MARKETING PAGAN EVENTS |
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Marketing Pagan Events
written by Lord Joshu (Ken Hall) 2002
Posted to the Pagan Clergy list (pagan-clergy@yahoogroups.com)
Merry Meet Everyone!
This is the third, and final, segment of what I consider to be the basics for planning a Pagan event. In this one I will be taking some basic marketing concepts and applying them to Pagan event planning.
To begin, in traditional marketing classes they teach what is called "the four P's"- Product, Price, Promotion and Place. To that list I would also like to add two more; People and Position.
First, and most important, is the product. Everything else stems from that and the nature of the product will often drive the strategies involved. Because we are discussing events we will consider the product to be a "service" to the end user, the Pagan customer.
In determining the product it is necessary to be hardheaded and realistic. What do people really want? What am I really able to provide?
The first rule should be: You are not going to be able to please everyone. If you try to please everyone, chances are you will only succeed in pleasing no one. You can spend a great deal of time, and money, in trying to provide services to smaller and smaller niches that you can often begin to lose sight of the bigger picture.
For example: You are planning a campout event that includes meals as part of the package. You realize that there are vegetarians in the Pagan community so you have vegetarian dishes in the meals as well. Then issues start to arise about those that are "wheat intolerant", "salt intolerant", and so forth. Pretty soon you are bogged down trying to keep everyone happy to the point that you've expended a great deal of time, effort and money to please a smaller and smaller segment. What then happens is the quality of the overall effort falls - so more people are unhappy. It has also been this author's experience is that the one person who will make the most demands for special accommodations will, very often, not even show up!
A more practical approach should be to have the most logical options listed. If someone has needs beyond those options, then she or he should make her or his own plans if they wish to attend.
The second item on the list, Price, has already been dealt with in a previous posting covering cost analysis, so we won't belabor that point.
The third item, Promotion, is a very important and very often overlooked aspect of the mix. One of the biggest complaints heard in regards to events - after the fact - is that the person who missed the event will say, "I never heard of this before!" The idea of Promotion is to get the Product before as many people as possible.
The problem for many Pagan groups is that of budget restraints; buying advertising can be very expensive, and many groups do not have that kind of budget to work with. However, with a little ingenuity, there are ways to work with this. There are, in addition, ways to apply limited budget resources to maximize exposure.
In order to determine an effective advertizing strategy it is first necessary to determine your target audience. The Pagan community, in marketing terms, is considered to be a "niche" market. Within the Pagan community there are further "niches" - Wiccan, Asatru, Druid, etc. If, for example, you were having a noted Wiccan author come and speak, it may not cost effective to place ads in Asatru publications. You might get a few that were interested, but chances are the few that were would also, most likely, be subscribers to Wiccan publications as well.
Knowing your audience, or your "niche", will then determine your approach strategy.
Placing an ad in a large circulation newspaper is what is known as a "broadcast" strategy - it gets you the largest exposure, but it also gets you the lowest return for the money. Newspaper ads cost a great deal of money. As an example: Once, as an experiment, this author placed ads in a university newspaper (the university, Arizona State, had an attendance 0f 43,000 students) and an "alternative" newspaper (the New Times, est. circ. 350,000), thinking those audiences might be a rich market. The event was a Witches' Ball, a masked dance held around Samhain. Both ads were fairly expensive - but not prohibitively so - and the final results were the same; not one response was from either publication.
The best response was in printing flyers and having them placed in occult and New Age bookstores. Nowadays there is also the option of putting listings on Web sites that cater to the Pagan community and on group lists that cater to specific interests. Care and judgment need to be exercised in on-line usage because it can, with misuse, become construed as spam.
Other ways of getting the word out depend on how "open" you, or your group, are in the community. If your local paper has a Religion or Events section, they will very often be open to printing a press release about your upcoming event. Same with radio or TV stations. With topics like "witchcraft" there is also a strong possibility that someone from the newspaper, radio and/or TV station may want to do an interview. This is the *best* possible advertizing you can get IF you are willing to be "out" in public.
If you choose this route please make sure that you have a spokesperson who is (a) articulate, (b) presentable, i.e. wears appropriate attire, and (c) has her or his facts straight. Live radio is probably the best venue since there is no chance for any "hanky panky" with the broadcast in terms of "creative editing". If it is a newspaper interview the person or group involved should ask for the right to review content before publication. In several cases a reporter has had a hidden agenda and later made the person or group look like a bunch of imbeciles in print. Television is a little more difficult to work with - TV reporters sometimes don't have much say in content and their reports will be cut and edited by the news director.
There is an advantage, and a disadvantage, to using the media in this manner. First of all you will reach a larger market with no capital outlay. Many Pagans don't have Internet access and some only go to bookstores on a irregular basis. This is a way to reach them. The biggest drawback is that approach will also attract a crowd of curiosity seekers and the "fringe" element. If you have no problem working with those that are curiosity seekers, then this should be no problem.
The "fringe" element can be more of a serious problem. In this group is included the people whose grip on reality isn't the strongest, in some cases people who suffer from serious mental illnesses, and religious cranks of all persuasions. There is also a chance that fundamentalist Christians might view this as an opportunity to "witness" their faith to what they see as a group of "unbelievers".
