13
WRITING AN EVENT MARKETING PLAN
JODIE MARINKOVICH
IMPLEMENTATION
GUIDELINE
• Stick to your timelines.
• Ensure someone is always available for any media interviews.
• Monitor all marketing and media and adapt your event marketing plan as needed.
TRACKING, MONITORING & MEASURING
It is crucial that you track and monitor your event marketing plan as it is being implemented so you can
identify early on if the plan is not working and you can make updates.
Gathering marketing performance data is essential for current and future events. Consider the cost as an
investment as the cost and benefits will be realised over the lifecycle of the event.
The data will allow you to plan and attribute resources to optimise your return on investment. It gives
assurances to stakeholders through valuable content in reports. The data supports decisions you need to
make about the event, which if delivered in a timely manner, can save you a lot of money.
When planning your marketing think carefully about how you will track, monitor and measure each
marketing and communications activity. The mechanism needs to place you in a position to move swiftly;
and stop, respond or capitalise on activities that are;
• Booked with a channel, but either never happened, or are delayed in activation.
• Not generating or generating more than expected sales.
• Cost a lot of money, but not returning the sales to give a good return on investment.
• Are sending the wrong message about the event.
• Eliciting a poor or fantastic response from viewers/readers.
When applying for funding from New Zealand Major Events and other organisations it helps to have
robust marketing and consumer data from past events. Many funding agencies will place greater emphasis
on independent professional data collection and analysis. Consider contracting these tasks out to experts
if you anticipate using data to support significant funding applications.
Consider your reporting requirements when putting your plans in place. Many funding agencies and
sponsors will expect progress and post-event reports on marketing activity. The Local Organising
Committee and Board will also require staged reporting.
Your Marketing Project Plan spreadsheet (see below) enables you to have a high-level overview of your
marketing and communications activity. Combining this information with your measurement data enables
you to attribute spikes in sales on or near a particular date to that/those activities.
• Stagger your marketing in a way that a spike in ticket sales can be largely contributed to a specific
activity.
• Subscribe to Google Analytics to measure your social media reach and viewer behaviour. For example,
conversion to sales, expressions of interest, click throughs.
• Ensure you budget for and conduct post-event research, ideally through a credible external supplier.
• At setup, consider how you will measure ticket sales, who is buying (international or national), what
they are buying and when (so you can report on buyer behaviour).
• Ensure your EDM platform has a means of measuring recipient behaviour. For example, opening of
email, click through to website or purchase site.
• Measure your merchandise sales so you can minimise waste in following years.
• Consider adding a question to your event ticketing and/or registration process to find out how
customers heard about your event.
• Create a marketing and press folder/book to keep track of all your marketing.
• Ask outdoor channels to send you photos of your marketing when it is up. For example, on billboards
or bus backs.
• Clip advertising examples from print media.
• Take photos of people in your merchandise.
• Screen shot online advertising and articles you see for your event, or contract a media monitoring
agency to do this for you.