How could I forget Google..

I forgot to include Google search results in my last post about websites :O

When I typed The National Wedding Show into Google I was greeted by 11,700,00 results :/ Great!
The entire first page all were relevant links to The National Wedding Show, the websites included ticket sales and individual exhibitor websites stating they were attending The National Wedding Show.




I received a similar result when I searched Ben Howard, all the first page was relevant links to his pages (Myspace, Facebook, Twitter etc) Links to his videos and one website for purchasing tickets from. However if you search 'Ben Howard UK Tour' the first link is a pink pay-by-click advert from Ticketmaster.

xoxo

The Websites

Seen as though my last few posts were quite text heavy you'll be happy to know this one has a few pictures.

I decided to compare the websites to see how accessible they were, whether any of the links led to dead ends and whether you could find all the information needed.

We'll start with Ben Howard's website.

When you log onto Ben Howard's website (http://www.benhowardmusic.co.uk/) you're greeted with a simple  web page that has an equally as simple navigation bar at the top, I found no dead links, if you click on store it takes you to an external site where you can buy merchandise from which is quite useful as it means you can stay on the original website and shop on-line for his merchandise. I feel this website is really easy to use and navigate.

The National Wedding Show 

The National Wedding Show's website is very easy to navigate, the navigation bar also has separate sections within it which makes it easy to find what you want. However the home page does have a lot of 'stuff' going on so it can get quite confusing, it's filled with adverts for magazines, hotels and wedding blogs, all of which are necessary for a bride but perhaps they don't necessarily need to be on the home page.

It's difficult to compare both websites as one is not specifically for the event (Ben Howard's) whereas The National Wedding Show's website is all about making you buy the tickets. When you click on 'Buy Tickets' both websites link you to an external ticket seller, pretty standard for any website.

The obvious differences between the adverts is that The National Wedding Show is created mainly for women, it uses pinks, white and pale blues, colours that are usually associated with femininity. The background is also very soft and swirly, it is clear the website has been designed for a majority women audience. In great contrast is Ben Howard'd website which mainly uses grey and black, Usually I would think this would cause a more masculine feel to the website but I feel the soft grey creates an almost unisex feel to the website, it doesn't look girly but also doesn't feel to manly. (Not the technical terms :p )

I managed to sign up to both of the events, I got an automatic confirmation email through from Ben Howard's website straight away. I found that the Wedding Show wasn't so simple, It took 3 attempts for me to successfully sign up as it kept automatically redirecting me to the homepage, eventually I received a confirmation email. (I'll talk about emails I've received in a later post, also not forgetting the dreaded Google alerts)

I'd say that The National Wedding Show's website was better for advertising the event as it constantly had a side bar with a link to buy tickets and the VIP ticket offer so whatever page you were on, you couldn't escape it. Whereas Ben Howard's page is more promotion him and his music, then you have to know he's on tour to bother looking at the 'Live' link on the navigation bar to get dates and tickets.

I do however have one final rant about The National Wedding Show website, the fact that every time you click on the homepage a loud video starts playing automatically and you have to try and scroll down the page to find it and stop it, but then again maybe its just me that finds it annoying.

xoxo

Was I right about target audiences?

It is important to know your target audience so you can understand the market you are advertising to. To advertise successfully you must become familiar with their habits, expenditure, annual income, likes and dislikes.

The National Wedding Show

As the average wedding costs £20,000 getting to know your market can prove very lucrative for the exhibitioners at The National Wedding Show. 

On The National Wedding Show website I found the following information about their clients. (The information was in the exhibitors section of the website)

• The average household income of visitors is £58,000
• 89% of visitors are in the ABC1 socio-economic band, our audience has the ability, as well as the desire, to splash out!
• The average spend of visitors as a direct results of the show is £1,427
• 97% of visitors come with the bride
• 27% of visitors come with the groom
• Half of all visitors bring the mother of the bride
• 40% of visitors come with their bridesmaids
• You have access to not only the bride but the bridesmaids, mother of the bride, groom and a whole host of the wedding party
• The average group size is 2.6
• 4 out of 5 visitors dont visit any other Wedding Show
• 77% of visitors are getting married within the next 7-18 months you are gaining acces to couples in the early stages of their planning when lots of decisions are still to be made - 69% of visitors say they are in the early stages of their planning

I guess I was correct (ish) in assuming the brides bring along their mothers but was surprised to see it was only half the visitors and only 40% brought the bridesmaids. I think the information provided by the National Wedding Show will be invaluable to the exhibitors as they then know exactly what stock etc to bring.

Ben Howard

Unsurprisingly Ben Howard's website doesn't include easy access information about his target audience. I've had a look at some Mintel reports to help work out a more accurate view of his target audience.

Looking at folk music in general Mintel states that this genre is more of a male dominated are with 68% of folk listeners being male and 56% of folk music listeners being over 50. However saying this as Ben Howard's music said to only have folk influences these statistics can not be directly applied however if we have a look at live music events statistics from Mintel (seen as though we are looking at his live shows) we can see that the growth in live music attendees is down to artists targeting the younger audiences through the use of social media, making ticket buying easier and through the increase of awareness of the events.

So far there hasn't really been any similarities between the two events, however I expect that both of the events will use similar techniques in targeting the audiences especially due to the increase of social media in the past few years, we'll just have to see if that is the case in a later blog.

xoxo

What are my events about?!?!

Well my last post introduced which events I was going to do, this blog will hopefully give you a more in depth look at the events I chose. I think both my events are completely different from one another in the type of event they are, hopefully as the blog posts commence I will find out how similar they are in the marketing aspect of them.

The National Wedding Show
The National Wedding Show is a 3 day event taking place on the 24th-26th February at London Olympia, the Wedding show is the UK's biggest Wedding show (also taking place at Birmingham's NEC Arena in March) featuring over 250 different exhibitors supplying everything you need for your big day. Also boasting that it has the largest collection of Wedding dresses under one roof in the UK.
According to the website the event attracts 50,000 visitors a year, If I were to guess at the target market I would put most of these visitors as females aged 25-40 and bringing along their Maid of Honour and their Mum, However that may be me being stereotypical and imagining the exhibition to be reminiscent of Disney princess films, I shall research the target market of the Wedding show in a later blog.

Ben Howard
I chose to follow Ben Howard's tour simply because I'm a fan of his music. He has just finished the UK leg of his tour and is currently in America. I was concentrating on the London dates (23rd,24th February, Shepherds Bush). Ben's music has been described as 'folky' and has only recently (in the past year) become a 'mainstream' artist being played on Radio1 and being featured on music channels on the television. For these reasons I feel that his target audience will consist of many die-hard fans that have followed him from day 1 mixed in with the younger audience (14-24) who perhaps listen to radio 1 or watch the music channels, I could be entirely wrong about this prediction we'll just have to see in the next post.

xoxo

My event choices

Hi

For my EV402 coursework on Event and Exhibition marketing comparisons I have chosen 2 events, the first being The National Wedding Show at London Olympia (24th-26th February) and I'm also following Ben Howards tour which starts on the 25th of January but I'm concentrating on the London dates which take place on the 23rd and 24th of February at Shepherds Bush arena.

The National Wedding Show - http://www.nationalweddingshow.co.uk/ 
Ben Howards tour - http://www.benhowardmusic.co.uk/live/

Happy Reading xoxo