Craft an Event Business Plan to Achieve Your Goals

Whether you’re dreaming of scaling your pop club nights to a national audience or expanding your workshop program with new classes, a business plan is the best way to grow your events. In fact, according to Harvard Business Review, entrepreneurs who create a robust business plan are 16% more likely to achieve viability than other would-be business owners. 

As an event creator, your business plan will help you to set out your vision, your mission, and the path you want to take to hit your long-term goals for your events business. Discover our step-by-step guide to kick-starting your success with your business plan roadmap. 

Key takeaways

• When beginning your business plan, keep your vision and mission front and center by defining your core values and your long-term objectives

• Make sure to lay the legal foundations for your business by registering your name, choosing a structure, and setting up relevant business accounts

• A key part of a good business plan is financial planning, so make sure to set aside time to create a budget and a strategy to source funding from partners

Crafting your event planning vision and mission

First up: the big picture. What is your vision for your business? What is your mission? These two pillars should be at the heart of your business plan — guiding every decision from marketing messaging to sponsor partnerships.  

To define your vision and mission, make sure to consider what makes your events business unique. Do your values set your business apart from your competitors? What do you do differently? How do your long-term objectives compete with other similar events? How do your values and mission help you stand out? 

Setting a clear vision and mission for your business will help you identify your unique selling point, distinguish your business from your competitors, and make strategic decisions to grow your events. 

Vision: identifying core values

What are the core values of your events business? Your values — or your vision — are key to crafting your business plan, and they are centered on finding your ‘why’. To identify your values, there are three key questions you might find helpful to consider:

• Passion: What is most important to you and your events business? 

• Purpose: Why do you want to create events?

• People: What do you want your events to give your audience? 

When answering each question, remember to be as specific as possible, keeping your USP front and center. It might be important to your business to create inclusive LGBTQ+ spaces for educational purposes, or you might want to run arts events to engage local youth groups. 

No matter what your business is focused on, your core values should reflect your passion, purpose, and the people you’re hoping your events will connect with. 

Mission: setting long-term objectives

What are the long-term objectives of your events business? Your goal — or your mission — is a key driver of your business plan. A big part of an effective plan is taking a big-picture look and setting a long-term goal, so it’s good to be creative and ambitious here. 

There are a number of things you might want to consider for your future (you may find it helpful to set a specific timeline for each of these questions, such as a year or five years): 

• What kind of events do you hope to be running?

• What type of audience do you want to have connected with?

• What kind of brands do you hope to work with?

• What kind of markets do you want to have broken into?

• How much revenue do you hope to make?

• How many team members do you want to employ?

Setting these longer-term objectives can then help to give your business a clear direction — and you can then begin to create a clear roadmap for your success. 

Laying the foundation: legal and structural considerations

Next in your business plan, you’ll need to focus on the fine print. This includes setting the right legal and structural foundations for your business, from registering your business name to acquiring permits. Once the foundations are laid, you then have stable ground on which your events business can flourish. 

Selecting a business name and registration

From company structure to domain names, there are a number of things you may want to consider when setting up your event management business:

• Business name: Choose an event business name that is easy to remember and reflects your events — whether that’s a nod to their subject matter, content, or style. When choosing your name, you may also want to check that no competitors have similar names, and that yours is available as a domain name (as well as social media handles).

• Business structure: Will your company be registered as a sole proprietorship, an S corp, or an LLC? Your business structure will impact your business’s legal liability and tax obligations, so make sure to research the different types — and which would best suit your business — thoroughly beforehand.  

• Registration: Next, register your business with the relevant local governing body (this may vary depending on your state) detailing your business structure, name, address, and your personal details. You’ll also need to apply for an Employer Identification Number (EIN) online, a unique number assigned by the IRS. Your EIN helps to establish your business’ legal identity for tax purposes. 

• Bank accounts: Once you have your EIN, you’ll be able to set up a business bank account. You may also want to hire an accountant to assist with your business’ finances and tax. 

• Digital profiles: Next, create an online presence for your brand by setting up social media profiles, email addresses, and a website domain. 

