OVERVIEW
  • Client – The Great Western Fan Festival
  • Industry – Live Event / Music
  • Date – 2015

The Great Western Fan Festival is a three-day music festival in Visalia, California with the best gospel singers, groups, and quartets from around the nation and 2015 was the second year the festival used social media as a marketing tool.

GOALS

Since it was their second time using social media, the goals were to;

    • Increase volume of people to the ticket sales site for the festival.
    • Create brand awareness through online ads by geo-targeting specific audiences.
    • Build, engage and inform target audiences through various social media platforms.
    • Excite existing audience of current “fans” through talent group’s social media outlets.

From there my measurable objectives were;

    • Engage over 2,500 people on various social media platforms.
    • Total impressions and total reach combined see over 100,000 views.
    • The website sees over 15,000 clicks to the ticket sales section.
STRATEGY

Below are the strategies and tactics that I used.

    • Social Media Marketing: The idea was to create two months of interactive organic content leading up to the festival. Everything from “artist spotlight bios” to videos of the talent coming to the event.
    • Social Media Ad Buying: Since the target audience’s age group usage of Facebook was extremely high, all online adverting was directed towards the Facebook page. Each month 10 posts were strategically promoted for $25 each.
    • Online Contest: People were encouraged to take a picture of themselves at the festival using the hashtag #gwff15. One lucky winner would get a signed autograph CD from their favorite artist. We had a dozen people enter the contest.
    • Real-Time Marketing: Created social media content in real-time. This was everything from photos, live streaming, to videos of performers on stage and behind-the-scenes content. The Periscope app was used to live-stream the event at various times each day during the 3 days. Over 75 people watched with a 100% retention rate each time it went live.
    • Talent Relations: Outreached to the publicists and managers of over a dozen groups that were going to perform at the festival to have them share festival content on their social media outlets was a priority. This resulted in the festival seeing a higher online organic reach versus paid reach.
RESULTS

Below were the final results.

    • Engagement: 3,134
    • Total Reach: 60,888
    • Total Impressions: 102,100
    • Web Clicks: 20,340

Overall the client was very happy. The online engagement saw a 25.36%+ increase from the original measurable objective. Both impressions and reach in total saw a 62.99%+ increase from the original measurable objective. Web clicks saw a 35.6%+ increase from the original measurable objective.