Event Planning Series - Event Management (Part I)
- Alex Genadinik
- Jul 16, 2024
- 4 min read
“Quality means doing it right even when no one is looking.”
~ Henry Ford
1. Event venue
A venue can be very costly, not only in the dollar amount to rent the space but also costly in terms of your time and effort to find and secure the location. Researching, contacting different venue managers, negotiating, scheduling (and rescheduling), and many more organizational details all take time, which significantly adds to the overall expense of getting a venue. Therefore, be sure that you set reasonable venue targets, or better yet, start by exploring if there are any free options for your event.
The most common free option is to host your event outside. While this is not a possibility for all events, it works great for a variety of events like exercise events, some hobby or interest groups, city tours, small shows like theater or music in the park, nature sightseeing, pub crawls, or food tours. Hosting your event outdoors is often the easiest way to go since you don’t have to struggle through the minutiae of securing an actual venue. Plus, an outdoor event can give you extra marketing because people passing by might see your fun gathering, inquire about what is happening, and become attendees themselves. You just need to find a meeting point that makes sense, secure any permits if necessary, and make backup plans in case of adverse weather.
Even if the events you host do not immediately seem like a good fit for outdoors, give it some thought. You might come up with a creative solution that could make it more enjoyable for your attendees, save you money on the venue, and even give you a unique marketing angle because hosting your event outside might make it more unique.
The second option to get a free venue is to host your event in a coffee shop, restaurant, or bar. Those venues like when you bring people into the establishments, especially during off-peak hours. During peak hours, they are usually full, but during off-peak hours they are often empty. If you can bring 5-20 people to their business during off-peak hours, they might offer group discounts or other perks and gladly host your event. A prime example of this is a comedy club that will promote a comedy show for free admission but require a two-drink minimum per guest.
The problem with this venue strategy is that most events take place during weekends or evenings when most people are off from work; however, that’s usually peak hours for coffee shops, restaurants, or bars. So, the challenge becomes either finding a venue that will accommodate your event during peak-hours or possibly sacrificing attendance numbers and hosting during non-peak hours in order to get a specific venue. This will require you to do some research and to reach out to the owners or managers of these establishments and try to negotiate something that is mutually beneficial to both parties.
Another strategy to get a free venue is to find a company that targets the same clients that your events attract and get the company to offer conference room space in exchange for promotion. If your event takes place in the evening or on a weekend, most of the company staff will be out of the office, your events won’t interrupt their work, and the meeting rooms will be available. Companies often welcome events in their office spaces because it gives them extra promotion.
To find companies willing to offer office space for promotion, network in your industry and reach out to managers at companies that target customers similar to your event attendees and work out a deal to get free event space in exchange for promoting that business. Sounds similar to a sponsorship deal we discussed earlier, right?
As your events grow, you may need more space than office conference rooms can offer. Once you begin to need bigger spaces, you’ll need to rent a venue. The most common locations are hotel ballrooms. Hotels have a variety of rooms that can accommodate a large range of event sizes. The challenge is paying for that space in a way that keeps your events profitable. Hopefully, by then you will have fine-tuned your monetization strategies. You can also negotiate venue prices by asking for a bulk discount. For example, if you plan to run multiple events, you can ask the venue manager to give you a better per-event price if you use the same venue for a few of your events instead of just one. You can also get a discount at a hotel if you purchase a number of rooms if you know that some of your attendees will be staying at the hotel.
Luckily, you might never have to pay for event space if you are resourceful. I’ve been a part of events that hosted over 200 people, which got free venues from Fortune 500 companies like Microsoft because the events targeted technology entrepreneurs and Microsoft was promoting small business solutions to them. Finding free event space can be a matter of resourcefulness to find such opportunities.
But you may never have to worry about growing to such proportions. Most events run by individuals or small businesses never become big enough to need hotel ballrooms or large conference spaces.
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