This Integrated Digital Marketing Strategy delivered 10X event ticket sales, 650% social growth and 280% increase website visits.
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This Integrated Digital Marketing Strategy Delivered 280% Website Visitor Growth
An established event organization, Francophonie en fete, struggled to grow. They called on Asset Digital Communications in 2016 to help them with marketing. Our team implemented a comprehensive digital marketing strategy. Since then they have enjoyed steady growth, becoming a recognized major cultural event in Toronto. We continue to work with them building their success each year.
The Challenge
Francophonie en Fête is an established and highly respected cultural organization which hosts francophone cultural events, and in particular a spectacular 10-day music festival every September since 2005. Despite a growing Francophone population in the Greater Toronto Area, event attendance was not growing. They had been experiencing sagging ticket sales in the previous few years. In August 2016 they began working with Asset Digital Communications, who did work on website optimization and social media content in the 4 weeks leading up to the September festival. This work generated a doubling in ticket sales over the previous year, and provided key insights and analytics that were then used the following year. In 2017, Asset Digital Communications was invited to continue their work to build exposure to the organization and sustain ticket sales, with a brand new digital marketing strategy to tap into the growing Francophone presence across the GTA.
The Digital Marketing Strategy Goals
Develop and launch brand new revitalized website
Build social media presence to grow follower base
Grow ticket sales and event attendance
Promote new event showcasing French African & Caribbean music
Digital Marketing Strategy Development & Execution
Using these insights, 3 persona were developed which served as a focus for the communications strategy.
The Young Newcomers were not familiar with the artists that were highlights in the Festival as they were new to Toronto, and Canada. The 2017 concerts featured Robert Charlebois and Jean-Pierre Ferland, two Canadian music icons from the ’60s an ’70s, and well loved by French Canadians. To appeal to the Young Newcomers we positioned the concerts as an opportunity to meeting new friends in a Francophone environment.
The Quebecois in Toronto, slightly older than the Young Newcomers, enjoyed these artists in their youth, and in some cases their parents also would have been fans. We developed messaging that communicated a sense of nostalgia around their childhood and youth, often within a family or community setting.
The third group, African Caribbean Heritage, were a mix of anglophones and francophones. To reach them we developed both English and French language content, and tapped into community influencers to help generate interest in the event.
1.
A new mobile-enabled bilingual event website
Tapping the latest features in leading Wordpress templates, an event website was developed to showcase both the festival and its featured talent. Each artist had a profile, a bio in both languages, plus links to their social media. At the click of a button a site visitor could listen to an artists content on Youtube or Soundcloud! The artists loved it, and in turn were active in promoting the festival and their participation at it.
2.
Media Micro-Site
The Toronto French-language press were identified as a key opportunity to widen both reach and online exposure. A micro-site that catered to them delivered access to the press kit and the full social media calendar. They were supplied with a steady stream of content to promote over their channels. The result was significantly more media coverage than previous years which helped boost ticket sales and grow online communities.
3.
Paid Advertising
The use of a highly focused, closely monitored paid ad strategy delivered a huge traffic uplift of highly targeted consumers to the website. Deployed in the last weeks of the campaign, paid ads delivered steady increases in traffic and ticket sales.
4.
Social Media Content Strategy
Highlighting the music of different performers daily, amplified over social and over the artists own networks created heightened reach and high engagement for the wide range of music styles that are showcased at Festival. A social media content calendar that featured daily posts targeting each of the three persona was broadcast via social, blog, email and community news outlets as part of the social media strategy.
5.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO on the website catapulted the website to the top of search and escalated the growth of organic traffic and new fans and event attendees.
6.
Email marketing
Weekly stories profiling the performers and their stories piqued the interest of the email base educating them on the unique, diverse performers featured at the festival.
7.
Community Influencers
Community Influencer Outreach enabled rapid growth in awareness for the inaugural Afro-Caribbean Music Extravaganza and enabled us to tap a brand new Francophone community for the organization.
Digital Marketing Insights
The organization Francophonie en fete enjoyed a loyal, mature Francophone attendee base for their events prior to the implementation of a digital marketing strategy. Insights gleaned from the 2016 analytics revealed that a new younger demographic was also interested in their events. A survey of the customer base was carried out in the Spring of 2016 and combining this with Google Analytics data, a key insight was uncovered: There were very different age-differentiated motivators for event attendance. We identified three key demographic online communities:
Testimonial
“Mary-Jane and Asset Digital have been instrumental in driving growth through digital marketing for our annual music festival. They manage all aspects of our marketing, including website development, SEO, content development, blogging, email marketing and online advertising. They have helped us to build a strong presence across all channels.”
– René C. Viau – Chairman, ACES Inc.
x10
Ticket Sales Growth
280%
Website Visitor Growth
650%
Social Platforms Growth
Testimonials
“Asset Digital has produced record attendance at our events.”
– René C. Viau – Chairman, ACES Inc.
“Asset Digital Communications have developed creative digital marketing solutions, delivering huge rewards and growth for our organization. We credit Mary-Jane and Asset Digital for taking the “Francophonie-en- Fête” Music Festival to become a recognized Major Cultural Event in Toronto.”
– Jacques Charette, General Manager
