CHAPTER 3
Implementing the Marketing Plan
You have written your marketing plan, and it’s looking good. Now we need to make that plan work for you.
Although there may be a number of other aspects to implementing your marketing plan, the most common components are
• Media promotion
• Online promotion
• Publicity
• Database/loyalty marketing
• Signage
We have included information about each of these components.
Media Promotion
Although you can go out and simply purchase media, like any other company, this is not all that common, primarily because it ignores the fact that you have a lot to offer a potential media partner. Instead, most sponsees embark upon media promotion to achieve their objectives without spending a fortune.
Generally, media promotions are created with one or more media partners. You provide them with co-ownership of the promotion and either a paid schedule or sponsorship of your event (and all ensuing benefits), and they provide several times that investment in media value. This can be an extremely cost-effective way for you to get your message out into the marketplace.
Who Should Create the Promotion?
Generally speaking, the sponsee is much more likely to achieve its goals if it is intrinsically involved in creating the promotion. See “The Ten Steps of Promotional Media” in the next section for some hints.
Do You Go to One or More Media Outlets?
If you have determined that you can achieve your objectives with either of two competing media outlets, our suggestion is that you brief them both on the promotion and ask them both to come back to you with a package that meets the brief.
If you have determined that there is only one media outlet that will suit your needs perfectly, you should negotiate closely with them to create a partnership. Do not let them hold you to ransom—you can always walk away and rethink your approach for a different type of media.
How Much Value Should You Get?
If your proposal is structured correctly (see “The Ten Steps of Promotional Media” in the next section), you should be receiving substantially more value from the media partner than the funds you invest. This is usually expressed as a value-to-cost ratio.
The table below outlines some value-to-cost ratios and what that value includes.
Is There Any Downside to Media Promotions?
Sometimes there can be a downside to media promotions. If you work with, say, one radio station, it will provide much greater value for your investment if you agree not to work with any other radio stations. But this could severely limit the number of people in your target market that you can reach. In that case, you have two choices:
1. Offer paid and promotional exclusivity to the one radio station and get maximum value from it. Use other types of media to increase your reach.
2. Offer promotional exclusivity but not sales exclusivity, explaining that in order to achieve your objectives you need greater numbers than it can deliver alone. You will probably get less value from it as a result.
The Ten Steps of Promotional Media
Buying promotional media is very much the same as any other kind of marketing transaction. It is part science, part street smart, part creative, and a lot of common sense. Here are nine easy steps to make the task easier.
1. Set Your Objectives for Media
Establish your specific goals. What are you trying to do? Are you promoting an event, selling tickets, or building up your profile? Know what you want to accomplish, who you want to communicate with, and how much you have to spend before you begin the media buying process.
2. Target Your Media Correctly
As with above-the-line media, the key to success is to choose the media partner(s) that will deliver the largest portion of your target market for the least amount of money. For instance, the number one radio station may deliver you 115,000 listeners in your target market, but you will pay to reach their total audience, which may be many times your core market.
On the other hand, if you select a lower rating radio station, magazine, or television program where their core market is your core market, the likelihood is that:
• You will spend less money to reach more of your core audience with less media coverage waste.
• Their listeners/readers/viewers will be more receptive to your marketing message.
3. Understand Why Media Run Promotions
Competition within the media for the attention of consumers is increasing exponentially, and the fact is that most media are virtually interchangeable in terms of content.
In addition to making a sale to you, most media groups want one or more of the following things from a media promotional opportunity: to create a point-of-difference from their competition through the creative use of promotions. This will attract more listeners/viewers/readers and make them more attractive for regular advertisers. Creative is the key word here—if it looks or sounds like every other enter-to-win promotion in the marketplace, it isn’t worth anything in a media negotiation to increase the profile of their shows, personalities, stars, etc. or to create new advertising vehicles. An example would be a newspaper creating the official program for your event in exchange for the right to sell advertising in it.
4. Create a Proposal That Helps Them to Achieve That Goal
In order to maximize the media value you achieve for your investment, it is imperative that you go to your target media with a plan that will achieve your objectives and will create a strong point-of-difference for them and assist them with attracting their audience. Do not fall into the trap of thinking that your promotional spend is their driving force, because it is not.
5. The More Creative the Better
Think outside the square, push the envelope, think laterally—whatever you call it, it is about thinking creatively.
