If you have been reading our blog this past week, you’ll know we’ve been focused on the business of marketing the St. Catharines Wing Fest. We’ve shared strategies with you, branding advice and even the thought process behind our very talented team of graphic designers and social media pros.

Our approach to marketing Wing Fest is not a lone concept, it is a strategy that we have and will continue to use on the future events we are lucky enough to market. Our strategy of course leans heavily on the digital realm. While to us it seems like a no-brainer strategy, it’s hard not to consider the effect that traditional marketing can also have on bringing success and attendees to your event.

When approaching the strategy for marketing your event, we suggest taking a step back to reconsider your event audience, your budget and where people are getting information today.

WHERE DO PEOPLE GET THEIR INFORMATION

Consumers get their information from a lot of places and really the demographics are spread. Millennials and the younger generations live online, they research, interact and play in the digital space. The boomers, they are online sure, but they also seek out more traditional sources to access information. One space where both meet? Facebook. Social media, specifically Facebook, has become the way to share information, especially information that promotes things people want to do and see.

Financially how will a focus on digital advertising affect your budget in comparison to traditional marketing?

EVENT MARKETING COSTS

Traditional Advertising

• Print advertising - newspapers, magazines
• Radio
• Signage - banners, posters, billboards

Traditional marketing is just that, because it is tried and true. Newspaper and magazine advertisements, signage and radio, they are effective in their own ways and they carry dedicated audiences. However, they are expensive. Costs vary but for a successful campaign spread out between print and radio you should expect to spend thousands of dollars.

Digital Advertising

• Social media
• Blogging
• Email marketing
• PPC

The cost of digital advertising is much less significant. Consider that for Wing Fest we spent a total of $282 on digital advertising. Much of the costs you will incur in your digital strategy comes from the labour to produce compelling content to drive your narrative.  

Public Relations

One aspect of our marketing strategy that we have yet to talk about is Public Relations. PR, when effective, can get you into the traditional marketing market without spending thousands of dollars, however you won’t be able to control the narrative or the date of publication. For instance, you may secure a story in the local newspaper, but that story may be published covering the results of your event. PR also requires labour costs and relationships.

YOUR AUDIENCE

Pinning down your audience will help you dictate where to spend your marketing dollars. Once you have a thorough understanding of who your audience is, their buying behaviours and where they get information, you can better plan your spend. Let’s take Wing Fest for example. Our audience or buyer personas and the campaign we used to entice them roughly looked like this:

Target Audience 1 - Younger St. Catharines generation 

• Digital campaign
• Focus: Get out to a fun community event. Campaign used the food, competition and entertainment to drive engagement
  
  

Target Audience 2 - The champions of Port Dalhousie

• Digital campaign
• Focus: Reigniting their love of Port Dalhousie. Campaign called on a Port Dalhousie nostalgia to manufacture engagement
  
  

Target Audience 3 - Civically engaged citizens

• Focus: A community organization that means a lot to the community. We weren't shy on why we love that organization. We talked about it and used it.