Join Fota’s marketing team and use your imagination to devise a unique event to attract new visitors to Fota. Discover how you can encourage people to visit by creating and marketing an innovative event.
Use the data gathered from your visit to Fota House and use our links to look online at a range of other historic properties with a marketer’s eyes in order to complete the challenge.
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1950s festival at Fota
You will be working as a group to develop and market an event, suitable for staging at Fota House. Your objective is to attract and maintain new audiences. Firstly you can familiarise yourself with audiences and what motivates them to visit.
Then you can look at the types of activities some of the busiest historic houses hold in order to attract and maintain visitor numbers. Using this information and the facts gathered on your visit to Fota, you can develop an idea for an event. Use the WebQuest to learn about how to use marketing techniques to create a campaign to promote your activity.
Finally make a presentation to your class detailing your ideas and event plan. We'd love to hear about it too!
The good news is you have an unlimited budget!
These are things that you need to consider when planning your event so that it will be consistent with the mission statement of the Irish Heritage Trust and Fota House. Look at Castle Howard in Yorkshire, it attracts over 250 000 visitors per year. The brand of the house is reflected in a consistent way throughout the activities and events – and the special qualities of the house are echoed everywhere – in the logo, the staff uniforms and even in the catering!
Visit the Castle Howard website and see how the names of the dining rooms enhance the brand identity and scroll down to see the Victorian Etiquette tea!
Group bookings are popular – remember many people visit as part of a social experience...
Tandem Design have created brand identities for a number of clients: you can see on their website how they approached this task by capturing the personality and values of these organisations.
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And also in order to vary the experience and bring visitors back again and again, houses like Fota, Belvedere and Castle Howard stage seasonal events.
The Geffrye Museum on London also use a changing programme of events to attract new and existing visitors
Now that you have some ideas about events, who might attend them and you have seen what Fota has to offer, you can work on a marketing plan. In order to build up a better understanding of Fota house as a visitor attraction you should consider the Marketing Mix and how it applies to the house:
These are the four ‘P’s ofThe Marketing Mix, The Marketing Mix refers to the basic components of a marketing plan. It is also known as the four ‘p’s:
- Product
- Price
- Place
- Promotion
Learn more about how the four 'P's are used in a museum by looking at marketing at The V&A .
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Check List for Setting Priorities
Who will be your target audience for this event? To appeal directly to them you will need to find out a little about them – for example if you want to target overseas visitors take a look at the material about them on the Failte Ireland website. This link will give you lots of information about overseas and domestic markets, visitor attractions and other tourism facts.
http://www.failteireland.ie/Research-Statistics/Tourism-Facts
Tip: – foreign tourists like meeting Irish people.
If you want to target people your own age – create a questionnaire for your class.
The more market research you carry out the more likely you will create an event that they will want to attend because it will cater for their needs.
Bearing in mind that we already attract and engage with self developers and social visitors, and they are our most frequent visitors, think about what sort of message you want to deliver about Fota House. Tip you can refer to your SWOT analysis and activity sheets for help.
- Are there other audiences that we are keen to attract? What about you and your friends? Older people? Young families? Subject specialists? Irish or foreign visitors?
- What are their needs?
- Could there be barriers to entry for this group - these could be people's attitudes or physical barriers?
- How will this project meet the needs of this group?
- In light of this, which groups look to be the best options for audience development and what is the justification for targeting them?
- How will you engage this group with your resources in mind?
You should now have enough information to decide on the type of event you would like to hold at Fota! Here’s a quick checklist of things to consider from your visit to help you complete the task.
Next StepPrepare your presentation!
Present your key aims for the event, focussing on the audience sector you plan to target, how you plan to do this and the nature of the event and why you feel it will attract this sector. Don’t forget to include how you feel it reflects the mission of the Irish Heritage Trust and Fota house, its values and aims.
Good luck!
