Marketing plans
To avoid wasting time, money and energy, it is essential to:
• Identify who has overall responsibility for marketing and authority for speaking on behalf of the event
• Determine the available budget
• Have a strategic marketing plan
• Evaluate the marketing plan post event to learn what does or doesn’t work
A community organisation presenting an event will more than likely have a high level strategic business plan, especially if the organisation is in receipt of public funding as it is usually a requirement of the funding body. Such a plan includes the vision, philosophy and values, goals or objectives of the organisation. It should also include implementation strategies over a defined period designed to achieve the goals.
In turn, a strategic marketing plan should translate the organisation’s goals into marketing goals and identify the strategies by which the marketing goals can be achieved, along with budget allocation, timeframes and the person/s or groups who are responsible for implementing the strategies.
While the nature of the “product” – the arts activity - will vary, there are some basic components of a marketing plan, regardless of the type, size or scope of the activity. The plan will need to clearly identify what many call the “P’s” approach:
Product what you are planning to “sell” and why
Price cost of admission
Place where is it being staged
People the target markets
Promotion how you are going to communicate with your market
Unless you have a clear objective you won’t communicate the right message to the right people in the right way at the right time i.e. you won’t be able to make effective use of marketing and your resources.
Click here for a Marketing Plan template
Evaluating your Marketing Plan
Evaluation of your marketing plan and its implementation is a valuable learning process. Gathering evidence before, during and after a project can assist you to make judgments about what happened, which in turn will help you to improve what you are doing both during the process and in planning for what you do next time.
Evaluation takes time and resources and your approach (how formal and detailed or informal and flexible) will depend on the nature of the event. The following questions may assist you in this regard:
- Will the evaluation be external or in-house?
- Who will be involved from the organisation?
- What level of resourcing can be allocated?
- What level of reporting/measuring/written feedback is required?
- How will the results be used?
Summary Checklist Have you . . .
- Identified who has overall responsibility for marketing and authority for speaking on behalf of the event?
- Determined your marketing budget?
- Identified your target audience?
- Decided on appropriate promotional tools – costing and free of charge?
- Prepared a marketing plan?
- Included a process of evaluation?