Event Marketing

I am experimenting with web marketing for an event. My goal is to increase awareness by having lots of mentions all over the place (ambient advertising, I suppose). I'm not sure if it's working as I'm waiting for hit reports on our website (http://www.sutherland.nsw.gov.au/).

So, I thought I'd do a bit of writing to track the process.

Step 1.

Blogging - Creation of the Coffee @ Peace blog. Aim of the blog is just to talk coffee, keeping it friendly and personal, and hopefully generate a little bit of traffic. I've kept it very simple so far - under the radar. I may be a little too far under the radar though and over the next few weeks (which covers the event date - Sunday 12 July, in case your wondering) I'll step it up a little. This isn't a short term project though. I want to build it up over time and so the benefits may not come into realisation until the 2010 Shire Coffee Festival (as long as I can keep the event coordinator sane, yes, there will be one next year).

Step 2.

Twitter. I started a twitter account (coffeeatpeace) in which I was originally going to "tell a story". I found this hard to keep up though and exchanged the story with weekly updates that occasionally included mentions of the coffee festival, more regularly talked coffee and now include marketing. As soon as I mentioned "marketing" my followers list jumped in request numbers. I do not follow back everyone. I pick and choose. I prefer Australian followers, coffee interest followers, and marketing/graphic design followers who aren't trying to push their services or software too much.

It seems to be going okay. Again. though, I'm unsure as yet to the impact and am currently researching measurability.

Step 3.

Alerts. I have registered with Google Alerts to pick up mentions and although we have sent out a press release we're not getting a lot. That's okay. Small, first time event is not going to make the news in a big way (again, may be next year).

Step 4.

Measurability.

• One way of getting hard data on how people heard about our event is to just ask them. We'll be doing this on the day (Sunday 12 July, btw) with volunteers undertaking surveying.
• I have an order in for hit reports on our website though I am unsure if this will include where people came from to get to our webpage.
• Alerts are activated in order to track web mentions.
• Blog traffic tracking - I follow stats for this blog on MyBlogLog.
• Finally, queries via email and telephone. Again, we simply ask where the caller heard about the event.
  
  

It's been an interesting process, at times fascinating, and I'm keen to see what impact any of it has had. I know there are applications out there that I can use to push the event in people's faces, but I'd prefer to avoid that at this stage. I want people to talk about the event and to do it naturally.

And the event?

Shire Coffee Festival

Sunday 12 July, 2009

Peace Park, Sutherland

Sydney, NSW, Australia

For enquiries, leave a comment here, follow me on twitter, email to culture@ssc.nsw.gov.au or visit our webpage for our telephone number.

Festival Programs

We've started distributing programs to all our friends, leaving them on countertops around Sutherland and finally have the finished version available for download at our website.

Shire Coffee Festival

We are so excited and everything is so hectic at the moment that we will all need lots of coffee by the time the big day rolls around.

I ducked around to the White Horse Cafe the other day for a "refill" - lovely! I hear there's one or two good cafes down in Cronulla too. I've been to Nulla Nulla several times and always get a good cup there. I kind of miss going up to Narrabeen but an hour's drive (and an hour home again) just to get coffee??

Back to the coffee festival... we have stalls from White Horse Cafe, Mayan Coffee (and chocolate - yum!!), Chai Amore, Gloria Jeans, Mokodor (thanks Fix Cafe!) and La Casa del Caffe.

And some really great market stalls lined up too. Handcrafted costume jewellery, African arts, Indigo Crafts, Chocolate Essence, more jewellery... you'll just have to come down for the day.

New coffee spot in the Shire

Okay, so it's not really new. It's not even new to me. I've known about it's existence for years. Just never stopped to have a coffee there. Mainly that's because it's a take-away. I've had chips and salads, but not coffee. Well, I found out that they make Shibello Coffee, which I really like, so I dropped in for an extended visit with my coffee-buddy, Lyn.

Mmmmm! Nearly as good as Jacks at Kensington. So where is it, I can hear the multitude asking.

Kirrawee. Corner of Oak Road and Flora Street.

They also sell yummy breads (as in banana) and muffins.

The hot chips aren't half bad either!