event planning marketing plan sample.doc

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Event Planning Marketing PlanCorporate Retreat Professionals

Executive Summary

The Corporate Retreat Professionals (CRP) is an event planningcompanyspecializing in corporatecustomers. CRP will offer two types of services; retreat training services as well as product launchevent planning. The retreat training services will be either leadership development training or teamskills training. For both types of retreats, CRP can take care of the planning of the event, as well asactually hosting the training through the use of one of CRP's strategic business partners.

The mission of the Corporate Retreat Professionals is to provide companies with the highest level ofevent planning. We exist to attract and maintain customers. When we adhere to this maxim,everything else will fall into place. Our services will exceed the expectations of our customers.

The corporate market for event planning is steady and profitable. For some large companies,

economic downturns means cuts in training. This is only the case for shortsighted companieshowever. The benchmark companies may trim down theworkforce during a downturn, but they donot cut funds for training. They recognize that investments in human resources is always a goodinvestment. CRP intends to profit nicely from this intelligent business strategy. Additionally, even intimes of economic downturn, companies still have product launches and will still need someone toorganize these events. In short, the need for corporate event planning/ hosting services rarelydiminishes, it is a steadily increasing demand that CRP will capitalize on.

Corporate Retreat Professionals' projected growth rate is over 100% through year three and willhave profits as a function of sales over 11% by year three. By the beginning of year two CRP willhave four employees.

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Situation Analysis

CRP is entering their first year of business. Marketing will be critical to develop sufficient business toachieve profitability. The companyoffers high quality event planning for two specific areas, corporatetraining and product release events. The basic market need is for a competent service provideroffering high quality event planning at a price that is cost effective relative to a company trying toplan the events themselves.

Market Summary

CRP possesses good information regarding its typical customer. This includes customer needs, thegeneral circumstances from which the needs arise, and the difficulties the customer would face ifthey tried to satisfy these needs themselves. This information will be leveraged to better understandwho is served, individual customers' specific needs, better communication channels, and how CRPcan satisfy those needs.

Market Analysis

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Potential Customers Growth CAGR

Large companies 9% 1,158 1,262 1,376 1,500 1,635 9.01%

Small companies 8% 1,878 2,028 2,190 2,365 2,554 7.99%

Other 0% 0 0 0 0 0 0.00%

Total 8.38% 3,036 3,290 3,566 3,865 4,189 8.38%

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Market Needs

CRP is providing its customers with a high quality event planning service that specializes in both

corporate retreats for training purposes as well as product launch events. CRP seeks to fulfill thefollowing benefits that are important to their customers:

Professionalism- This is imperative as the service CRP provides is, in effect, arepresentation of the client corporation itself.

Competitive pricing- The pricing scheme must be competitive to offer an incentive forthe customer to outsource these services.

Customer service- The customer must get the sense that all of their needs are being met,regardless how small or inconsequential it may seem.

Market Trends

The market trend for event planning has seen a surge within the last four years, a response tocorporations' impetus to outsource non-essential tasks. This industry space has gotten morecompetitive for several reasons:

Increased demand has increased the number of competitors. With the increase of general event planner service providers, there has also been an

emergence of specialized event planners that only offer one or two types of event planningservices.

The trend for outsourcing is not specific to the event planning industry, but can be seen inmany industries like IT assistance, accounting, payroll, and designwork.

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Market Growth

In 2000, the event planning market had $453 in annual revenue. This market space is forecasted togrow at 6% for the next four years. This growth can primarily be attributed to companies tighteningtheir focus on their core competencies and abandoning in-house support of activities that they do notexcel in.

SWOT Analysis

The following SWOT analysis captures the key strengths and weaknesses within the company, anddescribes the opportunities and threats facing Corporate Retreat Professionals.

Strengths

Superior, specialized service offerings. Well-trained, enthusiastic employees.

Strong relationships with complementary service providers.

Weaknesses

The concentration of a small niche of the market that will limit the potential size of themarket.

The difficulty of generating awareness and visibility of the company in its first few years ofoperation.

The inability to rapidly scale to meet large, unexpected increases in demand.

Opportunities

A growing market of companies that are outsourcing event planning activities. Being one of the first service providers concentrating on this specific niche.

Relatively low overhead.

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Threats

A slump in the economy that could have a ripple effect on service providers. Future competition from existing service providers competing in different but complimentary

market spaces.

The inability to find qualified, high quality employees.