Understanding local laws and regulations

Once your business is legally registered, you’ll now need to familiarize yourself with local laws and regulations. Staying up to date on permits, licenses, and laws on event planning and hosting is essential to the success of your business — not to mention your budget — so make sure to set some time aside to run this through. You may find it helpful to hire a business adviser, or contact your local authority, to assist you. 

• Registration of business entity: You will need to register your business with your state and comply with any state-specific requirements. This may involve filing paperwork such as Articles of Incorporation, Articles of Organization, or Partnership Agreements, depending on your business structure, as well as paying any necessary fees. 

• Insurance: Depending on your business — and the types of events you may be running — you may need to obtain certain types of insurance, such as public liability or employers’ liability insurance. 

• Licenses: To run your business, you will need to apply and pay for various business licenses (for instance, professional licenses, industry-specific licenses, and business activity permits). This will vary from state to state, and the nature of your events, but might include: a noise permit, an alcohol license, a seller’s permit, or a premises license.

In-depth market analysis for event creators

Market analysis is an essential component of creating a successful business plan. Not only will it help you to gain a deep understanding of the current events landscape but, more importantly, how your business fits into it. There are two steps to strategic market analysis: firstly, analyzing your competitors, and secondly, analyzing how your business can stand out. 

Analyzing competitor strategies

To start your in-depth market analysis, take a look at your competitors and their event offerings, considering:  

• Events: What events do your competitors offer? How do they differ from your offering? Make sure to begin your analysis by taking a closer look at the events themselves: their format, structure, content, and attendance — and how successful these elements are. Where can you take inspiration from their events and where can you compete?

• Marketing: What are your competitors’ marketing strategies? Whether they use social media marketing or influencer partnerships to create a buzz around their events, pay close attention to the channels they use, the content they produce, and the engagement they receive. This can help you sculpt and refine your own marketing strategies: you might choose to replicate certain posting formats or engagement tactics and add your own unique spin. 

• USP: What are your competitors’ USPs? Whether they have access to a particular roster of high-profile guest speakers or a specific venue or brand partnership, take note of what they offer that no other business in the space does. From there, you can begin to map out the gaps in the market — and understand where your business can compete. 

Identifying your niche

Once you have analyzed competitor strategies, it’s time to identify your own niche. To do this, consider your points of difference. How does your event differ from your competitors? What are you able to offer that they are not?

You may find it helpful to identify your niche by considering the three categories above — the event itself, your marketing strategies, and your USP. For instance, your niche may be creating an event program with a unique line-up of artists, or catering to a specific demographic that your competitors do not. 

You might also want to consider other ways to differentiate your event from your competitors by tapping into your existing connections and networks — such as existing relationships with guest speakers, performers, or venues — to help your event stand out from the competition. 

Financial strategies for event planning entrepreneurs

Next, your business plan should include an overview of your finances. The financial section of your business plan should forecast projected sales, expenses, cash flows, a budget, and funding sources. 

As an event creator, this is one of the most important sections of your business plan as it can be used to attract the attention of potential investors and partners (in fact, a study at the University of Oregon found that businesses with a written plan are far more likely to get funding). 

Budgeting and managing cash flow

Creating a robust event budget is key to good financial planning. On your business plan, you will need to detail your projected expenses — based on quotes you have obtained from various suppliers — for the costs necessary to run your event. This might include:

• Venue hire 

• Catering costs

• Merchandise costs

• Speaker or performer fees

• Staffing costs

• Technology or equipment hire

• Marketing costs (printed materials and paid advertising) 

• Event management tools and software

• Event permits 

You may also want to consider one-off costs of setting up your business, such as any relevant business insurance, website domain purchases, office hire, and team member salaries. 

Funding your event planning venture

If you need funding from long-term sponsors, your business plan will also need to detail these partnerships. Strategic event sponsorship can be a great way to receive an initial round of funding to help you create your first events and offer valuable promotional opportunities. 

First, you will need to find the right sponsors for your business. To do this, consider brands or organizations that share your core values, and share a similar vision for the event. You might approach brands already popular with your target audience, or aim to widen your reach by approaching organizations with connections to the demographic you want to target. 

