Event Planning? How to Benefit your Pocket!

The special events industry has grown enormously during the last two decades. The annual spending of events worldwide is estimated to be at $500 billion. It is no secret that the economic status worldwide of businesses and companies is not at its peak. Therefore, the need to keep employees and clients interested and motivated is crucial in a time like this. In addition, companies have recognized that only so much work can be conducted thru the phone, texts, and emails. This is when the ideas to create special events, seminars, meetings and/or conventions are taken into consideration. 

Now that we have established the need and importance of the production of corporate events, let's establish how an event planning company makes its revenue. According to the web article, How to Start an Event Planning Service, at entrepreneur.com, it is crucial to know that the goal in pricing a service is to mark up your labor and material costs sufficiently to cover overhead expenses and generate an acceptable profit. It is said that first time business owners often fail due to unknowingly low service rates, therefore make sure you are gaining profits from your services. 

There are two types of events; social and corporate, for our interest we will focus on corporate events. On the corporate events industry planners typically charge a fee for their services, plus a handling charge for each item they contract. Another option is charging clients a "flat fee" or a "project fee", this is often used in large events and/or when corporations want an estimated figure to stay on budget. 

Fees are generally determined by three factors. 

1.              Market Segment (Corporations- using flat fees)

2.              Geographic Location (For example, fees are higher in the northeast part of the United States)

3.              Experience and Reputation of the planning company (If you are starting out it is only reasonable to charge a lower service fee) 

This is why knowing your target market and doing your market research is so important. Most event planning companies’ price their fees-for-service using the Cost Plus Method (CPM), it involves calculating the unit cost of producing the product and adding on a target profit margin. This means, that you contract out the labor, supplies and materials involved in producing an event and then charge clients a service fee of about 10 to 20 percent of the total cost of the event, with 15 percent being a rough average. However, in order for your company to know the final net income, I advise you to produce a pro forma (for more information on Pro forma click here) this will determine how your company will make its revenue, determine expenses and much more.

Below is an info graphic of the event planning industry you might like. Enjoy. 

By: Melanie Rodriguez / Market Research 

Resources:

- http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/37892-5

-http://www.laurieco.com/html/cost_plus.html

-http://www.businesstown.com/accounting/projections-statements.asp

Out of ideas? Dive into Corporate Theater...

Corporate events and/or conventions sometimes lack innovation and creativity. It's up to event planners or convention organizers to continuously design and come up with new ideas for these types of events. After doing some research, new methods are being used by numerous companies to appeal to their employees and/or clients. Among these new methods we can find theme conventions and business or corporate theater. 

Many event and convention production companies are using business theater as a new innovative way to spice up corporate seminars, events, and/or conventions. Business or corporate theater are productions written and produced specifically to support and illustrate the theme and goals of your particular event. Agencies who actually produce this type of shows make sure they have very accurate information about the company, the employees and typical work situations. This way the shows have very realistic facts and characters, creating a very direct message. The advantage of this type of theater is that corporations have the opportunity to deliver desired messages using comedy, music or drama to their desired audience in a unique way. 

Agencies like the Killing Kompany have been consulting corporations for over 15 years.

"The Killing Kompany creates custom designed interactive training and awareness programs of any length and design for corporations and other organizations. By combining live performance by professional stage, TV and film actors with interactive audience participation, we can help make your company seminars on specific corporate problems and their solutions more provocative, unique and entertaining - and, of course, more effective.

Whether your company's goal is education, staff motivation, training, problem-solving or individual growth, we offer the most effective tool to replicate, and vividly illustrate the solutions to, the real and problematic situations your employees and managers confront in their day to day settings"

Using ideas like corporate theater can make your event or convention a one of a kind. People continuously need to be entertained and what better way to motivate, educate or problem solve with something not ordinary and fun. So next time you need to do something different, appealing and creative think out of the box. Keep looking for new ways to keep your employees and/or costumers interested with innovation and creativity. This is a great way for corporate activities to have a large number of assistance and support they deserve. So, next time you are organizing a corporate event think beyond the norm. Ideas like this will make your company stand out. 


For more information on Business Theater and companies like the Killing Kompany click here. 

Resources: 

Killing Kompany- http://www.killingkompany.com/kk01008.html

Owen Show Productions - http://www.owen.bc.ca/osp/corporate%20theatre/index.html