Competition

Currently there are three other companies that offer event planning specifically to corporations.They, however, tend do events that are more general in scope such as parties to reward customersor employees, or events to change the company's image. There is no company that specializes inevent planning of corporate training and product release events. There are companies that offercorporate training, but these companies provide the actual training and do not do any of the actualevent planning/ logistics of the entire event.

There is also no company that specializes in product release events. There are companies that doprovide this service, but they do not specialize in it. Because event planning is a tight market, CRPwill benefit from specialization.

The buying pattern for the larger corporations was, in the past, to have an in-house solution. Thispattern is disappearing in favor of outsourcing as there is the constant drive for gains in efficiency,something outsourcing can offer.

Service Offering

CRP will offer event planning for the corporate market. CRP will concentrate on two types of eventplanning:

1. Corporate retreats- These events are typically used for two different reasons. They are eitherleadership training or team building training where employees of the corporations are sent todevelop these skills. In addition to the planning of the events, CRP will be able to host the eventas well. While CRP's core competencies are not in hosting, CRP will align itself with a well-respected host of leadership development/ teaming skills programs and have them assist CRP inthe hosting aspect. Using a strategic partner in this case allows CRP to stick with a narrow focusbut still offer the service to our customers.

2. Product launches- These are events where the corporation is releasing a product and theyhave an event that is open to people outside of the corporation, such as industry press,distribution partners, or current key customers. The purpose of the product launch event is tocreate visibility for the new release.

Keys to Success

The keys to success are:

Generate repeat business. Achieve sufficient market visibility.

Accomplish benchmarked customer service.

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Critical Issues

CRP is still in the speculative stages as a start up organization. It faces the following critical issues:

Continue to take a modest approach toward expansion, expanding not for the sake of

expansion in itself, but because it is necessary to meet the needs of their customers. Establish CRP as the premier niche event planner of the Seattle corporate market.

Marketing Strategy

Corporate Retreat Professionals will be aggressively courting companies to winfuture contracts.CRP will offer a superior service at a lower cost due to specialization. By concentrating on a fewspecific services, CRP will become proficient at these services and perform the services better thansomeone without the same level of expertise.

CRP will increase company visibility through a website, local Chamber of Commerce networking,

and participation in trade shows. The website will be quite detailed and provide a visitor in-depthinformation about the services CRP offers, the corresponding high level of quality, and the costsavings that can be achieved by using CRP.

CRP will also be quite active in the local Chambers of Commerce in the Seattle metropolitan area.Over the years CRP founder Geoff Junket has come to realize that a lot of business transactsthrough the Chamber of Commerce or relationships that were started through this organization.

Lastly, CRP will be active in the many trade shows that come through Seattle. The use of tradeshows allows members of CRP to make initial contacts with a wide range of businesses that wouldotherwise be difficult to approach.

Mission

The mission of the Corporate Retreat Professionals is to provide companies with the highest level ofevent planning. We exist to attract and maintain customers. When we adhere to this maxim,everything else will fall into place. Our services will exceed the expectations of our customers.

Marketing Objectives

Increase repeat customers by 7% per quarter.

Decrease customer acquisition costs by 8% per year.

Generate increased awareness of services offered, quantified by a 2% quarterly increase ofunsolicited service requests.

Financial Objectives

Profitability by year three.

Maintain steady, monthly growth.

Decrease training and production costs.

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Target Markets

CRP is providing services to corporate customers only. We will not be going after the "social eventmarket" which is an alternative market niche within the event planning industy.

The corporate customer is a company that contracts with CRP to plan and typically host an event forthe company. Corporations will be turning to CRP to plan the events because:

1. It is cost efficient for a third party to plan the event. This is the case because the third partyonly does event planning so they can plan and host the event more efficiently.

2. The company does not have additional people who can be taken away from theirdailyjobs, nor time to invest in an infrequent event.

Our event planning services for corporate retreats will typically be utilized by larger corporations. Alarger company can be generally defined as one with more than 40 employees. Smaller companiessometimes will utilize this service of ours, however, it is the larger corporations that typically have thebudget for this activity.

For our product launch event planning, we will be servicing companies of all different sizes. Typicallythe companies that use this service will be product based companies, but we will also offer thisservice to service-based companies who desire to announce a new service that they are offering.

Positioning

CRP will position itself as a niche service event planner serving the Seattle corporate market. TheSeattle market will recognize the value that CRP provides with its specialized services. CRP willleverage its competitive edge to achieve the desired positioning.