These are factors that event planners have to take into consideration. Typically an event, like a speaker, a dance, or a campout, that involves paying an admission and is either located in a secure facility, or involves driving a distance, will dissuade the "fringe" elements and most of the curiosity seekers. Events like public rituals in a park are the most vulnerable because there is no practical way to control access. The nature of the event will, to an extent, determine the promotion.
In traditional marketing this is defined as the "means of getting the product into the consumers' hands". Since events are more in the line of a service the author would like to modify that statement.
"Place", in this sense, should refer more to physical placement, or the location of an event.
If it is a one day event, like a ritual, then it should be in a place that is easily accessible. Having a ritual that is 4 or 5 hours driving time out of town will probably not get you very many people since most people are going to be looking at the convenience of the drive as compared to what they are going to get for their effort. A weekend campout, on the other hand, may be more conducive to putting in the effort.
Event locations can have other factors as well. Parking availability may be a factor. If there is no, or very poor, parking around an event site, that may deter many would be attendees.
The neighborhood of a location may also be a factor. Sometimes there is a temptation to choose a site because the room rental is a bargain. Very often there is a reason for this. A site may be located in a high crime area where rental fees are low for very good reasons. Some Pagans may be oblivious to this, but some Pagans, typically the more affluent ones, will be very nervous driving an expensive car into an area with a high car theft rate.
Another factor that should not be overlooked is amenities. An important factor in public rituals in parks is in choosing parks that have restroom facilities. If you are holding a series of workshops or a conference in a hotel, the availability of restaurants nearby may be important.
This is something that should be obvious but it is surprising how often it is overlooked.
When planning an event please take the time to think about the target audience and plan accordingly. If, for instance, you schedule a famous astrologer to come in and speak, it may be a big mistake to target only the Pagan segment. Granted, there are Pagans that are astrologers - but not every Pagan would be interested. Likewise, there are many non-Pagans who are astrologers who would have been excluded in this approach.
This, as mentioned before, is identifying a niche segment and targeting it appropriately.
Even within a specific niche there should be some discernment. If, for example, you are aiming towards Pagan parents, and issues dealing with pagan parenting, then that should be clearly identified and stated. Pagan parents may not want to take young children to open Pagan events if they think the event is not geared towards their needs. A Pagan event that is "kid friendly" should openly say so. Likewise, a Pagan event that deals with more mature matter should also state this as well.
Appropriate venues should be chosen to either advertize in or to distribute information. An example of this is in the choice to write these articles in "Pagan Clergy" as opposed to other e-groups. People who lead groups are also often the ones who facilitate and coordinate evens. This is information that would be of more interest to them than in, say, an egroup comprised mostly of new-comers who are still in the process of trying to figure out the basics.
Lastly, "position" is what the author would like to define as placing an event in a time slot as opposed to placement in a physical locale.
Sometimes this can be an issue of trying to hold an open Sabbat celebration on a date where several other groups are holding similar celebrations. A group that has been doing a particular celebration for a long time has an advantage that is known as the "first mover" advantage - they were there first, they have the lead because of longevity and reputation. A new group on the scene has two choices: Either choose not to hold a celebration because of the competition involved, or find a differentiating factor that addresses a different niche entirely. For example, one group may have been doing public Beltane rituals for years but they are "mainstream" and very family focused. Another group, a newcomer, decides to have a Beltane ritual that focuses more on the gay community and their needs. In this case it's a "win-win" situation because both groups are addressing segments that may not feel comfortable with each other in such circumstances.
Another factor in time position is mostly common sense. Having a public ritual, a Full Moon perhaps, in a park that falls in the middle of the week may work out nicely. But if the ritual doesn't start until late - say midnight - then many people who have to get up for work early the next morning are not likely to attend. Having a guest lecturer or noted author speak in the middle of the week pretty much guarantees that very few people out of town will choose the long drive for the same reasons.
In the same vein is the issue of starting events on time. Some people and groups are notorious for always being late. Granted, things sometimes happen - cars break down, emergencies arise, etc.- but if this becomes a common occurrence, then people are not likely to attend an event that has a reputation for wasting time.
Lastly, the positioning of an event should be looked at in a larger sense as well. Holding a conference, or a workshop, on Christmas, for example, might seem like a good idea since that date doesn't really mean anything to most Pagans. However, many Pagans have family obligations to others who are non-Pagan. It's always a good idea to look at a calendar when doing event planning to see what conflicts there might be on a certain day.
If a large portion of your Pagan community are students, then you wouldn't want to plan anything around finals week or Spring Break. The week before tax time - April 15- is also not very good for most people. National holidays such as the Fourth of July (for those of you who aren't American please insert an appropriate day), religious holidays such as Christmas, and other days should all be taken into consideration. Even days you wouldn't normally think of may become a factor - when Phoenix was playing New York for the World Series title it was very easy to get seating in restaurants (those that didn't have TV's). Scheduling an event during a time like that may also have some effects.
Use common sense, and think it through. It is also a good idea to bounce if off as many people as possible to see if anyone else can spot any problems. That goes with each of the topics we've discussed so far.
Well, that's it. I hope that this will be of help to you when it comes to planning an event. I don't pretend to know everything there is to know about event planning, there are probably quite a few things I should have said but omitted because (a) I forgot, or (b) I didn't know. :-) If there are any questions, or comments, please feel free to post them.
May the Lady and Her Consort bless each and every one of you.
B*B,
Lord Joshu
HP, Coven of Danu
Mohsian Tradition
Phoenix, AZ USA
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