Make your proposal relevant to the audience—really think about what this audience is interested in and what they want, and then give them that and more.
Ensure your proposal really is creative. Sure, everyone wants a vacation, but open up any magazine and you can enter five different contests to win a holiday at a beach resort and, with discount travel packages in every newspaper, most people know that it is not that great a deal. Be sure that what you offer is special—go to the extra effort to make this something that they could not do without you.
6. Involve Your Advertising Agency
This is really your call, but we strongly suggest that you utilize the creative resources of your advertising agency to ensure that what you propose to your target media is fully developed and creatively executed.
7. Negotiate for Control of Scheduling
Negotiate for time slots in programs that consistently deliver ratings and the demographics you are seeking. Bargain for newspaper and magazine placements in sections that have proven circulation and the readership demographics you need.
Many media sponsorships provide advertising time at the discretion of the station. This is of absolutely no value to you. If you can’t match the demographics of your audience with programs and publications that deliver to these groups, the sponsorship is of little value to you or other sponsors.
8. Never Pay More than Your Volume Rate
There are some media groups that will tell you that, since they are giving away a lot of unpaid promotion, the buy must be made at casual or “rack” rates, even if you are a regular advertiser who normally gets a discount. This is a lot of rubbish.
If you structure your promotional offer correctly, you are actually doing them a favor—you are helping them to create a strong point of difference and paying their costs to do it. You should never pay more than the rate negotiated by you or your media buyer for the paid portion of the deal.
9. Keep Your Ear to the Ground
Make time to meet and network with people in the media industry. These people are approachable. Learn the lingo, read industry publications, and speak to your contacts to find out about the media buying process. If there is a media campaign that you feel has been particularly successful or innovative, contact the organization and arrange to discuss the campaign with the relevant people.
Keep your ear to the ground on how radio, television, and newspapers are performing. Listen to the radio and keep an eye out for industry trends, new programs, and industry developments. Become an active media watcher.
10. A Little Cash Goes a Long Way
If you are trying to secure a media partner on a strictly contra basis—they provide media value, you provide sponsorship benefits—you will usually be working with a promotions manager. The problem with that is that most promotions managers have little influence in the organization. They only have a certain amount and type of media inventory to work with, and it’s often not that high quality.
Rather than hoping the promotions manager will be able to work a miracle and get you exactly what you need, it’s a much better idea to have a small cash budget. As soon as you bring money to the negotiation—even if it’s just a very modest amount—you are no longer working with the promotions manager, but the sales manager, and the sales manager has a lot of clout and flexibility.
Online Marketing
Within this section, we are addressing a while range of web-based marketing options. Please keep in mind that what is available—and even possible—is increasing all the time, so take this section as a guide only. Although the mindset we recommend is likely to be relevant for a number of years to come, as new tech becomes available, assess it to see if it will meet your needs and ensure your approach is consistent throughout.
Social Media
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, YouTube, Reddit . . . it feels like a new social media site is launched every day. Social media has revolutionized our lives, providing new ways for people to connect and use word of mouth to promote everything from events to causes to campaigns to products. It’s this advocacy that makes social media one of the most powerful and cost-effective ways that you can market yourself.
To be successful in social media, you first need to understand its power. Social media puts the control into the hands of the users. While losing some control over your content, the two-way and infinitely shareable nature of social media means that if what you’re doing is worth talking about, they’ll talk about it to hundreds and thousands and sometimes millions of people.
More than that, you can involve your sponsors, allowing them the privilege of accessing and connecting with your passionate fans.
The two most important factors in successful social media marketing are having relevant, shareable content and using an authentic voice.
Shareable Content
The main drawcard for properties to use social media is that the message can spread exponentially through sharing and participation. But that doesn’t happen just because you post it; you have to either create something that is worth their interest or allow them to create relevant content and share it with you.
If what you need is to get word out about your event or season ticket sales or an exhibition, don’t just hammer people with that message. They will feel like their trust has been abused and stop engaging with you. Instead, decide on a target ratio for messages and content you generate. For instance, you could post four items that are interesting (useful, funny, how-to, behind the scenes, etc.) for every call-to-action, and you won’t do a call-to-action post more than once every couple of days on each of your social media pages. You’ve probably got tons of content to share—do that, build trust, and people will be much more receptive to your calls-to-action.
