Marketing

MAKE A PLAN 

Articulating your marketing goals and strategies from the get-go will organize and focus your efforts—even if it’s only an outline.

Here are some questions to ask and try and answer for your marketing plan:

  • What are your attendance goals?
  • Who are your audiences?  Can you map particular outreach strategies for each audience?
  • What are your primary vehicles for promoting your event?  Probably these will include:
    • Media sponsorships
    • Website
    • Social media presence
    • Your Makers’s Websites, Mailing Lists, etc
    • Editorial placement (news stories about your event)
    • Calendar listings
    • Public Service Announcements
    • Posters
    • Postcard mailings
    • Email blasts
  • Are there any big challenges to promoting your event?

TICKETING MECHANISMS

If you are using an online ticketing service like Eventbrite (see Ticketing Program), there are a plethora of marketing mechanisms that can really improve visibility for your event.

Discount Codes

Giving your makers, vendors, sponsors and other partners a custom code that gives X% off to their community is a great way of marketing your Faire.  That custom code name is just enough reason to push your partners to message all their community on your behalf.

This can include a comp ticket code for 100% off for passing on to VIPs, neighbors, elected officials, media and sponsors you want to court for next year.

Affiliate Programs

Eventbrite also has an easy affiliate marketing program whereby partners can receive a % of a ticket sale.  This is a good outreach mechanism for school PTA programs and other youth programs.

EMAIL MARKETING

Email is still a hugely effective way of promoting your event.  Just use email sparingly; write carefully crafted, succinct messages, and don’t send them too often.

Sources for email lists include:

  • Sponsoring organizations’ membership email lists.
  • Ticket purchasers (if you are using Eventbrite.com or some other online service).
  • Voluntary email subscriptions from your website.
  • Master maker list (all the people you mailed Call for Makers announcements to).
  • “Accepted” makers list.

Keep in mind that using a personal account to send vast quantities of email can get your address marked as a “spammer.”  E-blast tools like mailchimp.com and constantcontact.com help you avoid that—and they all have free trials, low prices, analytics, and helpful email creation and management interfaces.

HINT:  “Members” of the sponsoring organizations (e.g., parents of the school, or especially active members of the museum) should be encouraged through email to forward promotional information about your Faire to other email lists they belong to. For example, almost every family in our school belongs to a sports team, book club, or some other activity group.  Avoid HTML emails when you have this purpose in mind, as HTML is notoriously lost in translation when forwarded.