Module 2: Customers, Competitors and the Market

Good marketing starts with knowing who buys, why they choose, and who else they are considering. Most event businesses guess at all three. This module replaces guesses with evidence you can gather yourself, for free, in a few weeks. You will learn to tell the person who pays from the person who decides and the people who influence them, to run customer interviews that get honest answers, and to build buyer personas from what clients actually said rather than what you hoped. You will map the competitors in your own city, read the seasonal rhythm of the GTA event year, and use free search tools to see how demand rises and falls. It is written for planners, performers, caterers, venues, photographers, rental companies and every other event vendor. By the end, you will have a short market research brief for your own business, built step by step alongside Lantern & Lane, the two-person planning studio in Toronto's west end.