8.2 Discovery and Strategy
The Event Planning Life Cycle: Discovery and Strategy
Real World Example: Follow Along
Good event planning happens in stages. The first stage entails discovery and strategy. During this phase, the planner investigates the purpose of the event and the event’s goals. Then they identify the various stakeholders of the event. Who is the event for? Who gets to make planning decisions? Who is attending? Once the purpose of the event is identified as well as all of the key players, the pre-planning phase can begin.
Finding Purpose
Before any planning can take place, the event needs a clear, written, definable, and actionable goal. Without a clear purpose, ineffective events waste time, money, and resources. Additionally, written goals can be distributed to the entire event planning team, ensuring that everyone works towards a common outcome. The purpose of an event should be determined by the primary reason for organizing an event, the makeup of the guest who will be attending, and the intended outcomes the organizer wishes the guests to walk away with. Employing SMART goals—specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound—can also help in identifying and defining the event strategy. A few questions that event planners should ask: What is the ultimate goal of the event? How can the goal be achieved? Is it realistic? Does it align with the purpose of the client/brand? When will it be completed?
Real World Example: Goals
Mark and Kelly want to get married. Their goals for their wedding are to stay within budget and to ensure that their friends and family feel as if they are valued and welcomed participants in the event. Let’s run those through a SMART goal assessment.
Goal 1: To stay on budget
- Specific: Sort of! This is a specific goal if the amount is added. Update to: “Stick to a budget of $10,000.”
- Measurable: Yes, it is easy to measure whether the money has been spent
- Achievable: Yes, they will have to make decisions within that budget. A $10,000 budget is realistic for a simple wedding
- Relevant: Yes, they don’t want to start their life together in debt, so staying on budget is relevant to their larger goals
- Time-Bound: Since a wedding happens on a set date, this is time-bound.
Goal 2: Leave their friends and family feeling valued and welcomed participants in the event.
- Specific: Sort of! This is a specific goal if some parameters are set. Update to: “Have their friends and family feel valued and included by offering them at least three ways to engage in the wedding, help plan, be in photos, and have time at the reception to offer personalized messages.
- Measurable: Yes, it will be possible to know if the three engagement options were available or not. Additional metrics can be used to track guest satisfaction, such as “did they leave early,” “was attendance low,” “did people audibly complain or show happiness”?
- Achievable: Yes, it is realistic to ask people to help plan, to be in photos, or to give a toast.
- Relevant: Yes, Mark and Kelly have close friends and family, and the couple wants them to feel like welcomed participants, as inclusion is important to their key values and beliefs.
- Time-Bound: Since a wedding happens on a set date, this is time-bound.
Practice: Now, think of an event that is coming up in your life, maybe a birthday party or a fun-run. What goals would you attribute to that event? Run them through a SMART assessment to see if they can be improved.
Stakeholder Management

According to Northstar Meetings Group “Business events involved 1.6 billion participants across more than 180 countries” (Edelstein, 2023, para. 3).
The event manager must sort through all those voices to find the key stakeholders for the event. A stakeholder is a person or a group of people who have a defined role in the event. The importance of their role can be identified by a stakeholder matrix. To create a stakeholder matrix, the event manager will think of all the people who could be affected by or participate in the event. These include attendees, security personnel, vendors, the client hosting the event, the people paying for the event, the staff where the event will be held, and so on. For each of these people, the event manager will then list out how interested that person is in the event. For example, the people attending and the client who hosts the event are both very interested in the event, whereas the security personnel that you hire to monitor the parking lot may not be interested in your event. Next, the event manager would list out how influential each of those people is in helping achieve the success of the event.
For instance, the fiscal department will be very influential, as would the client, but the attendees, for instance, would not be as they do not get to have a voice in any of the decisions. Once these three columns have been filled in, the event manager will then be able to determine the most interested and most influential people and to focus their attention on those people as the key stakeholders. Communication plans can then be customized for each stakeholder group and the roles and responsibilities for each group can be clearly defined.

Real World Example: Stakeholders
Practice: For the following event, create a stakeholder matrix. Who are the most interested and most influential stakeholders? Who has a high interest but a low influence? Who has high influence but low interest? Who has low interest and low influence? Which quadrant of stakeholders gets to make decisions regarding the event?
Mark and Kelly are getting married. They will have 100 guests. Kelly’s father is paying for the event, and Kelly’s mother is helping to plan it. Mark’s family lives overseas and will not be in the area until the week before the wedding. Kelly’s bridesmaids are all from out of state, but Mark has 3 brothers whom he is very close with and who will serve as his groomsmen. The wedding will include the traditional vendors, including a priest, a photographer, a florist, and a. A reception will take place in a nearby hotel with dancing and dinner.

