Festival Marketing is a critical piece of putting on a festival of any kind. While Covid restrictions have eased, the entertainment industry is still suffering as live concert and festival attendance have recently fallen (Source). Festival marketing now has one main goal: remind fans what they have been missing out on now that live events are back!
Generating a buzz around the event is crucial to the success of any festival, and it all starts on social media. If your digital marketing is strong and done well, it can introduce your services to a new demographic of potential attendees. An updated and clear website is essential to get information out to the world, but in today’s day and age, it is social media engagement that will make the difference in your festival attendance.
Keep reading to see how to market your music festival using social media to its full potential. As always, have a target market in mind and speak to it using the social media channels they use.
5 Social Media Marketing Tips for Festival Marketing
1. Post Consistently When Promoting Your Festival
Posting consistently is key when building a loyal audience that will engage across all social media platforms. Being consistent means that consumers don’t have to keep checking back into your page, but rather that content is being provided to them in advance to jog their memory about the event and remind them how much of a great time it will be.
Finding a happy medium between posting too frequently and not enough is based on your audience and how frequently they engage with content in general. For reference, more than 60% of Generation Z (ages 16-25) check social media daily while millennials are more likely to check their socials weekly.
Based on this information, it could be best to post one grid post a day or week depending on the demographic you are appealing to. Posting on stories is also a good way to frequently remind your audience of the upcoming event and create anticipation in a more passive way.
2. Partnering With Influencers is Excellent Festival Marketing Tactic
2. Partnering With Influencers is Excellent Festival Marketing TacticPartnering with influencers is a good way for more established events to expand their audience. If your marketing techniques are successful, you won’t even need to dig into your budget for this step. Influencer marketing also doesn’t mean that you need to be working with personalities that have millions of followers.
It is important to research content creators and find those who align with the event that you are putting on. If you are planning a music festival, you might try to find fashion, food, and travel bloggers. These influencers can tap into different audiences that might overlap and have followers who are interested in music festivals as well. Even if a fashion blogger is showing which outfits they put together for each day of the festival, those posts are still promotion for your event!
Paid influencer marketing is an option for music festival marketing. With this type of promotion, the influencer exchanges scheduled content for payment.
It flourishes similarly to word of mouth. You never know when someone at your event might have 10,000 Instagram followers and posts about an amazing food vendor at your festival. Influencer marketing is a great way to showcase the different aspects of your event and tailor it to varying audiences that are also interested in music and attending festivals.
3. Use Event Promotion Giveaways to Engage
Giveaways are a great way to engage followers and further market your music festival on social media. Enticing giveaways have the power to increase followers, convert leads, and amplify awareness for your event.
The first thing to decide is what the goal of your giveaway is, because ultimately you don’t want to be giving something away and getting nothing in return! One idea for a festival marketing giveaway might be VIP packages.
If you were to run the giveaway on Instagram, make one post explaining the guidelines and what the winner will receive. You may ask that they follow the festival’s account, tag 2 friends in the comments section, and share the post on their story for one extra entry.
Promotion giveaways tend to create a buzz around events as people are sharing it and tagging their friends to win a free experience. Since one requirement of the giveaway could be following the festival’s account, you have subsequent organic page views.
If consumers don’t end up winning the giveaway, they might decide to purchase tickets anyway. By following the account, they find out that they don’t want to miss out on this experience. All in all, giveaways can be a win-win for everyone involved.
4. Create Other Incentives to Engage Potential Festival Attendees
4. Create Other Incentives to Engage Potential Festival AttendeesLike giveaways, creating incentives for your audience can help create a mutual benefit for your event and audience. Providing exclusivity makes your supporters feel recognized and ultimately improves loyalty to your brand or live music event.
One example of an incentive for a music festival would be if consumers sign up for your weekly newsletter, they will receive first access to tickets when they become available. This helps promote your event and services, while also providing exclusive access to a service that attendees find valuable.
Other examples of creating incentives for your live event could include adding your name to an email list in exchange for a free drink at the festival or liking the event page on Facebook for access to behind-the-scenes content.
5. Use Hashtags to Promote Your Music Festival
Hashtags are still a great way to engage your target audience and connect them with relevant information about your festival. Using hashtags creates one unique place for information to be shared. In addition to creating a hashtag for your event’s name, you might consider using a creative slogan that is adjacent to your other promotional avenues.
Whether you are using general terms for hashtags in your posts leading up to the festival like #event, #venuemanagement, #musicfestival, or more creative catch phrases, hashtags are essential. Hashtags create a forum where ideas and information can be shared about the event. They are also a great way to be able to see all the content posted during your festival after it is all over!
A combination of these 5 festival marketing tips can help your festival become larger than life using social media. The main goals of any festival, growing awareness and boosting ticket sales, can become even more effortless with social media marketing.
It may seem like a daunting task to figure out how to effectively utilize social media on top of other event promotional strategies that you may already be using for festival marketing. Put simply, marketing using social media channels provides a mutual benefit for you and your potential attendees.
You engage them with your festival promotion posts and they participate “socially” in your next live music event and many will end up actually attending the music festival as well.
Related Posts:
Using Offline Marketing for Event Promotion: Part One
Why Use Offline Event Promotion Channels: Part Two?
7 Event Marketing Strategies for Your Next Concert Promotion
