Marketing Your Chorus
(Page 2)

The Basics of Marketing

Before we get too far, let's first focus on defining the marketing concept and what goes into marketing as it relates to Sweet Adelines.

Target Audiences

The first essential key to marketing is deciding exactly who it is that you want to reach or whose needs you want to meet – these people are called your target audience. In the world of Sweet Adelines, there are several different audiences, but for the purposes of this handout, we'll focus on four main external target audiences:

Show Patrons
Includes people who have come to your shows and cabarets in the past as well as those you want to attend in the future. Beyond family & friends, this should also include other people who might enjoy an afternoon or evening at a show – senior citizens, concert-goers, kids – pretty much anyone who enjoys and appreciates music in your area.

Fundraising Donors/Sponsors
Includes people whom you want to contribute to your chorus raffle or other fundraiser, businesses who might place an ad in your show program, organizations which may provide grants to music organizations, and perhaps even businesses or individuals who might want to donate costumes, risers, music, or other materials your chorus could find useful.

Performance Contacts
Includes anyone who might want to hire all or a part of your chorus and/or one of its quartets to perform for them – this could be a business looking for entertainment at their company picnic; a city or county who's looking for some live singing for their next festival or parade; a club or group who wants to add some variety to their next get-together; or an individual who wants you to sing for someone's birthday or anniversary party or deliver a singing telegram on Valentine's Day.

Potential Members
Includes pretty much any woman who lives in your area and likes to sing: co-workers, friends, family, classmates, and other people you may not know – community choir or band members, people you meet in day-to-day life at the grocery store, in the bank, at the doctor's office, or any number of other places.

Deciding on Your Target Audience

Sometimes you will want to reach all of these "audiences"; other times you’ll want to focus on just one or two. Throughout this handout we'll be highlighting each of these target audiences and what questions or issues you need to keep in mind when marketing to each of them.

Keep in mind that for right now, we're focusing only on external audiences. We also have a myriad of internal audiences within our hobby – our fellow chorus members, director, members in other choruses, and of course regional and international leaders. Although we won't be focusing on these people, you may still want to keep them in mind – especially if you have had or are having communication problems with one of these groups. As you go through, keep these other Sweet Adeline people in your heads when we cover the wants and needs of potential members. I think you'll find that the key to satisfying these internal audiences often parallels the needs of potential members. In other words, some of your best recruiting efforts can also be some of your best retention efforts.

The Four P’s

Now that you've defined your target audience, the next part of marketing is the four P’s – product, price, place and promotion. What does that mean? Well, in order to best meet the needs of your target audience, you want to:

Create a quality PRODUCT or service that the target audience will want to use or purchase
Make the product or service available for a PRICE which your potential audience can afford, while still being reasonable for you
PLACE your product somewhere where the target audience can comfortably find it or use it
PROMOTE your product by selecting a medium that will reach your target audience, sending messages that will grab the attention of the audience & persuade them to use or purchase the product
Confused? Don't worry – this is a rather "academic" overview. In the following sections, we'll get more in-depth and explain more about the four P's, how they apply to Sweet Adelines, and how they will help you mold your marketing plan.

Go to the next step - The Product

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1. What's marketing and why should I use it? 2. The basics of marketing 3. The Product 4. The Price

5. The Place 6. The Promotion 7. Putting it all together 8. When You're Done

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Site last updated on August 20, 2007