If this advice is true for you, it’s doubly true for your sponsors. Straight promotion of your sponsors in social media just looks like an ad that you were paid to place, and your audience will tune out. Instead, encourage your sponsors to come up with some great leverage ideas (more on that later) with a strong social, real-time, social media component. If their ideas are creative and participatory and social, they will look right at home alongside your social media activity.
Authentic Voice
In social media, it is imperative to speak with the voice of a human—a fellow fan—not an organization. It’s the difference between:
“Monster Truck Madness tickets on sale now—Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town.”
And
“Mud? You want mud?! We’ve got the biggest mud pit ever seen in the Southern Hemisphere! Guess how many liters—closest gets a pair of weekend passes and behind-the-scenes tour! 20 minutes—go!”
Yes, you have to have details about what you’re doing, but you can put that in the main image of your Facebook page, in the background of your Twitter page, and reference getting all of the details with a link—still maintaining an authentic voice.
You want to sound as excited and passionate about what you’re doing as the fans are. You want to give them insider or behind-the-scenes information that they’re hungry for—and do it with enthusiasm. You don’t want to be unprofessional, but being professional doesn’t mean passionless!
What Can Social Media Accomplish?
Social media is a marketing jack-of-many-trades. Used well, it can
• Drive interest
• Drive intent and/or preference
• Sell tickets
• Sell merchandise
• Garner donations or volunteers
• Drive people to participate in research
• Get fan feedback
• Drive fan advocacy
• Extend your sponsors’ leverage activities
• And so much more!
Social media is no longer a nice “extra” within your marketing plan but an essential component that your sponsors and audiences expect you to have well developed.
Going Viral
The real brass ring is if you can get your social media activities to “go viral”—that is, to spread from person to person, expanding their impact exponentially, like a virus.
If that’s the goal, you can achieve it in a number of ways:
• Be funny, outrageous, or surprising—go out on a limb with a video, spoof something familiar (and do it well), create a social media app or meme that will capture people’s attention.
• Offer insights or context that creates relevance to individuals that they may not have understood. This is particularly effective for causes, which can often suffer from an understanding and/or relevance gap with potential donors.
• Crowdsource content—ask people to submit ideas, videos, photos, solutions to a problem, or whatever. They’ll share it. You can share the best.
• Ask your celebrity or athlete spokespeople to forward and promote your content to their followers.
• Simply ask people to spread the word. If your content is compelling, just ask for the retweet or for people to share on Facebook or other platforms.
• Ask your sponsors to share select content with their followers.
Your Website
We are assuming that your organization or event already has a website. If not, you really need to set one up. The web is now a major, and for some, the primary, tool for gathering information on topics of interest, events, causes, and more. If you’re not online, you’re not in the game. In addition, your online presence, and how it is presented, says a lot to sponsors about your professionalism.
At a minimum, your website should feature the following:
• What the event or organization is and what it’s about.
• Location.
• Dates and times.
• Pricing.
• Transportation and parking information.
• Schedule of events (if applicable).
• Special offers.
• Sponsor recognition (at minimum, logos linked to their sites).
• Logos of all endorsing bodies (linked to their sites).
• Key marketing messages—tell visitors how this event relates to them. Push those hot buttons!
• Links to connect/follow/like you in social media.
• Share buttons, so it’s easy for people to share your site content with their own networks.
How you feature all of this is very important, and although we make no claim to being website gurus, we do have a few suggestions:
• Get the website professionally designed and built. A good web designer will know where to put the most important information, how to make it user friendly, and will be able to make the whole thing reflect your image. This doesn’t have to be expensive. You can use resources like Elance.com, Odesk.com, Guru.com, or Crowdspring.com to get strong design for a very fair price.
• It doesn’t have to be huge—a credible-looking 4- to 5-page site with the right information is better than 20 pages of fluff.
• It also doesn’t have to be flashy (literally). Flash animations have fallen well out of favor, along with music and other purely cosmetic additions to an otherwise useful website.
• If there is content that would be useful for people to have around or bring with them to your event, such as an event map or schedule of activities, either provide a printer-friendly version or create a downloadable PDF.
• Give away information—a great way to get people to welcome contact from you is to ensure you are giving them useful information, such as how-tos, checklists, articles, and white papers, and more.
• Start a blog. If you can commit to blogging once every couple of weeks (at least), or hire someone who can, a blog is a great way to ensure your site has fresh, topical, shareable content.
