The American Marketing Association defines marketing as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.25 

Reach and Frequency

“Reach is the number of potential customers that will be exposed to a message through a particular media vehicle. Reach measures the number of potential customers who see/hear the advertising campaign. Frequency refers to the number of times that those customers will be exposed to the message. So, the higher the reach, the larger the number of people that see your message. The higher the frequency, the more times individual people see/hear your message. Reach and frequency are inversely related – by increasing frequency, reach is reduced and by increasing reach, frequency suffers. This is primarily a function of the budget – there’s a limited number of ads/exposures and decision on how best to execute. The main objective of any advertising is optimal exposure.” 26 

The marketing tools for a festival will depend strongly on the audience and the message we want to communicate, as well as on our budget. Each tool has advantages and disadvantages. There are two concepts which are important when deciding what plan to use, which are connected to what our goal is: is it to bring in new audiences and create awareness of our festival, or is it to build ticket sales? 

The key marketing tools are:  

• Social Media and Internet Marketing 

• Surveys 

• Loyalty programs (friends of the festival) 

• Advertising  

Here you have 2 lines of strategies: 

• Above the line strategies: directing communication towards the mass market (TV, radio, billboards). While the cost per impact is cheaper, the risk is that we might be reaching people who might not be our direct audience. 

• Below the line strategies: strategies designed towards a specific audience such as activation at a concert (where we know our audience will be present), or direct mail. The cost per impact might be higher, but we know we are reaching the audience we want to. 

• Media monitoring tools 

• Automation  

• Google Analytics (a wonderful resource to track the visits to our website, and the patterns of their web surfing) 

• Digital Marketing Tools:  

• Search Engine Optimization 

• Social Media 

• Paid Advertising 

• Email Marketing 

• Content Marketing (see section below on Marketing Evaluation) 

Find here some Online Tools for Digital Marketing Management and Search Engine Optimization: 

• https://www.semrush.com/ 

• https://moz.com/ 

• https://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/ 

• https://analytics.google.com/ 

• https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/ 

The following template is meant to be used as a guide on some of the key factors to think of when creating a marketing plan: 

• Executive Summary. It should include the current situation of the festival, and the objectives that we plan to achieve with our marketing plan. 

• Target audience. Who are we planning to reach with our festival? We should not forget to include segmentation, as discussed earlier in this toolkit. 

• Positioning strategy. What do we want our audience to take from this festival? It is important to keep in mind our positioning should be aligned with the price of our tickets. 

• Distribution plan. Do we want to promote advance ticket sales? We should consider, how we want our audience to engage with us. Will communication happen via our website before the festival starts, or do we have a box-office, phone line or direct mail options? 

• Promotion strategy. Do we want to offer any advantages for booking in advance, such as discounts, better seats, or backstage opportunities? Are we selling single tickets or are we offering packages for the whole festival? 

• Online strategy. Since now most of the communication is done through digital media, what is our strategy and the tools we will use to promote our festival? Social media requires time and effort: are we realistic in terms of our resources and all the platforms we intend to use, or do we want to select our efforts in just the ones that are more aligned with our audience? 

• Pricing. How are we defining our prices? Do we have a strategy in mind in case demand is too high or too low, such as dynamic pricing? Do we have a pricing strategy for students or people within the industry? 

• Partnerships. We should list existing and possible partnerships (such as sponsors) who might align with our strategy. 

• Retention strategy. How are we engaging previous audiences, and how will we follow up with new audiences? 

• Measurement. We should include numbers and information of how we can measure the success of our campaign (income, tickets sold, new audience, returning audience), so we can evaluate the effectiveness of our campaign.