Event Management
Typically event management is thought of as a kind of project management for medium to large scale corporate events. They take care of all the planning and make all the arrangements prior to an event including such things as transportation, hotel bookings, catering, activities and entertainment. There are a hundred things that can go wrong when you start putting together events for more than 20-30 people as many of us know from organising large family parties, weddings etc. Throw in a company budget and a need to impress and this gets exponentially harder.
Events themselves can be anything from conferences, to motivational or training trips away from the office. They may be local or overseas and services included may be as diverse as arranging visas for attendees to finding Hollywood look-a-likes.Getting into these kinds of events on an independent basis is tough even if you routinely run them for your current employer. If you have no experience then the best thing that you can do is put together, and promote a newsworthy event of some description to prove that you have the ability to see something through.
Have a look at www.citysuperstar.com for an idea of the kind of scale that I am talking about. They are trying to set up a London-wide singing competition with heats run for each London Borough and then an overall final. They have enlisted the support of many celebrities and are looking for funding from local government to help get the event off the ground. The level of planning will be immense as will the rewards if they pull it off.
Once you have a track record of a number of smaller events, or one headliner it should be easier to get in front of large organisations and pitch for their business. Most sales organisations have incentive related events for their staff that require a lot of organisation and administration. You should be prepared to pitch a number of ideas within a set budget and give an idea of how much time and resources will be required to deliver.
In terms of marketing, you are unlikely to be able to just call the likes of IBM and speak to the right person at the right time, you will need to promote yourself and/or your company in a way that will get the right people to notice you.
Ideas include: -
Doing interviews for periodicals, radio and TV
Organising bigger events
Write a book on running your big event
Offer to speak at industry functions
Build a website with some kind of community involvement
Getting into the media is strangely not as hard as you might think. Most radio stations and newspapers, and even some TV stations are constantly looking for news articles and items that will interest their viewers. If you have a story of rising from obscurity to fame through a project that you set up or ran there may well be a lot of interest at a local level and this can quickly snowball if the larger networks are short of news, or if the response to your story is particularly positive. Regardless of how much exposure you get, keep newspaper cuttings and recordings of broadcasts to show potential future customers.
If you have only run small events to date then set yourself a goal to run something that will catch the eye of the media. You may need to be creative in terms of both what you do, and how you fund it but if you can pull off something newsworthy then you are backing the game as far as interviews and other publicity.
Once the initial press coverage has died down a book release, or even a home edited documentary of how you put your even together may help to generate a second round of publicity and get you noticed by those who missed you the first time round. If you are not much of a writer then focus more on images and “Pad” them with a little writing, or hire a ghost writer to work with you.
Once you have a resume that can get you noticed then you should have no problem getting yourself booked to speak at industry events. If you buy industry related magazines these are usually publicised well in advance, and you may also find out about events that are being planned well in advance through industry related websites and forums. Offering to speak is not a big problem; I have managed to get myself booked (free) at a number of events over the years including an Insurance Industry event in Vietnam during my 18 month stint there. Most conference type events are crying out for speakers with approximately 45 minutes to an hour of material.
Having a website that will appeal to people in sales related industries can be great for garnering feedback on what the sales people like and dislike about their work, the incentives they are sent on etc. More importantly some of the top sales people that frequent these types of sites will go on to be the managers who may hire you in the future.
Take a look at sites like www.asalesforum.com to see what I mean.Your stock in the case of this business is the events that you have successfully run, and how well remembered you (or your events) are by those that attended. If you have no relevant experience but feel this is a business you would like to get involved in then either go and work for an established event management company, or set up and run a large scale public event.
If those options are both too high risk, then hire someone with the relevant flair and experience, offer them a share of the profits and publicise the heck out of what you are trying to do.
This is a notoriously tough business to get into, and the glamour is mostly superficial but if you are going to have a go, do so with pizzazz.
Profit margins can range from marginal to huge. Make sure you run your numbers several different ways to make sure you don’t leave your shirt in the game.