My friend and mutual event & entertainment marketer Jim Delaney and I were talking yesterday. We bitched in unison at the lack of non-traditional marketing that is happening in the arena venues. This includes both the small and large venues. We discussed what we continue to hear are the reasons. The list is the typical excuses:
1) Not enough time
2) Not enough manpower or resources
3) Not enough money
Give me a break. How long are venue marketers going to use these excuses? Let’s discuss each of these three “so called” reasons.
You have heard the term “time is what you make it”. Well make time. One way to do this is stop looking at non-traditional marketing as “extra”. This is marketing in the 21st century. If you are paid to market then this is part of your time. You make time to place TV, and radio. You drive around town looking for the right place for your billboards. You write press releases and pitch media stories. Why don’t you have time to post Twitter messages? How much effort does it take to send 140 character messages out about the venue or show?
I will agree that venue marketing departments are never given all the resources and manpower that they should have. The main purpose of a venue is to fill the seats. This is all about marketing the product. I believe the venue marketing department should be the most important department. As marketers we have learned to adapt to our environment. This means making it happen with what we got. You don’t need a team of people to make advances in social marketing.
Jim used the analogy of venue digital technology and an advertising wrapped vehicle. It looks great. It will bring your brand lots of attention. You give it to the intern. Instead of driving the wrapped car all around town he leaves it in his driveway. This is what is happening with websites. What good is a flashy website if you don’t use it to market? Just listing upcoming events is not good enough. Today’s web is all about interactive. You have technology to capture data like mobile phone promotions, yet you don’t use it to market back.
Money or budget is the “easy out” excuse these days. This is one of the reasons that the recession is so deep. We are so worried that our business is going to be hurt, we cut budgets “just in case”. If we cut budgets that affect business does this help? Every show you promote has a budget. Look at what you are spending this budget on. Every venue tells me that print does not work anymore. I am not sure this is true or not. But if customers don’t read newspapers anymore, where do they get their info? I just read today that Boston TV advertising revenue is down $66 million. So where are we going with the marketing dollars?
Tags: advertising budgets, Arena marketing, data capture, Jim Delaney, marketing budgets, non-traditional marketing, recession cuts, social marketing, Twitter, venue marketers, venue websites
