Marketing and Promoting Research (Research)

Marketing for and promoting a live event is key to attracting a target audience and to be able to sell tickets as Eventbrite Blog (n.d) suggests, this secondary source, although unclear when it was created or who it was created by, is a helpful and informative source. Although marketing and promotion are often intertwined, there are distinct differences betweens the two processes, Sold Out Run (n.d, n.p) shows a Dennis Marasigan quote that states:

“And promotions comes, or should come, at the end of a long and systematic marketing process, a process that includes an assessment of one’s product, pricing strategy, place decisions (product availability and distribution), branding (or positioning), and people.”

This source is from a blog that is no longer running, this blog may no longer be reliable for information, however the quote from Dennis Marasigan, although an opinion, has helped me to develop my understanding on the difference between marketing and promotion, Marasigan has experience within all kinds of media, specifically within theatre, therefore may have valuable experience within marketing. I found this information within Marasigan’s blog (2005), which is a primary source of information.

This means that promotion is the product of information collected about the proposed event. For example, the date, time and location on a poster is the product of marketing. The poster, with the stated information, is the promotional tool to communicate the event with a target audience.
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Marketing for a Live Event

Eventbrite Blog (n.d) states that marketing for a live event is about using tools and techniques to promote an event to an audience with the goal of selling tickets. This means that marketing is the process to collect data and information about the live event in preparation to present it to an audience, in the form of promotional material. The source, although a blog, therefore a secondary source of information, seems to be factually correct when I cross check it with other sources of information such as Kristen McCabe’s (2018) blog.  

There are different ways of marketing for a live event, these are called marketing strategies. Kristen McCabe (2018) and Eventbrite Blog (n.d) suggest that business to business (B2B) event marketing, this involves aiming a product or an event towards another business with the intent of mutual gain such as revenue growth or sponsorship. A B2C strategy focuses on creating a product that the consumer would want. For example Kristen McCabe (2018, n.p) states within her blog:

“A great example of a B2C brand utilizing event marketing is the cosmetic brand L’Oréal, and its ongoing partnership with The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF.). To correspond with the event, it produced a line of lipstick…The glamour of the festival was tied in with the product, making it feel special.”

With two business coming together to supply consumers with a product in the form of free samples in specific environment, both companies and their were promoted. This means that both consumer and consumer benefits from this strategy.

The author of this secondary source has a masters within Commerce – Marketing, as written on Linkedin, and is a ‘Senior Content Marketing Specialist’ for G2 Crowd, this makes her blog valuable and reliable to my project as she has experience, as well as an education within marketing.

Having a marketing strategy also means that a timeline of what to do by when is needed. This includes: event announcements, creation of promotional material, distribution of promotional material and other pre-event tasks. Having a marketing timeline/strategy is a key aspect to the success of an event, this shows when Alejandro Cremades (2018), an entrepreneur and writer of ‘The Art of Startup Fundraising’, states within a Forbes article:

‘’As a startup, 90% of your success is going to fall on the shoulders of your marketing. That applies even if you are doing no big paid marketing or display campaigns’’.

Although this source suggests empirical data, this data is subjective and is not fact, this makes this source fairly unreliable, however, as an entrepreneur, Cremades may have experience within the field of marketing, thus making this statement valuable when validating the importance of a marketing plan within my project.

Targeting a specific demographic can be key to bringing in an audience for any kind of event, however, for a small business, targeting demographics is very important to be able to effectively communicate a product to an audience. Businesses look at age, gender, social class, family size, income and generation to determine the target audience of a product as suggested by Know Online Advertising (n.d). By selectively targeting an audience, a business can accurately target people who are more likely than others to buy their products. A target market is made up of different demographics as Dan Shewan (2019) explains during his blog, this means that the way you may market your product to the demographic of people with children or people without children, as an example, may be different. For example, people with a family may be targeted on Facebook with an advertisement with Disney shows, this is because people with families are more likely to go to shows like this over people without families as shown within Stephanie Mialki’s (2018) blog.  

Promoting a Live Event

365 Careers states that promotion is:

“The art of communicating a product’s benefits to customers and convincing them to acquire the product one, or ideally, a repeated number of times.”

Coming from a secondary source with no accreditations to other sources, this may not have been as reliable source as I could have used, due to this, I cross checked my information with a more reliable primary source of information. The Cambridge Dictionary (2019) confirms that promotion means “activities to advertise something” or “the act of something to happen or develop”. This meaning can be applied to 365 Careers’ definition of what promotion is.  

Promotion happens across a varied range of platforms, however, the majority of marketing and promoting an event happens over the internet, in fact, a large proportion of tickets are sold through the internet as Passman. D (2014, p405) describes within his book All You Need To Know About the Music Business 8th edition. This means that although using a range of platforms is efficient, however, currently, the internet is a very efficient way to promote a product. I am aware that there is an updated versions of this book, so some of the information may have changed, however, within previous research I have conducted in other projects, I have always come to the same conclusion as Passman, the internet is the common factor amongst most marketing and promotion campaigns.