Other Websites
Be sure to get your event or program listed on complementary websites. These will vary greatly from one property to another, but here are a few suggestions:
• Convention and visitors bureau schedule of events
• Convention and visitors bureau listing of local cultural and/or sporting organizations
• City council schedule of events
• Governing body schedule of events (e.g., if it is a golf event, ensure that your state and national endorsing golf bodies list your event on their calendar), newspaper “what’s on” sites (some radio and television stations have this type of listing on their sites, too!)
• Related directories (e.g., listings of causes serving your geographic area)
• Your sponsors’ websites
• Sites specific to your target market (e.g., gamers, football fans, retirees)
Apps
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you are familiar with the idea of apps. There are apps for smartphones, apps for Facebook, apps for computer operating systems, and more types coming all the time.
In our world, how apps are delivered is less important than how meaningful they are to the experience around your event or program. There are three main types of apps: helpful, amplifying, and games.
Helpful Apps
As the heading implies, these apps are about getting helpful information into the hands (literally) of people who need it, and they’re a great way to make whatever it is that you do even more relevant and accessible to your target markets. Whether it’s an interactive event or exhibition information, a festival map, team stats, artist profiles, workout plans, or other how-to skills relating to what you do, they can be wrapped into an app.
Amplifying Apps
These apps are about amplifying and personalizing the fan experience. You can give fans a platform for sharing their love for your team or allow culture buffs to re-create their social media avatars in the style of great painters from a blockbuster exhibition.
Games Apps
Gamification—enhancing and augmenting the fan experience through social gaming—is a huge trend for events and other properties. It deepens your bonds with your target markets by making them feel like participants, not spectators.
Search Engines
The fact that google is now officially a verb should tell you how important search engine positioning is. Again, we’re not experts, but here are some suggestions.
• Double-check to see that your site is indexed on Google, Yahoo!, and DMOZ. (Dmoz.org is the indexer behind hundreds of smaller search engines.) If it’s not, follow the instructions and submit your site.
• Get a business Google+ page and share content from your website and/or blog. This has been shown to increase your Google search ranking.
• Up your positioning—if you get your event listed and include a link to your home page on a number of complementary websites, you are far more likely to come up higher in a search engine results list.
• Consider search engine advertising—products like Google’s AdWords allow you to pay for advertising alongside searches for keywords you specify. If you specify “cancer research,” then whenever someone searches for that topic, your ad will come up. You can target specific geographic regions and only run the ad during certain time frames or times of day. It works on a pay-per-click basis and is a science unto itself, but it gets easier pretty quickly.
If all of this is starting to sound like gobbledygook, don’t despair. Every half-decent website in cyberspace has gone through the same thing. There are plenty of good books available, including “For Dummies” books on search engine optimization and AdWords, and there are lots of online tutorials. That’s how we did it!
Emails
Email marketing can be very powerful, or it can be perceived as very annoying. It is, basically, database marketing, but the immediacy and personal contact has its own benefits.
If you want to get into email marketing and have absolutely no experience, you will probably want to find yourself an expert to develop the strategy and help you build your list. Whether you are currently doing email marketing or not, we have a few suggestions:
• Send a regular newsletter. Make it a mix of useful information—links to pertinent blogs, white papers, advice—and promotion of your event or program.
• Focus on the customer. When you are trying to market something (sell tickets, increase donations, etc.), talk about the specific benefit to the customer. Email is personal. Keep the message personal, as well.
• Segment your list—categorize the people on your list based on various factors so you don’t send every communication to every person. If you’ve got a community event in Texas, they don’t need to hear about it in Connecticut. If you are selling tickets to a $1,000-a-plate dinner, your $15 one-off donors probably don’t want to know about it.
• Don’t spam. If the people on your list haven’t asked to be on your list, it is unethical and, in many jurisdictions, illegal to send unsolicited bulk mail messages to them. Plus, it will give you really bad karma, and no sponsorship seeker needs that.
• Respect your customers. Do not ever, ever loan, sell, or rent your list. Also, if someone doesn’t want to hear from you by email, be sure the person is removed permanently from the list and apologize for any inconvenience.
Podcasting
Whether this pertains to your event or not depends entirely on the scope of your event. But if you’ve got content that people want to see or hear, this is a very interesting marketing medium that is only set to grow.
