marketing plan

Logbook Entry: March 11th

Logbook Entry: How will you use marketing and the strategies explored in this course with your career as an artist or arts administrator?

I think this class has made more critical of design. Collecting all the marketing materials and reviewing them has made me pay more attention to how all things designed. Writing about these materials has helped me define what I think to be good design and gave me examples to model my work after.

This class also taught me the value of planning out your marketing goals. I had always just been thrown into marketing plans and expected to deliver. Now that I know how to create a strategic marketing plan, I will feel more prepared to take on that responsibility. I also found it really helpful to do the SWOC analysis for my marketing plan. That analysis really put into perspective where we really needed improvements and where we were strongest. I was thinking it might be interesting to do a marketing plan for myself. In this field and age we have to spend a lot of time marketing ourselves. It may be a good idea to have a plan.

Lastly, this class has given me an inside look to how marketers think. The idea of target marketing makes perfect sense, but still throws me. My mission has always been to make art accessible for all, so it’s difficult for me to design a marketing plan that tailors to a specific audience. Though I see how an organization must cater to the right clientele in order to stay financially stable. I just want to figure out how to do that while still maintaining accessibility. It reminds me of a story I hear from musician Bonnie Raitt: She said that artist like her were funded by the big commercial stars; that without bands like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, she wouldn’t have been able to have a career. So, maybe I should think of marketing like this: sometimes you need to pull in the big bucks in order to help the small artists, but in the end we are always supporting the arts.

Logbook Entry: March 4th

Logbook Entry: Describe audience development programs that would integrate into your plan including permission marketing and customer escalation methods.

One aspect of audience development we really need to work on is keeping in touch with our past attendees. This year we had everyone fill out their bid sheet before they got drink tickets, so we were able to collect a lot of people’s information. We now have their email, phone number, name and how they heard about the event. This will definitely help for next year. We will be able to send out invitations and a call for artists through email. We also have the contact information from artists that submitted their work this year, so we can contact them again. I should probably compile this information into an Excel sheet to be included in the marketing plan.

We could improve on this bid sheet for next year by adding permission marketing questions such as asking how they would prefer to be contacted. We could also ask if they are already a fan of our Facebook page or follow our Twitter. If we did the bid sheets electronically like on an iPad, we might be able to get people become to follow our social media at the event. It would be really cool if we could file everything electronically. Plus we need to have an iPad for charging credit cards anyway. We don’t currently have a newsletter, but if we asked our audience how they preferred to be contacted, they could say email. This would be a good indicator that we should develop a newsletter or create a list serve.

Logbook Entry: February 25th

Logbook Entry: List consideration for pricing your product. Consider promotional activity and discounts. When, where, and how will these be implemented? How does “place” influence pricing decisions?

This is definitely a question we should have considered before marketing the event this year. In past years, the price has been a $5 entrance fee that includes 2 drink tokens and food. However, we had a higher fundraising goal this year. After going over the numbers, I realized that we’re probably not going to hit our goal if people don’t either buy a lot of alcohol or spend at least $20 on each art piece. So, we decided to make the entrance fee just include 1 drink ticket. However, we had our event last night and while it was fairly successful (150 people attended, around 70 artworks sold, good reviews), we did not meet our fundraising goal.

I believe part of this is due to the nature of the event. There’s a limit to how much it can grow and how much people are willing to bid on art. However, I did learn last night that $4 was too much to charge for beer. Halfway through the night we realized that we weren’t selling that much alcohol, so we cut the price in half to $2. Though I think it was too late and maybe too cheap. Therefore, I think $3 would have been the perfect price. Cheaper than your regular bar, but still brings in revenue.

One thing we discussed was raising the entrance fee for next year. I’m thinking $8, although I don’t know if that would be too high. Danielle suggested we could sell pre-sale tickets for $5 and charge $8 at the door. Although collecting $8 is always difficult when you are a cash only venue. We need to invest in getting a credit card option for next year. People would be willing to bid a lot more if their bid was not dependent on the cash they had on them.

Overall, if we want to raise more money, we will have to change some pricing. The places we have the event at often limit the number of people allowed in the building to 100, so we can’t increase the attendance, but we could charge more to attend. Through the question still remains: how much to charge at the door? Or should we make money another way?

Logbook Entry: February 11

Logbook Entry: List organizational and product stakeholders. Outline and prioritize target markets that you will address in your plan.

Organizational Stakeholders:

Leaders and members of Emerging Leaders in the Arts Network
Arts Administration Program
Americans for the Arts
Emerging Leaders Network
Architecture & Allied Arts Department
Community supporters of ELAN

Product Stakeholders:

All sponsors including:

Ninkasi
Bijou Art Cinemas
Jordan Schitzer Museum of Art
MECCA: Materials Exchange Center for Community Arts
BRING Recycling
Evviva CrossFit
Costco
Safeway
Track Town Pizza
Pegasus Pizza
Trader Joe’s

Other Product Stakeholders:

People who made art for Beats & Brushstrokes (artists)
People who will buy art at Beats & Brushstrokes (patrons)
Eugene arts and culture community
City of Eugene
Attendees to Beats & Brushstrokes
DJ Leftovers

We are definitely focused on the donor market, specifically the sponsorship market. As you can see, we have gained a fair amount of sponsors, but in order to meet our fundraising goal of $2000 it would best to get even more sponsors. We have a sponsorship packet that we have been sending out to possible sponsors that includes a list of reasons why an organization should sponsor our event such as increasing brand awareness and connecting to university students. There are many different sponsorship levels that give organizations different promotional opportunities from social media cross promotion to including their logo on all print materials to a website link on ELAN’s website. I don’t believe we have gotten a highest level donation yet, but we did get an individual donation at level 2 ($200). Perhaps, next year we should focus on individual donors. One way to do this, would be to start a Kickstarter campaign. This would increase the opportunity for individuals to support us rather than corporations. However, it is too late this year to put this plan into action. Though if we do not meet our fundraising goal this year, we may have to start a Kickstarter or another fundraising campaign after Beats & Brushstrokes in order to pay for Arts Venture. All of these questions will be addressed in the “Suggestions” portion of my marketing plan.

Assignment Description By the end of the term, students will have a completed marketing outline with a plan that can be implemented with direct reference to an organization. Note that students are not required to actually create marketing materials. Please refer to attached Marketing Plan Outline for expectations on the required information to be included in the final plan. A seven (7) minute oral presentation on each students’ marketing plan is required at the end of the term.

Marketing Plan Outline: Parts I & II

Marketing Plan Outline: Parts I, II, III, & IV A

Final Marketing Plan