Within the internet, there are many different platforms to be able to promote live music events on, for example, there is Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Online Magazines/Articles and Websites. These are a few examples that Mark Walker (2018) states within an Eventbrite blog, a secondary source compiled of knowledge and experience that Walker has had through running large scale international events. There are also more tangible ways of promoting an event, Walker also suggests to use posters, networking and press to also promote an event. As this information has come from a blog post, a secondary source of information, it may not be as reliable as a source of information compared to a primary source of information, to ensure that my information is correct, I have cross checked it with the Government’s ‘Social Media Playbook’ (2018), which is a reliable, primary source of information regarding ways to promote on social media.    

Conclusion

In conclusion, the research into promotion and marketing had helped me to clarify and understand what the different processes are for each marketing and promotion. I will be using this new information on marketing to be able to create a marketing scheme for my own event that I will be putting on. This will help me to make informed and productive decisions and be efficient when completing tasks for the marketing of my event towards specific target audiences. My promotional research has helped me to understand what platforms are best and which ones I can use to be able to promote my event in the best light possible. Overall, this branch of research will be key to enabling me to be able to produce successful marketing and promotional elements within my project.

The skills needed within marketing and promotion include organisation, to be able to create and implement a marketing strategy; creativity, to be able to create eye catching, theme-appropriate promotional material; skills within social media are also an important to be able to communicate the product to an audience in a cheap, effective way. Teamwork skills are important when marketing and promoting for an event, communicating between different elements is important to ensure the success of a marketing effort.

When comparing myself against the skills I have listed above, I have found that I have strong skills within each element with the exception of creativity. To ensure that this does not delay mt project, I will be conducting a survey to receive feedback on the promotional material that I create for my event . By doing this, I am subjecting my creative work to the creative opinion of others, thus helping me with my own creative processes.

Reference Bibliography

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Careers, 3. (2017). The Marketing Mix – Marketing Promotion. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBKWqdAS7nA [Accessed 5 Mar. 2019].

Cremades, A. (2018). How To Create A Marketing Plan. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alejandrocremades/2018/12/03/how-to-create-a-marketing-plan/#f5a0cd74554b [Accessed 4 Mar. 2019].

GOV.UK. (2019). Organising a voluntary event: a ‘can do’ guide. [online] Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/can-do-guide-for-organisers-of-voluntary-events/the-can-do-guide-to-organising-and-running-voluntary-and-community-events [Accessed 4 Mar. 2019].

GOV.UK. (2018). Social media playbook. [online] Available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/social-media-playbook [Accessed 5 Mar. 2019].

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Marasigan, D. (n.d.). A Life in the Theater. [online] Dennismarasigan.blogspot.com. Available at: http://dennismarasigan.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2013-02-03T16:50:00-08:00&max-results=7 [Accessed 4 Mar. 2019].

McCabe, K. (n.d.). Kristen McCabe Senior Content Marketing Specialist at G2 Crowd. [online] Linkedin.com. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristenmccabe/#education-section [Accessed 4 Mar. 2019].

McCabe, K. (2018). The Ultimate Guide to Event Marketing Strategy and Execution. [Blog] G2 Crowd. Available at: https://learn.g2crowd.com/event-marketing [Accessed 4 Mar. 2019].

Promotion. (2019). In: Cambridge Dictionary. [online] Cambridge University Press, p.n.p. Available at: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/promotion [Accessed 5 Mar. 2019].

Passman, D. (2014). All You Need to Know About the Music Business. 8th ed. London: The Penguin Group, p.405.

Shewan, D. (2019). Everyone Is Not a Demographic: A Guide to Target Markets for Small Businesses. [Blog] Wordstream. Available at: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/09/18/beginners-guide-to-target-markets [Accessed 4 Mar. 2019].

St.Louis, M. (2016). 5 Stellar Tips for Marketing a Live Event. [Blog] Inc. Available at: https://www.inc.com/molly-reynolds/5-stellar-tips-for-marketing-a-live-event.html [Accessed 4 Mar. 2019].

The Difference Between Marketing and Promotions. (n.d.). [Blog] Sold Out Run. Available at: https://soldoutrun.com/the-difference-between-marketing-and-promotions/ [Accessed 4 Mar. 2019].

Mialki, S. (2018). What Is Demographic Segmentation & Why Is It Necessary? [Examples]. [online] Instapage.com. Available at: https://instapage.com/blog/demographic-segmentation [Accessed 5 Mar. 2019].

Walker, M. (2018). How To Promote an Event – 33 Ideas. [Blog] Eventbrite Blog. Available at: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-free-event-promotion-ideas-ds00/ [Accessed 5 Mar. 2019].