Have you thought about joining forces with another company for your next event? There’s a lot to gain from an event partnership, like having access to more staff and more funds as well as reaching a larger audience.

That said, you need to make sure that your partnership is a good fit before you jump right into something that could affect your organization and/or event brand in the long run. Check out these four questions you must consider before forming an event partnership:

1. Are your missions, values, and visions in alignment?

First, you need to consider whether or not your companies have aligning missions, values, and visions. Why? It allows you to get into questions like this:

  • Mission: Why do we exist?
  • Values: What is your goal?
  • Vision: How will we accomplish it?

By looking inside your separate brands and asking these core questions, you’ll discover if you’re both speaking the same language. While this may seem low in consequence when you’re considering larger financial or practical concerns, you’ll be thankful later to know you’re on the same page about what you want to accomplish collectively.

2. Do you have the same audience?

Just because both of your companies work within the same industry doesn’t always mean both of your audiences are going to be in sync. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, you do want to make sure that all of the effort going into your partnership is going to either help you grow your audience or cement your place as a thought leader in your industry.

How can you be sure? One best practice is to start by comparing your unique audience personas and see how much these characters align. From this side-by-side assessment, you should be able to figure out pretty quickly whether or not your joint audience has the same needs and wants.


3. Will it help you save cost?

But seriously: One of the biggest draws of creating any event partnership is saving costs for both parties, right? We recommend writing a list of your needs for any upcoming joint event and coming together with your potential partner to see what overlaps to make sure it’s going to be worth your while.

Some factors (that you may need to rent or buy) include:

  • Food and Beverage
  • Installation and Dismantling
  • Wi-Fi
  • Rental Fees for Location, Furniture, etc
  • Audio and Visual
  • Staff and Volunteers
  • Parking

4. Is this a potential long term partnership?

Before you sign on the dotted line for your partnership, have you stopped to consider whether or not this partnership could extend to multiple events? More often than not, you may find that an event partnership between your companies may only work for a specific event as opposed to several.

While this situation shouldn’t completely deter you, it’s something you should keep in mind as you consider the resources you’ll need to create a successful event plus the goals and ROI you’re trying to hit.

 

Planning an event, especially a big one, can seem like a daunting task. There are a million things to do and, if you’re like most organizations, very few people to help. But don’t worry! We’ve broken down the event planning process into nine simple steps for overall success. Check out our free guide 9 Steps to Event Planning below!

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