Live from the LMA Fall Conference in Atlanta

Event Marketing: Keynote Has Muscle and HUGE POTENTIAL

ChattanoogaTimes Free Press Publisher Jason Taylor wound up the Wednesday morning crowd with his keynote presentation on Event Marketing and boy oh boy, did he get things going with a bang. His energy was enormous and so was his lively staging of his Flex Your Muscles presentation.

Jason Taylor

The bottom line is this: there’s plenty of money to be made in marketing events in communities large and small and, going beyond the revenue lure, the audience engagement and strengthening of newspaper brand are invaluable long term benefits.

Why Events?

• Revenue through sponsorship sales, ticket sales, booth sales, VIP packages, premium seating, merchandising.
• Allows newspapers to play to their strengths – brand and market penetration. Taylor said that in his market, an advertiser would have to buy 26 commercials on American Idol to match the market penetration of an ad in his Sunday newspaper.
• Prevent outside event companies from swooping into your market and taking these dollars. An excellent selling strategy for local newspapers: “Money spent locally stays local.”
• Can dramatically improve foot traffic to the SMB’s who buy booths and sponsorships.
• Grow customer base – lots of new business comes from events.
• Engage readers – events boost relevancy and improves overall impression of newspaper among both consumers and businesses
• Get to know clients much more intimately – when you host an event you’re spending an entire day with the businesses who are participating.
• Strengthen underperforming audiences – have a big Hispanic demographic in your market? Host an event aimed specifically for this target.
• Showcase high performing audiences – think Senior Expo.
• Sell subscriptions – Taylor reports unexpectedly high sales at events.
• Capture $$ from different buckets – many companies budget separately for event marketing. For example, McDonalds, an infrequent advertiser previously, now is the lead sponsor on Taylor’s Kidz Expo. This has led to more in paper ads such as inserts and post it front page notes.
• Marketing your events markets you.

Look for more on this, including links to Jason Taylor’s dynamite presentation, coming soon to this website and in October issue of Local Media Today.