The key to attracting sponsors is creating a valuable offer in return for funding. In your business plan, you may want to consider detailing sponsorship packages for potential partners, outlining what you can offer in exchange — whether this is cross-promotional opportunities, merchandise collaborations, or access to your networks. 

Marketing and promotion in the event planning sector

How will you spread the word about your event? Outlining your marketing strategies is a key part of any business plan — and especially so for events. Crafting compelling marketing messaging is reliant on building a strong brand identity and online presence, as well as creating valuable partnerships for cross-promotion. 

Creating a standout brand identity

Your brand identity is one of the first things you’ll need to create and define as part of your business plan. From a memorable logo to a unique tone of voice, your brand identity should be instantly recognizable, unique, and easy to remember. 

It should also reflect your event’s style and atmosphere — as well as your core values as a business. There are plenty of factors that play a part in creating your event branding, and they generally fall into two key categories:

• Visuals — such as fonts, graphics, images, videos, and color schemes

• Tone — such as tone of voice, messaging, emoji use, and language use

Building an online presence

Once you have created a strong brand identity, it’s time to use this to build an online presence to promote your event. This might involve building a website and/or creating social media profiles (such as X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok). 

The key to creating a strong online presence is consistency. Make sure you keep your event branding in mind when crafting your messaging and visual assets online, using consistent emojis, logos, and graphics across all channels and platforms. 

It’s also important to make sure attendees can navigate your digital presence easily — with easily accessible contact information, as well as links to buy tickets and learn more about your business. 

Networking and partnerships

As well as engaging attendees with compelling marketing strategies, another way to expand your reach and promote your event is to connect with other brands, businesses, and organizations. 

This can be a powerful marketing strategy as partnerships allow you to access wider networks, exchange value, and boost your business’ credibility. To find potential partners, try attending event planner networking sessions — either in your industry, or tailored to other business owners — and seek out potential collaborations. Whether in person or online, networking can be an effective way to grow your business and market your events. 

Operational tactics for seamless event execution

The next step of your business plan creation is to focus on operations. Under this section, it’s a good idea to work out how you can best streamline your business operations and processes — from software implementation to task delegation. 

Streamlining processes and services

The key to an effective business model? Smooth processes and strong time management. Whether you’re opening better communication channels between your teams or using data to improve your marketing efforts, streamlining your processes is a great way to boost efficiency and save resources.

To do this, keep track of where you and your team spend the most time, such as ticketing administration or manual attendee survey tracking. Next, look for ways you might be able to save time by streamlining these processes. For instance, could new ticketing software save your team time on manual tasks? Are there survey reporting tools you could use to automatically pull data from attendee surveys into digestible, actionable reports?

Hiring and team building

One of the best ways to streamline your processes is to hire a skilled team. Delegating each team member a specific task — whether that’s admin, PR, or marketing — with measurable outcomes will help your event planning to stay on track. 

In your business plan, make a list of each team’s responsibilities, deliverables, and deadlines. To streamline your planning, you might find it useful to hold regular team meetings to check in on status updates and roadblocks to keep your event moving forward. 

Preparing for growth: scaling your event planning business

Thinking ahead is a vital part of being an event creator — and so creating a roadmap for future growth is an important part of your business plan. Whether you’re planning ahead for six months or five years, your plan is a great space to map out where you’d like to be, by when — and how to get there. 

Evaluating expansion opportunities

To grow your business, you may choose to focus on your existing event offering — or expand it. This decision will need to be strategically made and will vary depending on the nature of your events, but you may want to consider the following expansion opportunities: 

• Frequency: Is there scope to run your events more often? The first step to considering this expansion opportunity is to assess your current event popularity. Take a look at ticket demand and audience appetite. Is there enough demand for your event to run every fortnight, for example, instead of once per month? 

• Scale: Is there scope to expand the scale of your events? Could you look into hiring larger venues with bigger capacity to accommodate more guests? As with increasing the frequency of your events program, you’ll need to consider ticket demand and audience numbers for this expansion strategy too. 

• Location: Is there a possibility to expand your current offering to national or international events? Make sure to explore possible national and overseas partnerships with venues and promoters when considering this. 

• Content: Is there a possibility to expand the event offering itself? For example, increasing the number of workshops, screenings, or talks — or expanding the number of guest performers involved?