Event Objectives
Any event needs to have clear objectives to determine if it was successful. Take a simple birthday party, for example. A birthday party celebrates the life of the person and makes them feel special. With that goal in mind, the party is easy to plan. On the other hand, if someone tried to plan a birthday party to educate everyone about global warming, a huge disconnect might emerge between the guests who expect to celebrate the person having a birthday, or stakeholders, and the educational component of the party. If guests are disappointed, the party might be a huge flop. Getting all stakeholders to agree on the objective of the event before any event planning starts is the number one key to a successful event.
Developing Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)
Once the event objectives are identified, key performance indicators or KPIs need to be established. In the birthday party example, some key performance indicators could be if the party stays on budget, if more than 20 people show up, if the guests stay longer than 2 hours, and if the person who is celebrating their birthday indicates that they enjoyed the party. Having concrete, data-driven KPIs helps to drive event-planning decisions as well as to identify whether the event was a success or not. Event objectives should be in writing, with performance metrics, and be visible to all key stakeholders.
Pre-Planning
The pre-planning stage of event management refers to the time during which the event is being planned, but before marketing or invites have gone out. At this stage, only the key influential stakeholders are aware of the event. In this stage, the event manager is working on answering two key questions. 1) Is the event even possible? 2) What are the goals and big picture concepts that all the small details need to align with? To be feasible, an event needs to pass three tests. It needs to be affordable, legal, and in ethical alignment with the goals (or brand) of the client. The best event in the world is not worth planning if there is no budget to produce it. The budget will also help to frame future event decisions. For example, the bride may want extravagant floral arrangements on each chair, but if the budget doesn’t allow for that expense, then there is no use planning for those items. Additionally, not all events are legal to produce. There may be capacity limits, venue use limits, or other associated risks that make the event either illegal or too risky to produce. Lastly, the event must fit the overall brand, image, and goals of the client. If, for instance, the client is launching a new line of frozen vegan breakfast items, then hosting a “Breakfast Bacon Bash” themed event would not align. Once an event idea passes the budget, legal, and ethical tests, the pre-planning phase can begin.
Budgeting
The first step to budgeting requires determining if the event needs to make money ( i.e., be revenue-generating),just needs to cover its costs ( i.e., be revenue neutral), or if it can cost money ( i.e., be revenue negative).
Budget Type Examples
- Revenue-generating: A fundraising event for a local animal shelter
- Revenue Neutral: A conference for a small association
- Revenue Negative: A wedding
Next, the event manager must create a spreadsheet that estimates each line-item expense. The budget will be divided into two parts, fixed costs and variable costs. The fixed costs are the costs that will not change regardless of the number of people who attend the event. Fixed costs are items like room rental, audiovisual services, speaker fees, etc. Then, the event manager will calculate each of the variable costs. These costs are the expenses that will change based on the number of people who attend the event. Examples of variable costs include catering and name badge printing. Budgets should also include taxes, service fees, shipping, and labor costs, as these can add up quickly. Once the pre-event budget is created, each purchase for the event will be entered as an actual cost and accounted for in the spreadsheet.
Date and Location
Once the budget has been created, the event planner will know how much they can spend on a venue. Sourcing venues occurs in a two-step process with a “request for proposal” (RFP) and a site visit. An RFP, created by the event planner, lists the preferred dates of the event, what type of space the event will require, how much the host is willing to pay for space, and what basic items the event will need in terms of catering, audiovisual, and additional logistics. The RFP includes a general agenda of the event and a short background about the client and the guest demographic. The RFP will be sent to several properties that the event manager is interested in. If properties are not already identified as those of interest, the event planner can employ a Destination Management Organization, or a DMO, to submit the RFP for them. A DMO is a nonprofit or government-affiliated organization that promotes tourism in a specific area. DMOs work with most local hospitality businesses to help planners book their events in the area.
They are like a destination management company, or a DMC. A DMC does similar work in helping event managers plan their events. However, DMC is a for-profit company, and they offer additional services such as arranging transportation, excursions, and entertainment. Regardless of how an RFP is submitted, the venues contacted will review the proposal and respond with their availability, pricing, and amenities. From that list, the planner will select their top choices and then conduct a site visit. Site visits are normally done in person but can be virtual as well. During this stage, the planner will walk through the venue with the venue’s sales associate to physically see the space and ask any questions in real-time. From the response to the RFP and the site visit, the planner can then select the venue that makes the most sense for the budget and for the event requirements.
Selecting dates, in turn, requires thinking about what works well for the guests who are attending and making sure to note any conflicts in timing, such as major sporting events, school break schedules, and religious holidays. Other factors include weather and possible travel restrictions. Selecting the correct date is an important factor in making sure that guests can realistically attend.
Workflows and Communication Plans
The last stage of the pre-planning process is to create the event workflow and communication plan. As in the stakeholder matrix, not all stakeholders have the same level of influence and involvement in the event. The clear, concise roles identified in the pre-planning stage will help to keep the event on track. Create a list of what needs to be done, who is responsible for doing it, and when it needs to be done by. Then, create a communication plan for each stakeholder group. Think about who needs what information and in what format. For instance, the financial department doesn’t need to know what color flowers you are ordering. They are only interested in the price. However, the person who is ordering the table linens doesn’t care how much the flowers cost, but they do need to know the color of the flowers so that the linen colors will coordinate well. Workflows and communication plans should consist of written documents that are stored in an easy-to-access location for the full event team to use. A little extra time and attention in this stage of pre-planning will reduce stress and miscommunication throughout the rest of the process.
Attributions
- Figure 8.2: Untitled, by Startup Stock Photos, is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
- Figure 8.3: Stakeholder matrix, by Angela Senter, is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
- Figure 8.4: Blank stakeholder matrix, by Angela Senter, is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
A person or group of people that has a stake (or a role) in the event.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are metrics that a property uses to make informed management decisions. Standardized KPIs also help managers compare their property’s successes or failures to other properties in the area.
A document issued to potential suppliers that outlines what products and services are required by your organization or what your organization needs to achieve, leaving specific solutions up to the supplier to suggest.
an organization that promotes a city, region, county, state, nation, or area to potential visitors and/or manages multiple aspects of tourism within a destination.
A site visit is a physical or virtual tour of a venue with the goal of deciding if that space will work for the intended event.