CRP's competitive edge will be based on two factors, specialization and strategic relationships. CRPwill be specializing in two distinct areas of corporate planning. While specializing essentiallyprecludes CRP participating in some other market niches, it allows the company to excel in servingits chosen markets. Additionally, the expert knowledge allows CRP to provide the service as a costsaving to the client company because it can concentrate on improving the current offerings.Improvements that CRP strives for are a reduction in cost charged to the client and an improvementto the level of services offered.

CRP's second competitive edge is based on the use of strategic relationships. Geoff clearly realizesthat he and his staff cannot be good at everything. CRP believes it is better to concentrate on a fewthings, excel in those areas, and form strategic partnerships with companies that excel in the serviceareas that CRP doesn't. Applying this philosophy, Geoff has decided that in addition to planningcorporate retreat training sessions, he wants CRP to offer the service of hosting/ leading theseevents as well. The service of hosting/ leading however, is quite different than planning and CRP

believes that it would be more cost effective to form a strategic relationship with an expert in this fieldinstead of trying to become proficient in-house. CRP then is able to offer a top notch service offeringof hosting/ leading the training seminars but does not have to invest heavily in developing theprograms.

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Strategy Pyramids

The single objective is to position CRP as the premier niche event planner serving the corporatemarket. The marketing strategy will seek to create customer awareness regarding the servicesoffered, develop the customer base, and work toward building customer loyalty and referrals.

This objective will be communicated using several different methods. This first method will bethrough the use of CRP's website. The website will be a rich source of information detailing servicesoffered, previous customers, examples of their work, etc. The second method of communication willbe through networking with Chambers of Commerce. The networking activities will be important andfruitful as a significant amount of business gets conducted through the Chamber of Commerce. Bybeing an active member of the Chamber as well as networking with other members, a lot of businesswill be derived from these relationships.

The last method of communication will be through participation at various trade shows. Trade showsare an excellent venue for generating awareness of the company because most or all of theparticipants at a trade show are there because they are seeking information. Participation at severalof the larger trade shows will be an excellent source for contacts at prospective companies.

Marketing Mix

CRP's marketing mix is comprised of the following approaches to pricing, distribution, advertisingand promotion, and customer service.

Pricing- The pricing scheme will be based on a per project estimate tailored to eachcustomer.

Distribution- CRP's service's can be performed throughout the Seattle regional area,determined by the needs of the customer.

Advertising and Promotion- Several forms of advertising and promotion will be used including

a website, partnerships/ networking with the Chambers of Commerce, and participation atvarious tradeshows.

Customer Service- The company goes about the day-to-day operations with the belief that100% customer satisfaction is required in order to make the business a success. All levels ofthe organization have been taught this and practice it.

Marketing Research

The main source of marketing research that CRP used to validate and improve their marketing planwas a comprehensive questionnaire that was administered via email. By using email as the methodof delivery CRP was able to to send out far more questionnaires for the same amount of money than

if they were to use more traditional, labor intensive methods, and received more responses with afaster response time.

The questionnaire was comprised of 75 different questions with each question having four possibleanswers to choose from. The questionnaire was designed to elicit information regarding customerpreferences, the different types of outsourced activities companies typically use, as well as to testassumptions held by the founders regarding the perspective market. The survey was constructed bya Statistics graduate student from the University of Washington and was heavily tested to ensurevalid, significant, relevant results. A total of 300 questionnaires were sent out with a return rate of

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31%. This return rate is far better than a traditional survey. The main factor in this extraordinaryreturn rate is that the participants were friends or acquaintances of the CRP or someone connectedto CRP, and the participants were given a heads-up to prepare them for answering the upcomingsurvey.

Strategic Alliances

Corporate Retreat Professionals will develop a group of strategic alliances to enhance its serviceofferings. The first two will be:

1st-At-The-Top.com- CRP will depend upon its website for marketing promotion and clientproposal development. A clean, easy to navigate website is essential for e-commerce. Butfirst a customer has to find the website. Listings with the large search engine data bases andsubsequent placement in search results displays are a mystery to most people. In reality, itrequires skilled specialized work to get a website out where customers will find it. CRP willutilize the expert services of 1st-At-The-Top.com Internet and E-commerce Consultants tobuild their website and position it on the Internet.

Innovative Learning Goup- CRP is negotiating with the corporate trainers at Innovative

Learning Group to provide the program content and facilitation of the leadership and teamtraining seminars CRP will plan for its corporate clients.

