Gateway Guest Night: A Marketing Story
As many chorus’ out there, the thought of recruitment may seem daunting coming out of this pandemic. Anxiety and fears surrounding COVID 19 are still at large as we learn what coming out of our homes or zooms and back to chorus night look likes for each of us.
We at Gateway Chorus want to share with you our first post-pandemic guest night. The landscape of how we attract people has changed, and therefore our tactics need to change as well. The market is currently ‘noisy’ with trying to recoup losses from the last few years and those potential members are being bombarded with messaging all the time for them ‘to do’ something.
This type of messaging is fatiguing, and so instead of ‘do more’ we focused on two deliverables
1) The value or benefit to that potential member
2) Getting clear on what they are looking for
We are going to spare you the details of all the market research and just give you the answers we found, and for those who know marketing this is the value proposition diagram of matching what you have to offer in the market to what the market wants, with clear simple messaging.
So, Gateway’s value is right in our tagline and consistent in our current marketing. Those who join us do so to laugh, to sing and to form connections with others (our word we use for this is love). Laugh, Sing, Love. The order in which these words appear is also important, as while singing is the ‘thing’ we all do together the laughter is the main value we are telling the market that we provide. In forming connections, we also saw search terms for community, making new friends, having a purpose, getting a hobby, and combating loneliness.
Laugh: Being free to be authentic together, we find comfort and joy in our humanity.
Sing: Passion unites us as we develop our craft and share harmony.
Love: Together we build connection. We welcome you to “come as you are, be who you be”
Our recruitment strategy was two full weeks of advertising. We had a poster for each of the values, so three in total each addressing the Come to Sing, Come to Laugh and Your community Awaits. We took out a community road sign by our rehearsal spot (they are cheap right now), and we spent money on digital advertising spend on Facebook to boost our event and lead up posts (each day for two weeks). As the region had just done a digital advertising campaign, we road those coat tails, and launched ours with a similar look and feel, just with our own messaging. We added a section on our website talking about the event including a what to expect video, by our director. You can view this here: https://www.gatewaychorus.com/news
Now what really pushed our numbers wasn’t the advertising. Please read that sentence again. What pushed the advertising is that our current membership took a hands-on approach to this event. One week before we asked members to take a selfie of a spot next to them on the risers, and to post with a message saying, “this spot is for you.” These posts popped up all over Facebook, some members shared their Sweet Adeline’s journey, while others kept it simple and short. The point is the posts were shared, tagged, and liked combined thousands of times. That week we increased the organic traffic to the event (so not paid) by over 60%.
The night before our event we had over 50 confirmed guests who had RSVP’d and direct messaged. Unfortunately, mother nature decided to not shine favor on us, as we had torrential flood warning rains the day of our event and well into the evening. With any event we always know we are at the mercy of weather. We offered zoom links, and just really tried to be proactive in our communication.
We individually messaged those letting them know that they could come ANY Tuesday and that guest night is truly any night. Many wrote back saying they would try us out another evening, but we still had 10 guests walk through the door – soaking wet and with umbrellas but they still came.
And guess what? Those 10 were super engaged! Many asked to be voice placed that night and stayed all the way till the end of our rehearsal (we usually let guests go early so they don’t feel overwhelmed on their first night). New friendships were formed in the storm, and we know more potential new members will come to check us out in the coming weeks (as they are still engaging and messaging with us).
So a quick recap:
What worked:
X Clear simple messaging, that described the exact value or benefit that person would experience.
X Putting some dollars into digital advertising to boost it
X Hands-on member effort to share the information with their own engaging post
What didn’t work:
X The weather day of event
X We should have watched the forecast more closely and had messaging out prior to day of
What did we learn:
X We bring value to others in a way that we take for granted each Tuesday and sharing our own individual experiences will engage others way more than any typical advertising methods.
X That even through storms, we can laugh, sing, and love. We can form new connections, be kind, give hugs and welcome all those to come as you are and be who you be.
