Why it's Important to Have an Effective Venue Marketing Strategy

Discover the significance of a venue marketing strategy and essential components to incorporate in your own.

As a venue manager, you want as many event planners through your doors as possible. It's about expanding capacity, increasing revenue streams, and building an engaged client base. But how do you attract the right audience, and get event professionals enquiring about your venue space? A well-planned venue marketing strategy is a good place to start. 

Find out more about boosting your exposure and what to include in your venue marketing strategy to get more eyes on your event spaces and more function bookings in your diary.

What is a Venue Marketing Strategy?

A venue marketing strategy, in simple terms, is a plan of action that details how your venue will achieve its marketing goals. It outlines the specific steps you need to take to achieve these goals and who will be responsible for each step.

A well-crafted marketing strategy is essential for any venue, regardless of size or type. It helps you focus your efforts and make the most of your resources, while also helping you stay ahead of the competition. If you're looking to increase bookings, a solid venue marketing strategy is a must. The same goes for boosting revenue streams or building brand awareness. With the right plan in place, anything is possible.

Different Types of Marketing Strategies for Your Venues

There are several different marketing strategies that a venue can use (ideally you should use all of them in one way or another), but the most effective ones are those that are tailored to the specific needs of your audience - in this case, event professionals. Here are four of the most common types of marketing strategies you should consider for your venue;

Paid Advertising

Paid advertising is one of the most traditional forms of marketing, involving various paid media channels to promote your venue. While advertising can be expensive, it can also provide fast results. By researching and planning carefully, you can successfully increase venue exposure and enquiries, especially when combined with organic marketing efforts.

Organic

Organic marketing is essential and arguably the most crucial aspect of long-term success. This strategy requires creating various types of venue marketing content, such as blogs, SEO, case studies, infographics, and video content to establish your venue as an expert or thought leader. Although it takes the longest to develop, it will provide successful long-term results.

Public Relations

Public relations is all about building positive relationships with the public. This can involve press releases, interviews, social media outreach, and more. Establishing relationships with key publications and using them to push out important pieces at critical times can greatly expand your reach, although it can be costly.

Marketing Events

Events are a great way to engage with potential customers face-to-face and as a venue manager, you should be more than familiar with these. They're a great way to create word-of-mouth marketing and social proof. It's important to strategically approach sharing content from these events to enhance venue marketing efforts.

How To Develop a Venue Marketing Strategy

When developing your venue marketing strategy, there are several key steps to consider. A well-crafted strategy can lead to significant growth for your venue.

• Know who you're trying to attract. Study your ideal customer and create your buyer personas
• Defining your goals, make them SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely)
• Measure progress against goals
• Create your unique market positioning statement (and keep it consistent)

Understanding your target audience, marketing strategy, and measurement techniques helps create consistent, relevant, and compelling messaging. Your venue management software can also provide greater insights into your customers, including how they prefer to be communicated with, and what messaging is most impactful for their needs (i.e. corporate event offers or wedding packages).

Implementing Your Venue Marketing Strategy

Creating and Distributing Marketing Material

After finalising your venue marketing strategy, the next step is to put it into action. This will involve a range of activities based on the specifics of your plan. Marketing materials for your venue can include print ads, website banners, social media posts, blogs, testimonials, and videos. Once you have your materials ready, you'll need to distribute them to the appropriate audience. Creating buyer personas will help you tailor content for your target audience. It's also important to ensure your venue mailing lists are current and accurate to avoid difficulties with distribution.

Measuring the Success of Your Venue Marketing Efforts

One of the most important aspects of any marketing strategy is measuring the results. Don't just set goals at the beginning and then forget about them. Make sure to track your progress throughout. There are several different ways to do this, including: 

Web Analytics

Web analytics is a process of collecting and analysing data from your venue's website to see how well it's performing. This can include things like traffic levels, page views, and more. For marketing material on your site like web pages or blogs, your focus should be on time on page, bounce rate and click-through rate. This can be done relatively easily through Google Analytics, once you have it set up. 

Social Media Analytics

Social media analytics involves analysing data from social media platforms. Avoid prioritising superficial metrics such as impressions and likes. Instead, paying attention to engagement rate, clicks, and click-through rate can provide more valuable insights. These metrics genuinely reflect the level of engagement with your venue content and can be tracked using the analytics tools provided by each social platform.

Reviews

Reviews are an excellent way to measure how current and previous clients have found your venue, and they are also fantastic marketing tools. People are more likely to trust someone in the same position as they are, compared to a brand. By having social proof, you are more likely to attract future customers.

Make Venue Marketing a Consistent Work in Progress

Once you've been through this process, it's time to decide what worked and what didn't. This isn't a do once then set-and-forget scenario. You need to constantly be making tweaks and updates to your content depending on what's working and what isn't. This will help you be more strategic and stay in the front of your customer's mind. Remember it takes 6-8 touch points for someone to remember who you are, so make each of your venue marketing touch points memorable.