Challenges Of Working In A City Park
- Abby recommends that you spend time with neighborhoods, work closely with parks, with the city, with road closures, and other organizers that also operate in the parks.
- It is all about coalition building to help support the event. However, a big part of this process is about removing barriers.
- Updating The Austin Ice Cream Festival For 2018
- The Austin Ice Cream Festival brings in 10-20 different frozen treat vendors for attendees to sample.
- Diversifying options: This year, the event is splitting into 2 parts, each with a different target audience.
- Paying attention to audiences. The team handling the Ice Cream Fest noticed that there were two different groups attending the event. The first was families with kids who wanted to have a good time. They also noticed that adults would show up later in the day.
- This year, they have chosen to break it into two sections. After the family-friendly event, they will take a break, and then have an “After Dark” experience with more adult vibe, and a headlining music lineup.
- Practical experience: The previous festival went from 10AM to 10PM. This was way too long, and grueling for event staff and for the vendors.
- Consumer Data: The two audiences were Families with kids under 8, and then groups of people aged 20-40. This data allowed the Ice Cream Fest to give people an opportunity to do what they liked.
How to set up marketing efforts to communicate changes and sale dates
- Have a different plan for each of your channels, with messages based off of target audiences
- Use email lists from previous years
- Segment emails, to send the segment info based off of their interests
- Rely on social media and website to tell the story of the event
- Start with the look and feel based off of email
Measuring Success
- Track the customer flow, see how many clicks people need to take to view the ticket page and convert
- Spend a lot of time on ticket page, with the content and ticket page explaining what is involved
- Everything starts with design and look & feel
- Be very deliberate in content and copy that you use. Think about the customer journey.
- Make sure that everything is logical. Track how people
- Have a strong FAQ page based off of what your attendees will be concerned about. Put yourself in the shoes of your consumer and target audience. Organize the questions. Get someone who doesn’t know anything about your event to go over the FAQ and site, and offer constructive feedback.
Providing value to participating brands in events
- One of the brands that will be providing event souvenirs is YETI. In this case, for YETI coolers, they are putting a product in the consumer’s hands that is meeting and helping soothe their pain point.
- Brands want to see not only physical branding but also digital. They want to understand measurement and see the impact.
- Create a brand interaction in a way that it is a value-add for the customer, but don’t make your event a billboard.