Top 5 Ways to Start an Event Planning Business: A Comprehensive Guide

If you are planning to start an event planning business soon, this article is going to be very helpful for you. In this article, we have mentioned some of the most useful ways of starting an event planning business.

Events offer an amazing way to connect with your target audiences, spread brand awareness, and meet new people. Whether it is a fashion brand or a company that connects job seekers with employers, organizing events is beneficial for all types of businesses.

To establish a successful event planning business, you need to have sufficient knowledge and experience in this field. Event planning is all about creativity and personalization. If you know the right method to build your event planning business, it becomes easy for you to understand if it is the right career track for you or not.

Before diving into the steps of establishing your event planning business, let us brief you about the concept of an event planning business and how it works.

What is an event planning business?

An event planning business or a company helps individuals or brands successfully plan and execute events. Such events could be anything from birthday parties, and wedding functions to corporate meetings or exhibitions.

As an event planner, you will have specific responsibilities which include the following:

• Preparing a budget for the event you are working on. 
• Following local laws. 
• Selecting a nice venue ( in case of in-person events). 
• Planning food menus, guests, attendees, transportation, seating arrangements and more. 
• Managing registrations and ticket sales when applicable. 
• Handling check-ins and check-outs. 
• Dealing with all local vendors, like photographers, decorators, designers and more.

When it comes to virtual events, requirements are different.

• Taking care of the technical needs. 
• Ensuring that all the required equipment is working properly including speakers, mic, etc. 
• Promoting the event.

The roles and responsibilities of an event planner are endless and that is why proper planning is crucial before starting an event planning business.

What are the seven stages of event planning?

Small or big, every event requires proper planning and execution. One of the most significant qualities an event planner should have is the ability to handle difficult situations and make the right decision without being stressed.

That is why if you are planning to start an event planning business, make sure you are aware of the 7 stages of event planning.

1. Start planning now: Planning is the heart of every event so no matter how far your event is, you should start planning it from now. Try to create a rough sketch of the event and include everything that you will need in it. For example, if you have a wedding function to organize, start looking for venues, decorators, designers, musicians etc. 
2. Maintain a calendar: when it comes to an event, time management is very important. To make sure that you do not forget any important part of your event, create a calendar and highlight the dates on which you plan to complete specific event-related tasks so that nothing goes out of your hands. If you have multiple events, do not forget to specify the dates on your calendar to get everything done on time.
3. Build a team: Taking up all the responsibilities of conducting an event entirely on your shoulders is certainly not a good idea. Its better to build a team to handle the event seamlessly. Look for hardworking people depending on your budget. Someone you know might have knowledge or contacts in the food section or fashion. Utilize your contacts and do research to create a perfect team for the work.
4. Contact vendors: Dealing with vendors is one of the most challenging part of managing an event. You probably need to talk to multiple vendors to get things within your budget. Its an art to convince vendors to offer you things at cheap rates and that you need to achieve.
5. Look for associated risks: it is another crucial part of the event planning business. You always need to have a Plan B in case the Plan A fails. For example, if any technical issue arises like the microphone is not working or anything like that you always need to make sure that you have an alternative option for that.
6. Get everything in writing: Written assurance is everything that matters. This is because verbal promises have no value. So it is important for you to thoroughly check your vendor contracts to ensure that nothing comes to you as a surprise on the main event day. Get all the details of your purchases and deals in writing. Starting from the number of chairs or decorating items to price breakups everything should be mentioned in your agreement clearly.
7. Get ready for the event day: When everything is planned on time and things work according to that, your big day is sure to be successful. All you have to do is to check things properly to ensure that everything is alright.

So now that you know the 7 stages of event planning, let us explain the top 5 ways to start an event planning business.

Top 5 ways to start an event planning business

1. Gain experience in this field

Before starting a business in event planning, it is essential for you to know the industry and its culture, and to achieve that you need to have sufficient experience.

