Initial Marketing
Marketing
Now the fun stuff.
Your marketing should consist of the following:
Flyers/Posters
Print Ads
Radio Spots
TV Commercials
Websites
Press Release/Interviews
Your flyers and posters will run you about a grand to print. 15,000 post cards and 300-500 posters should be plenty. This will be your first phase of marketing that will go alongside your press releases. You will post these (or pay someone else) all over your city and event surrounding cities or suberbs. Distribute the flyers at mall parking lots by sticking them on cars. Flyer mailboxes. Public restrooms. You name it. If you can put a flyer somewhere, do it. You should begin your flyering approx 1 month or so before the event. Postering 6 weeks.
Some of your local print shops will give you a nice discount if you let them place their company name and contact info on your materials. It’s worth it to save some money and its not too intrusive as to take away from the message of the piece.
Your print marketing shouldn’t be too cluttered with information. Try to restrain yourself from putting every little detail on your posters. You want the date and location to be big and bold to be seen at a distance with your main event and event name. Put your website on their or a phone number to order tickets. All of the other detailed information should be on your website.
Some great print shops I use are either www.jakprints.com or www.seemlessdesign.com
Print Ads should run approx two weeks leading into the event. Your print ads will run in your local Alternative Newsweeklies. Just about every major city has them. There is a website that lists all of the newsweeklies in the country by city. www.aan.org
Your flyers and print ads should feature your main event fighters, your special guests and everything else pertaining to your event.
Some newspapers will do a 50/50 trade. Meaning, they will quote you on the price of the ad and then charge you half the rate in cash and the other half in tickets they can give away to readers or advertising clients.
Radio Spots are fun. Your radio station will put something together for you and send you examples before they air. When you are buying radio time, make sure you approach the radio station as a sponsor first. In other words, don’t quote a budget up front. Let them know what you are doing and that you would like them to sponsor airtime for your event in exchange for tickets to give away and placement on all of your print marketing and at the event etc. Chances are they will come back at you and say if you buy in for x amount of radio time, they will double it and give you a bunch of additional live mentions etc. It’s a nice way to get your local radio station to support you more and it will help add some credibility to your event.
TV Commercials… You will run your commercials on your local cable network during shows such as ESPN Classic, Kickboxing and SPIKE TV’s UFC events. It works and its pretty cheap depending on your market and how much of your market you want to reach. Expect to spend $2,000 to $3,000 on TV marketing, much more in much bigger cities. Most spots will range from $30 to $500 each. It really depends on the time slot and network.
Website marketing is pretty easy to do. Just look for some local websites with cheap banner spots and run them for a couple weeks. Don’t spend too much. Think of your banner ads as a reminder but not a deal maker. Too many people just ignore banner ads to spend a ton of money on them. One site that seems to help draw fighters and fans a like is www.mma.tv It’s a pretty good resource to get your word out. It’s $99 a month with a two month minimum but its worth it.
Your Press release is extremely important. This is something you will want to spend time on and make sure its perfect. This is your entry into newpapers and local news channels and its free! So don’t screw this up.
Your press release will have all of the key elements relating to your fight show. Location, time, date, main event, special guests, costs, where to get tickets and anything else you can throw in that is new worthy. Don’t be afraid to hype things a bit.
Once you have put together a complete news, newspaper and radio list for you to submit your news release to, send it off. Wait a about a week and follow up via email. Then wait another week and follow up with anyone else remaining. Some will want to do interviews with you as the promoters, some will want to invterview the fighters. Either way, its free promotion!
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September 24th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
good site qucwim
April 1st, 2009 at 10:01 am
Hey! Can I ask what’s this template you are using in your blog? thanks.