Additional host/presentation/service provider alliances will be built, allowing CRP to offer completestart-to-finish event planning and implentation.

Financials

This section will offer a financial overview of Corporate Retreat Professionals as it relates to themarketing activities. CRP will address break-even analysis, sales forecasts, and how they link to themarketing strategy.

Break-even Analysis

The Break-even Analysis indicates that $13,129 will be needed in monthly revenue to achieve theBreak-even point.

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Break-even Analysis

Monthly Revenue Break-even $9,301

Assumptions:

Average Percent Variable Cost 5%

Estimated Monthly Fixed Cost $9,300

Sales Forecast

CRP will, for the most part, be using the sale strategy of personal selling. With his five years of consulting forlarger corporations, Geoff has formed relationships throughout the business community, and will leveragethese relationships into an initial client base. Once things get rolling and CRP has developed some satisfiedclients, Geoff will be building additional relationships with his network of friends generated through theChambers of Commerce and trade shows.

Geoff's spiel to prospective customers will be based on the high level of service offered and cost advantagesby going with CRP. The costsavings can be quantified and shown to the customer while the higher level ofservice can be guaranteed as well as communicated through testimonials from satisfied clients.

The website will be utilized as a powerful communications tool, supplying introductory information toprospective customers, providing an avenue for questions and answers, as well as presenting more

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specialized information such as cost estimates and event proposals.

The first month will be spent setting up the office. It is unlikely that there will be any sales activity within thefirst two months. During the first and second month, Geoff will be developing some systems to provide atemplate for future event planning. Once this is set up CRP should be able toprocesscustomer service

requests rather easily.

The third month will see some sales activity trickle. It will not be until the fifth month that things will really kickin. During months six through 12 sales will steadilyincrease, and this increase should continue well into yeartwo.

Sales Forecast

2006 2007 2008

Sales

Large companies $58,764 $122,547 $135,855

Small companies $35,602 $65,458 $78,958

Total Sales $94,366 $188,005 $214,813

Direct Cost of Sales 2006 2007 2008

Large companies $2,938 $6,127 $6,793

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Small companies $1,780 $3,273 $3,948

Subtotal Direct Cost of Sales $4,718 $9,400 $10,741

Expense Forecast

The marketing expenses are budgeted so that they are fairly high during the first quarter of operation, astrategy to develop visibility for the start-up organization. After that the expenses will ramp up during certainmonths to cover the costs of specific events such as different trade shows.

Marketing Expense Budget

2006 2007 2008

Website $2,100 $1,200 $1,200

Networking $2,950 $3,500 $4,000

Other $5,100 $7,000 $9,000

------------ ------------ ------------

Total Sales and Marketing

Expenses$10,150 $11,700 $14,200

Percent of Sales 10.76% 6.22% 6.61%

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Controls

The purpose of this marketing plan is to serve as a guide for the organization. The following areas will bemonitored to gauge performance:

Revenue- Both monthly as well as annual tracking. Customer satisfaction.

Margins- A relativecomparisonbetween the two types of services offered.

Percentage of new business relative to repeat customers.

Implementation

The following milestones identify the key marketing programs. It is important to accomplish each one on timeand on budget.

Milestones

Advertising Start Date End Date Budget Manager Department

Marketing plan completion 1/1/2003 2/1/2003 $0 Geoff Department

Website development 1/1/2003 2/1/2003 $1,000 Geoff Department

Trade show #1 4/1/2003 4/30/2003 $1,500 Geoff Department

Trade show #2 7/1/2003 7/31/2003 $2,000 Geoff Department

Trade show #3 10/1/2003 10/30/2003 $600 Geoff Department

Name me 1/1/2003 1/15/2003 $0 ABC Department




Other 1/1/2003 1/15/2003 $0 ABC Department

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Total Advertising Budget $5,100

PR Start Date End Date Budget Manager Department





Total PR Budget $0

Direct Marketing Start Date End Date Budget Manager Department





Total Direct Marketing

Budget

$0

Web Development Start Date End Date Budget Manager Department





Total Web Development

Budget$0

Other Start Date End Date Budget Manager Department

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Total Other Budget $0

Totals $5,100

Contingency Planning

Difficulties and risks:

Problems generating visibility.

The entry into the Seattle market by an overly aggressive competitor.

A sudden boom inthe economythat encourages companies to take on projects that they wouldotherwise outsource.

Worst case risks may include:

Determining that the business cannot support itself on an ongoing basis.

Having to liquidate equipment to cover liabilities.

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