Here are some of the ways you can gain experience in the field before shaping up your event-planning business:

• Join an event planning company and start working there. 
• You can also participate as a volunteer in charity events.
• Try to secure a job as an event planner. 
• Build meaningful connections in the events with people who can guide you in your business journey. 
• Closely observe the traits business owners follow and the skills they possess.

Follow the above-mentioned tips to gain experience in event planning.

2. Do a thorough market research

Market research is an inseparable part of every business to find out if the business you are planning to establish will be beneficial for you or not.

Consider the following things to initiate market research:

• If you have a plan to take up a specific type of event like birthdays or private parties, check whether the people in your locality are financially capable of handling that. 
• Similarly, you need to make sure that the business plans that you have in your mind match the cultural and religious norms of your target audiences. 
• Don’t forget to study your competitors in the market, their client base, the kind of strategies they follow etc. 
• Check competitor’s websites and their promotional strategies on social media and other online platforms.

If the answer to the first two questions is no then you need to restructure your business ideas. Moreover, the competitor’s research helps you determine if the demand for the events planning services exceeds the supply. Only after these studies, you will be able to take the first step of building your business.

3. Create a business plan

After doing thorough market research, it is time for you to make a solid business plan. Make sure you create a written document with clearly mentioned steps and guidelines that need to be flexible enough to embrace any kind of changes that might be dependent on the current situation.

Cover the following points in your business plan:

• Write down your business objectives and the goals you want to achieve through this. 
• Ascertain the number of people you want to hire to build a team for you. 
• Create a budget. 
• Mention your financial goals. 
• Build your online and offline marketing strategy. 
• Plan your expenses based on the budget you have set.

You can also take an experienced person’s help if you have someone in your contact to create the above-mentioned report.

4. Take legal advice

You must follow legal guidelines before starting your event planning business to keep it away from any lawsuits. Do proper research to know the legal procedure that you need to pass through to set up your event business.

Here are some of the common legal proceedings that you may consider to start your own business:

• Select a business model. 
• Choose a suitable name for your business registration. 
• Generate your employee identification number. 
• Get relevant licenses for your business. 
• Create an account in the bank for your business and keep it insured.

Legal policies are different for different states and business types. So it is always good to take legal advice from experts to ensure that no important legal step is missed.

5. Create a website

The event industry is highly competitive and to stay ahead of your competitors you must have a prominent online presence.

Build your event website to grab the attention of your target audiences who use the internet. When it comes to an event management website, WordPress is the best option.

This is because it is:

• Open source. 
• Scalable.
• Easy to use. 
• It offers a huge list of event management plugins. 
• Currently, it empowers more than 43% of all websites available on the internet.

Once you decide to go with WordPress building a website becomes super easy for you. WordPress is generally a free platform. However, you need to pay for the hosting server you choose. After that, choose a suitable name for your business and start working with it. To make your event planning business management easy, use WordPress event plugins that help you add various event management functionalities to your website.

As mentioned above WordPress offers a huge list of plugins and choosing the best might be confusing for you. Check out 5 best event management plugin for WordPress in 2024.

For an event planning website, we would suggest WP Event Manager as it offers a coding-free, feature-rich, and affordable solution to everyone.

It offers calendar, registration, recurring events, ticket selling, and more such features that you can add to your events website. The core plugin is free but it has more than 37+ premium add-ons that are paid. Find out more about its pricing here.

How much investment is required to start an events business?

If you have the right skills, you can start your event planning business with very minimum expenses, and that too from your home. A properly planned events business requires at least $100 of investment.

If you do not have any budget restrictions you can invest as much as you want in this business. However, if it is your first time then don’t rush, start with a small amount instead and monitor the growth.

Wrapping up

We hope that the above-mentioned ways of building an event-planning business will help you kickstart your own business. Things you need to cover include a detailed market research, experience in this field, following legal guidelines, creating a business plan and building a feature-packed website. Besides these steps, you can also rely on a WordPress plugin like WP Event Manager that automates the entire event management process online.