When you’ve had so much experience when it comes to planning events successfully, and you have developed your loyal fan base, and you’ve maxed out your current market, expanding your business and mastering your next market can be the next best thing for your career.
Expanding your event planning business can be a great risk if you fail to make a connection between your new attendees and your local team members. Building a relationship with the event attendees, the local community and the local city itself will help sustain your business. Here are the 5 partners you need to have on the ready when expanding your event to another city.
1. Law enforcement
The team of law enforcement can help you think through any problems that may arise in advance. They can assist you in how much security you will need for the event. They can also help you if there is a need for any street closures or detours. You can also check with them if there were any other events that had issues in the past.
You can also reach out to the authorities and ask them what you and your team can give back to the community where you will be holding the event. You can also talk to them and ask them for a debriefing after the event. You can also send them important updates monthly about your upcoming event. That way, you will be able to build rapport with the authorities and this can deepen your relationship with the new locality you’re expanding your business on.
2. Medical and emergency response teams
When holding an event, it is important to have medical and emergency response teams present, especially if it’s a bigger one. These teams can help you out in planning and think through possible situations that may happen on the location of your event. Example, if you’re planning to have a summer festival, you should be prepared for heat-related emergencies.
Emergencies cannot be predicted, and we can’t really control it, but you can always be prepared and be ready on what you can do when things go wrong in your event. The local medical and emergency teams can help you keep your event running smoothly in case of emergencies.
3. Partner in Event Production
You can look for a local partner that can guide you in the right direction when it comes to planning your event. There may be localities that have specific laws when it comes to putting up posters for your event. When you miss this out, your team might be wasting a huge amount of time on marketing strategies that are not applicable in your new target market.
A local event production partner can help you in understanding local laws and suggest what would be good for the event, from the best food to making a deal with sponsorships. This can be quite an investment, but it will be worth it. Working with someone locally can also help you spread the word about your event. They know local social influencers who can get the word out and attract more attendees for your event, plus they can help you discover prospects for partnership.
4. Staff Onsite
Most probably, you would not have enough staff to send over to a new location for an event. To make sure that you have trained staff that you can count on during the event, you can go for local contractors to help you out during the event. These are great substitutes instead of getting full-time staff.
You can look for freelancers that are verified by organizations. These contractors have already been trained and background checked so you need not stress out on logistics and you can spend more time on planning for your event.
5. Sponsors
Partnering with local or national known brands will help build your credibility in a place that has not have heard of you yet. There is a possibility that your possible attendees do not know you or your event yet and would then think twice about going to your event. These major sponsors can help promote your event on their social media pages.
When you’re ready to make the big step of expanding your event to a new city, you need to keep in mind what made you successful in the beginning. Most often, it’s the community of attendees and partners that you are working with.
