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Marketing the Cheltenham Festivals – CIM event

We attended an interesting CIM presentation last night about the marketing of the Cheltenham Festivals. As a not for profit organisation and registered charity, they have to make their marketing budgets work really hard for them. So what do they do?

• Partnerships – they place great value on the partnerships they have with sponsors – this has created real brand value for them. The Times and Radio 2 are both partners.

• Values – all the programming of events is agreed based on being in line with their values, which include partnership, young people and education to name a few.

• Offline marketing includes direct mail, advertising, press, local marketing and cooperative arrangements.

• Online marketing includes their website, social marketing, e-news and blogs.

Their biggest spend is still their 4 festival brochures which work really hard for them in the community. They also have a membership now of over 4000 who are core visitors and enjoy regular dialogue through e-news and blogs.

It was fascinating to get an insight into such a public event!