, or if you prefer to act on a case-by-case basis. Do you want to touch modest budgets or, on the contrary, clients with substantial means? Do you want to display prices below, above, or equal to the average? How would you like to be paid by the hour, by the performance, by the month? So many questions that will need to be answered before launching your activity!