Digital marketing to sold out your events

The development of art, education, and culture are emblematic characteristics that are part of the mission of the Panama Jazz Festival. The Panama Jazz Festival is a platform for massive cultural, social, and educational exchange, where people from different countries, ages, and social statuses come together to share ideas and interdisciplinary projects of high academic quality, covering all aspects of music. The Panama Jazz Festival in 2020, celebrated its seventeenth edition, in tribute to Panamanian saxophonist Reginald “Reggie” Johnson, during the week of January 13-18, 2020. During the week of the festival, the following activities will take place:

Music Therapy Symposium

Music clinics

Concerts

Jam Sessions

The Panama Jazz Festival’s main challenge for 2020 was to increase ticket sales, especially during the pre-sale and before the festival.

Likewise, during the week of the festival, the concerts were sold out.

Part of the challenge was to continue the work of keeping the Panama Jazz Festival at the top of mind of Panama’s cultural events.

On the other hand, there was the challenge of increasing the attendee database, and segmenting it appropriately in order to implement a loyalty strategy to ensure that attendees continue to repeat the experience.

In order to meet the challenge of increasing the number of concert tickets sold, a strategic digital marketing plan was developed and executed.

The strategic plan included an analysis of the website, social networks, digital positioning, and target market of the Panama Jazz Festival.

The work began in September 2019, first with the collection of information to develop the strategic plan. Then we started with the execution of the different activities, mainly with digital marketing campaigns on Google Ads, Facebook, and Instagram Ads platforms.

In addition to the debugging of the database, e-mail marketing campaigns were launched. Strategies for social networks were defined, including content, contests, hashtags, among others. SEO strategies were also defined to improve web positioning and activities to be carried out for the communication of the festival in digital and non-digital media.

The main objective was to sell out the concerts. Of the 5 concerts held, 3 of them were “sold out”, the Gala, the Thursday and Friday concerts at the Ateneo Theater.

In terms of ticket sales, there was a 48% increase in revenue compared to 2019. In 2020, a total of 32,613 people attended all festival activities (clinics, symposiums, and concerts), 2,293 more than in the previous year. In the digital campaigns (Google, Facebook, and Instagram ads), more than 4 million impressions were obtained, reaching 2.6 million people.

The database went from having only 700 contacts to more than 5 thousand contacts, segmented according to the activities in which they participated, among others.

In addition, 39,900 total website impressions were obtained during the promotional period of the Panama Jazz Festival.

In terms of Email Marketing, the average email open rate was 42%. This rate is higher than the industry average of 25.75%. This was also confirmed by the public’s preference to receive Festival news via email.

More than 800 people were surveyed and interviewed, which allowed us to learn much more about our target market, their preferences and interests, and many opportunities for improvement for the festival in its next editions.

The level of satisfaction on the part of the attendees is high, 66% of those surveyed gave the Panama Jazz Festival a score between 9 and 10. Forty-four percent gave a score of 10 (the highest rating) to the Panama Jazz Festival event they attended, 22% with 9, 19% with 8, 8% with 7, 3% with 6, and only a minority with less than 6 points.