10 Festival Marketing Tips for Small Business

Festivals can prove outstanding opportunities to reach new customers, especially if you develop a strategic festival marketing strategy for earning permission-based marketing rights. The following 10 festival marketing tips for small business will help you maximize lead generation and sales.

1. Target your festival

Targeting your festival audience is essential: should you set up a booth at movie festival, a music festival or a local community festival? The answer ultimately depends on who your customers are. Meet your customers on their terms to establish common ground, and you can demonstrate a shared culture that fosters long-term customer loyalty.

2. Give takeaways

Make sure everyone who visits your booth leaves with a business card, brochure and/or coolie cup – something physical they can hold on to. You want them to remember you and to follow-up for more information. Another great option: T-shirts, since your booth visitors will wear them and thus expose others to your brand.

3. Lead people to your booth

If you’re attending a crowded festival or have poor booth placement, don’t let potentially enthusiastic customers unwittingly pass you by. Use vinyl banners, posters or flyers strategically placed to draw traffic toward your booth.

4. Product demonstrations

If you really want to draw a crowd around your booth, offer product demonstrations that are both effective and entertaining. A skateboard retailer, for example, might have a skateboarder doing tricks in front of their booth.

5. Give people a reason to buy

It’s one thing to pass information at your festival booth, it’s quite another to effectively market your business. Give people a reason to buy with a time-limited coupon or some other incentive that motivates them to make an immediate purchase. And, of course, make the benefits of choosing your company well-known.

6. Make it fun and interactive

Product demonstrations can be fun, but dunk tanks, trivia, contests, and other games can make your booth fun and interactive. Give your audience a hands-on experience that, if possible, puts your product in their hands.

7. Collect contact information

You want to collect contact information so you can follow-up with potential customers, but don’t make the mistake of placing a sign-up sheet on the table. It won’t be filled out. Instead, have customers give their information in order to be entered into a contest to win a desirable prize. If the prize is good, you’ll have plenty of calls to make next week.

8. Sponsor other activities

Your booth isn’t the only marketing outlet you have at festivals. Sponsor music pavilions, tournaments, rides, or other festival-related events to get your banners and other marketing materials out and about on festival grounds. You can also consider guerrilla marketing by employing a team to canvas the crowd with brochures, flyers, coolie cups and other marketing materials.

9. Pre-market

Let potential customers know you’ll be at the festival before it begins, so they’ll know to look for you. Publication ads (especially the festival’s own flyers and brochures) are perfect for this. You can also place signage in your location; and advertise on your website, Facebook, Twitter and newsletters.

10. Post-market

Take plenty of photos and videos at the festival and post them on your social media networks to generate shares and increase exposure for your company.  Through sharing, you can pick up customers who weren’t even at the festival.

What festival marketing tips for small business can you share?

Read More: Get Your Business Noticed at Summer Music Festivals.