Memorable Events

Memorable events don't just happen.  They are created.  Events take organization and management in order to insure success.  Small business owners are in the business of running their ventures...not event planning.  It makes sense to put your energy into running your business and allowing a professional to help you with your events.

So that brings up the question of why should I even do an event?  Face to face marketing is the highest return on investment for your marketing dollar.  This is proven time and again.  There is no better way to say thank you - to roll out a new product - or to celebrate an anniversary than with an event for your customers and supporters.  

A professional will help you set your goals and help you to identify your demographics before embarking on a marketing event for your business.  Who do you want to invite and why?  Define your goals and evaluate them at the end of the event.  Change what you need to before the next event and continue to improve the marketing and goals of each different event.  The important thing to remember is to have an event to personally connect with others.  Say thank you and you will never go wrong.  Have a great event!

Knowing When to Hire a Professional

Knowing when to hire a professional to help you with event planning is a big key to success for non-profit companies.  There are many costs associated with event planning. When a company needs to delegate event planning to a staff member, the staff finds they are unable to manage a good balance between their normal full time job and their full time event planning/marketing job. Most employees can’t work 70 hours a week to complete everything in time and stay up to date on all aspects of their jobs.   This means, when your staff members are busy working on events as their primary target, something else is not getting done.  As an executive, it’s vital that you continue on your fund-raising path.  If you have to event plan, you spend a great many hours doing event related things when you could be and should be soliciting donors, writing grants, and completing other weekly job duties that maintain the functionality of the business.  The event planning costs add up quickly!  If you spend just 30 hours on an event, at executive wages of $50 per hour, there’s a hidden cost of $1500 added to your event for every week that person is working on the event.  In that same 30 hours, you could have met with several donors and written a few grants.

It’s important to realize that non-profits do not need to skimp on their events.  Consider hiring a professional to help with things that you are not an expert at; let them do the organizing and leg work.  You can most definitely help with contacts and suggestions, direction and guidance.  Sign the solicitation letters for auction items, but let someone else do the work that you or your staff simply don’t have time to complete.  An event planner can shop around for the venue, plan the catering and the bar, as well as the entertainment, guest speakers, solicit sponsors for the event, help with the budget and staying on task to accomplish the goals of the organization.  If you consider building in a little extra into the event itself to pay for the planner, you will be saving yourself and your company a ton of money! Event planners typically do contract to contract work, instead of outrageous hourly wages. In the end what you would perhaps pay someone for working 2 weeks at executive wages, you could be putting towards an event planner who takes care of all of the details over the course of 1-12 months in advance. You will be happy that you hired an event planner, and anyone seeing the financial aspect of the company will love it too.