EventScotland Events Management - A Practical Guide

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1) Where to start: the situational analysis
The first stage of devising your marketing plan involves what is sometimes called the
‘situational analysis’. It basically means taking a step back and having a good look at
all the available information that relates to the event before devising a plan to move
forward. The idea is to give you the proper context in order to make informed
marketing decisions. The good news for those unfamiliar with event marketing is that
if you have already conducted the basic event planning activity suggested in Chapter 1,
you have already taken the first steps in carrying out the ‘situational analysis’. For
example, you’ve already:
> Established the event’s ‘vision’, ‘mission’ and ‘key objectives’
> Considered the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats pertaining
to both the event and your organisation
> Begun to formulate/refine the event’s programming policy/content
> Decided when the best time to hold the event is
To develop the situational analysis further in marketing terms you should now begin
to consider the following in more detail:
> The existing audience for the event (i.e. who comes, where from, how many, level
of repeat attendees, level of first time attendees, has the audience profile changed
over the years, etc?)
> If there is any existing research (i.e. do you hold any hard information on your
audiences, have you closely examined it, what does it tell you, is it recent, what
else do you need to find out, etc?)
> Previous marketing activity and resources (i.e. what has worked in the past,
what could be developed further, etc?)
> Available resources (i.e. budget, staff, stakeholder support and amount of time
available to deliver the plan, etc)
> Competitor analysis (i.e. does the event have any competitors, can you learn
from them?)
> Income targets (i.e. what level of return does the marketing activity aim to deliver
by way of ticket sales, what are the other sources of potential income and can
marketing activity influence these?)