Implementing advanced technologies

One of the best ways to grow your business is to utilize technology. This will help you save time so you can allocate your resources where you need them most: scaling your events. Event planning software and tools — such as meeting software or email tools — can help you streamline your organization. 

You may want to save time and resources on the following: 

• Ticket management — for example, software to automate table reservations, guestlists, and ticket capacity 

• Meeting admin — for example, using AI-powered tools to take meeting minutes, or meeting software to send reminders beforehand 

• Marketing — for example, using social media apps to schedule marketing posts, or using email tools to schedule email campaigns

• Attendee communications — for example, using an advanced CRM to automate attendee contact uploads 

Risk management and insurance for event planners

Whether you’re preparing a back-up plan for adverse weather conditions or a strategy for coping with overcrowding, paying close attention to risks and roadblocks is key to running a safe event. 

There are many elements to creating an effective contingency plan, including conducting a thorough risk assessment, creating actionable solutions, and taking out the right insurance policies. Take a look at some tips on risk management below. 

Identifying potential risks

Planning ahead is a great way to give your team clear solutions to any potential challenges, so you can navigate any roadblocks as smoothly as possible. To do this, identify any potential risks involved in running your event — and then work with your team to create solutions. These might include:

• Technology failures: a laptop might malfunction during a hybrid Q&A event; the solution here might be to have a back-up device (such as another laptop, or an iPad), or to hire technicians to have on standby during the event 

• Adverse weather conditions: an outdoor festival may be affected by wet weather; the solution might be to provide extra coverage by way of extendable gazebos for guests to stay dry

• Staffing shortages: if a staff member calls in sick on the day of the event, you might be understaffed; one solution to this would be to have on-call staff on hand, or working with the venue to see if their staff may be able to assist 

Choosing the right insurance policies

To run events as a business, you’ll need to obtain the correct insurance policies to make sure your events run as smoothly and safely as possible. The insurance you need may vary depending on your business and the types of events you’re hoping to run — but you’ll find the most common insurance policies for events in the US below: 

Commercial general liability insurance

Commercial general liability insurance is designed to protect you, your business, and your event against common claims for injury, illness or accidental damage from the public. 

As an event creator, it’s your responsibility to make sure health and safety measures are in place for attendees — but, in the event of something happening beyond your control, this insurance helps protect you by covering claim costs. 

Worker’s compensation insurance

If you’re employing others to help run your event — such as caterers, bar staff, or cleaners — you will need to take out worker’s compensation insurance. Otherwise known as employers’ liability insurance, this policy is designed to protect employers against the cost of compensation claims should an employee become injured or sick at work.

Commercial property insurance

If you’re operating your events business from an office space, you may want to consider opting for commercial property insurance. This will protect your physical property from unexpected events, such as weather damage, theft, and vandalism. Some policies also include contents insurance to protect items such as office equipment and furniture.  

An effective business plan helps you to define a clear vision for your business, set long-term objectives — and create a clear, actionable roadmap on how to achieve your goals. From marketing strategies and financial planning to insurance policies and risk management, a written business plan is key to achieving success as an event creator. 

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I start an events business?

To start an events business, you’ll need to research the market thoroughly and identify your own business niche. Begin by researching the market thoroughly, form a strategy for your company’s success, comply with legal regulations and then seek funding. You’ll also need to register a relevant domain name for your website and set up social media accounts to start creating an online presence. 

What are the key components of a successful event planning business plan?

A successful event planning business plan should include five key things: a clearly outlined mission and vision; a comprehension of the market and potential growth areas; financial objectives; marketing strategies with ways to promote and establish brand identity, and tactics for effective operations. 

How can I identify my niche in the event planning industry?

To identify your area of expertise in the event planning business, you will need to conduct extensive market research. After this, make sure to consider the potential gaps in the market to see where your business can satisfy demand. To find your niche, you may also want to focus on your USP and your existing connections to performers or venues. 

What legal structures are available for an event planning business?

When it comes to an event planning business, the primary legal structures employed are sole proprietorship, partnership, and corporation. All three offer different levels of protection as well as unique benefits when organizing events. Make sure to conduct your research into different business structures to set up your business correctly.