Motivation
My marketing budget for promoting Targhee Fest (a reasonably sized 3 day music festival Grand Targhee Resort holds every year with names like Michael Franti and ) was next to nothing. We needed a strategy that could generate buzz around the music festival but also have long term implications for raising awareness about local music in Teton Valley. There were a couple opportunities also available for us as low hanging fruit. At the time, Teton Valley did not have a social hub. Blogs existed that mentioned local activities, but it was more of a side note. We also had some great lineups schedule for the summer and wanted to provide customers an opportunity to plan around some of the events.
Execution
I built the microsite at targheemusic.com and helped fill it with content. We managed to drive traffic by becoming a hub of information about local activities and live music schedules in the valley. We also launched the site with a bang by starting an online battle of the bands competition that translated into a physical battle of the bands competition. In a sense, the bands involved ended up doing most of the promotion for us by motivating their loyal fans to go on the site and vote. In order to vote, users had to click through a small piece promoting our Targhee Fest lineup. The site is still used when enough staff exists to keep it current and it has generated over 22k of new traffic.
Learned
Online voting is hard to implement. We had trouble with some fans “spamming” the vote in order to help their band win. In the end we had a wonderful response and actually walked out of the situation with an opportunity for some of the bands to contribute to the content of targheemusic.com in order to start an online music community.
Targeting leaders of small tribes with engaged users and producing real value is key. We didn’t have the budget to promote this festival in a standard way and so we needed something viral. The band leaders already had email lists and sets of engaged users all we had to do is provide real value to the band leaders and the rest was taken care of.
Microsites take a ton of maintenance. Micro is a bit misleading in this sense because it implies “easy” which isn’t the case. It took hard work and long hours in order to fill the site with content and keep it relevant.
Tech
WordPress with a custom built theme and custom backend administration windows to manage voting and calendars.
Youtube direct API