The gist of it is that you can create content, put it on iTunes, other MP3 sites, or your own site, and people can download it and listen or watch on their smartphones or MP3 players. This is not just limited to music—if you can record it in audio or video format, and it’s useful or entertaining, it’s worth distributing.
Below are just a few examples of content that might be compelling. Many of these could be done in serial form.
• Business advice from a professional association
• Training program from a marathon organizer
• Concert footage or behind-the-scenes footage from a concert promoter or band
• Infant first aid basics from a children’s hospital
• How to fix a flat tire from a racing team
You can charge for the content—possibly using it as a fundraiser—or let it out there for free. The key is to make it compelling and credible.
Publicity
Publicity includes editorial media coverage in newspaper and magazine articles, and television and radio coverage. It is also known as public relations. Public relations will probably be very important to your event. That said, it is the only facet of a marketing plan that is out of your control—you can’t make the newspaper write what you want them to write—so be sure that PR isn’t your only marketing strategy. There are some key strategies that you can follow that will help you gain better results from your activities.
• Be sure that your public relations program is handled by a reputable public relations professional, preferably a member of your national public relations institute. Hiring an independent public relations professional is probably a lot less expensive than you think. Do not dismiss spending this money until you have analyzed the value against the cost.
• If you are handling public relations internally, do ensure that whoever handles it is an active member of the public relations community.
• Whether internal or external, be sure your publicist understands what is expected, the resources available to him or her, and how success will be judged.
• Understand that not all media are equal. One spread in a national magazine could be worth dozens of smaller placements, but if you have a niche market, the right coverage in a niche publication or broadcast could be worth a lot more than something aimed at a broader market.
• Understand that, in order to get coverage, an event has to be newsworthy.
• Spend some time developing a variety of interesting angles. This will not only increase your potential for coverage, but it will also allow you to go to the same media outlets again and again with different stories.
• Do not discount the value of smaller, more targeted media outlets. They may be more receptive to your story and the readers may be more avid.
Database Marketing
One of the best ways to communicate large amounts of information to a specific target market is to embark upon a campaign of database marketing.
Databases come in all shapes and sizes, and you probably have access to several. Below we have listed several sources, in order of their probable receptiveness to your marketing message:
1. Members
2. Season ticket holders
3. Previous attendees or ticket purchasers
4. People who have signed up for your mailing list
5. Databases provided by industry organizations (e.g., your local arts governing body)
6. Databases that you rent from outside sources (demographically and geographically targeted)
Once you have settled on the database(s) to be used for your communications, you will need to determine how you will reach this group. Keep in mind that different types of databases represent different groups that may be receptive to varying methods of communication. You have many options for communication, including:
• Email announcements and e-newsletters (ensure your list is highly targeted, opt-in, and run in an ethical manner)
• Newsletters or other publications
• Inserting information in regular mailings
• Special mailings (specific to this event)
• Telemarketing
• Promotional material in member gathering places (clubhouse, etc.)
In addition to informing target markets about your event or organization, you may also want to include some type of enticement for them to attend. Some suggestions include
• Priority seating
• Early ticketing
• Special pricing or offers
• Merchandise discounts
• Invitations to special events
Signage
Signage includes signs that are made specifically for an event, such as banners, A-frames, and scoreboards. Pre-event and event signage can be a strong communication vehicle. Think broadly about your options, which could include
• Venue signage (facing a roadway or public area)
• Signage on your office building (if it is in a good location)
• Street banners or flags around your town
• Electronic billboards (many cities and towns have electronic reader boards that show upcoming events)
• Signage at convention and visitor bureau kiosks
• Perimeter signage
• Airport signage
• Vehicle signage
Sponsor Leverage
We will talk extensively about sponsor leverage and its strategic importance to both the sponsors and your organization a bit later on, but there is also a marketing plan angle to it. Everything your sponsors do to leverage their sponsorship—to use it to enhance connections with their target markets and promote their brand—also promotes what you do. And if you are collaborative in the process of leverage development, you can suggest ways that they can achieve their objectives and augment your marketing plan.
One very simple example is to encourage your sponsors to extend their leverage into social media. In the very simple example below, American Express employees volunteered with the New York City branch of CityYear. @CityYearNewYork tweeted about it to their 2,500-ish followers and American Express retweeted the message to their nearly 650,000 followers.
Figure 3.1 Get sponsors to help spread the word