As per the American Marketing Association, Audience Segmentation: 

“[…] can provide the roadmap for short- and long-term success for a brand. The appeal of segmentation has a lot to do with efficiency. Marketers can’t be all things to all people, so they focus attention, strategy and resources on those things they can best deliver. […] Segmentation gives an organization a way to concentrate its marketing activities, based on selected customers and particular brand positioning elements“ 5.

Furthermore, it can be noted that: 

“[…] rapid changes in the marketing environment create direct challenges to long-held views on core ideas like segmentation. Digital technology fuels major changes in the marketing mix and in the nature of information to understand and track customers. A continuing stream of new ideas competes for the attention of marketers, advocates new strategies and practices and promises improved performance in market”6. 

Some questions to ask when segmenting our market based on a geographic perspective:

• Is our audience local, national, regional, or international? To what percentages? 

• Are they close to the venues where our events happen or do they commute from afar? How do they commute? 

• Do we have an outreach strategy in place for programs that might appeal to a specific audience that might not live close to our premises? 

• Does the weather have a specific impact on their attendance of the events? 

• Do we host our festival in a city that has a touristic appeal, and if so, do we have a strategy to reach out to them? 

• If some members of our target audience cannot attend to our festival, do we have a way to “bring” the festival to them? (whether regionally or by smaller events?) 

Factors to consider include Age, Gender, Economic status, Marital Status, Ethnic Background and Education. Here are some questions to consider for segmentation. 

• What are the average ages that attend our Festival? Do we want to bring younger/older audiences as well? 

• How diverse is our festival and our audiences, in terms of race, religion, gender, ethnicity? Do we need to increase our efforts to attract a different segment of our population? 

• Do we have a sense of the medium income of our audience? 

• What is the average education level of our audience? 

Lifestyle elements such as values, interests, attitudes, and beliefs define our psychographic segmentation. Having an understanding is these characteristics can help us draft a better communication strategy and tailor our message accordingly. 

• What are the beliefs, values, and personality traits of our audiences?

• Do they have shared interests? 

• What is their lifestyle like? 

5. Gordon Wyner, ‘How Segmentation Provides the Roadmap to Success’, American Marketing Association, 12 December 2016, www.ama.org/marketing-news/how-segmentation-provides-the-roadmap-to-success

6. Wyner, ‘Segmentation the Roadmap to Success.’ 

7. ‘Market Segmentation Template’, YourFreeTemplates, 18 February 2019, yourfreetemplates.com/market-segmentation-template

8. ‘Geographic Segmentation Template’, YourFreeTemplates, 18 February 2019, yourfreetemplates.com/market-segmentation-template

9. ‘Demographic Segmentation Template’, YourFreeTemplates, 18 February 2019, yourfreetemplates.com/market-segmentation-template

10. Kim Kohatsu, ‘Psychographic Segmentation’ in PickFu, 9 February 2021, www.pickfu.com/psychographic-segmentation  

How to provide feedback, amendments and additions:

The toolkits are open-sourced, continuously developed tools. Therefore, festival and cultural practitioners from all backgrounds and levels of experience are invited to expand these materials by adding their own contributions, building on the gathering of knowledge and insights shared with the whole festival-making community worldwide. Please email info@festivalacademy.eu for feedback, amendments, and additions.