Christmas (planning) in July? This year might call for Christmas a bit earlier.
I develop the media plan for a botanical garden that puts on a top-notch holiday lights event every year.
Last year, the attraction hit all-time high attendance records. It was selling out nearly every weekend and the entire two weeks of Christmas break.
How do you drive more attendance when you are selling out the ‘good’ nights?
This year, we are planning a marketing push in late October/early November for presale
tickets and opening week visits.
This will be a challenge. The amount of political advertising is expected to increase by 30% this year compared to 2020.
We should expect a limited advertising supply and increased advertising costs in Q4.
Here are four ideas we’ve been trialing in recent years to drive holiday event attendance in
November while navigating around the influx of political advertising:
1. Buy “can’t bump” ad inventory on TV.
We are talking to the local TV and radio stations now to secure ad inventory like billboards, traffic/weather sponsorships, or any other ad slots that political advertisers can’t gobble up.
2. Programmatic out-of-home to turn on/off billboards.
Moving a portion of the billboard budget to programmatic OOH will enable us to turn off the ads (and save some budget) as the event begins to sell out. Or, we can run a ‘sold out tonight’ message to create some FOMO in the market.
3. Run ads on Pinterest in September.
Data from Pinterest shows searches for Christmas-related topics start in July. This is a fantastic channel to capture your early holiday planners to drive early holiday season visits. Plus, Pinterest is generally a ‘safe space’ from political content.
4. Get influencers to the opening night.
I’m lining up the garden’s social media ambassadors to attend the event’s opening night. They’ll be able to produce their content in just a few days. Then, I can promote it starting in early November.
I go deeper into this topic in this episode of The Marketing Attractions Podcast. Give it a
listen. There’ll be one or two takeaways you can use for your attraction.
