Integrated Marketing Communication Plan

"Increasing Heritage Theater Events Attendance"

Asia Rivera, Logan Bries & Rosan Otto

Professor Marty

BAC 308 Principles of Advertising

May 12, 2018

Executive Summary

In this report, we analyze the University of Dubuque's Heritage Center current situation and

recommend a marketing strategy, based on our research, to increase overall attendance by 15%.

The Heritage Center was built in 2013 to provide education, entertainment, and leisure to its

students, faculty, staff, alumni and the general public. As part of the University of Dubuque, the

Heritage Center's most important target audience are students and its mission for them is to teach

them by exposing students to culture. In this report, we discuss demographics, consumer

behaviors, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, and we discuss critical issues we

hope to solve with our long-term strategic plan. We discuss solutions in pricing, partnerships,

and digital marketing. Furthermore, we make recommendations for the marketing expense

budget and the implementation of our plan.

1
 Table of Contents

Executive Summary…………………………………………………….…..2

Situational Analysis…………………………...………..…………………...3

Market Summary…………………...………..……………………...3

Market Analysis…………………...………..………...…………..…3

Market Demographics…………………...…………...…………..… 5

Market Behaviors…...………..………...………..………...………....7

SWOT Analysis……………………………………………………...7

Marketing Strategy……...………..………...………..………...………..…...10

Marketing Objectives……...………..………...………..………...….10

Target Markets……...………..………...………..………...…………10

Strategy……...………...………..………...………..………...…...….10

Marketing Expense Budget……...………..………...………..………...…….17

Implementation of Marketing Strategy……...………..………...……………18

References……...………..………...………..………...………..………….…20

2
Situational Analysis

Market Summary

Because of the accessibility of the Heritage Center to the students of the university, through

simple advertising and promotion opportunities such as posters scattered throughout campus,

emails, etc. a good majority of the students enrolled at the University of Dubuque are exposed to

the events going on within the Heritage Center on a semi-regular basis. However, in terms of

actual growth, it is difficult to say that any specific progression is being made. There is not

necessarily a growth of interest in theatre from the community, but the opportunity for growth is

very much present. The recent remodel/opening of Phoenix Theaters at Kennedy Mall could be

considered growth of programs having to do with the modern-day term for ‘theater’. With just

less than half of Dubuque’s population being comprised of people under the age of 30 and three

college campuses within reach throughout the city, Dubuque is a prime example of endless

opportunity and influx of new potential in regards to the performing arts.

Market Analysis

We acquired data through an interview with Tom Robbins, the Director of the University of

Dubuque Heritage Center. We learned that on average, a fourth of the audience for a theatre

event consists of University of Dubuque students, another fourth of University of Dubuque

faculty and staff and half of the audience consists of the general audience.

From our interview with Tom, we learned that the priority target audience are UD students, this

is because the Heritage Center is affiliated with the University and the Heritage Center is a

3
service to UD students. Surprisingly however, the general audience makes up the biggest chunk

of the audience on an average night and generated the most revenue. Without this audience, the

Heritage Center could not operate because it provides significantly discounted tickets to the

student body as well as faculty and staff.

4
Market Demographics

In terms of demographic information regarding the University of Dubuque and its surrounding

community, we discovered the following information:

Undergraduate Students

Of undergraduate students, 58.6% is male and​ 4​ 1.1% is female.

5
Ethnicity of Faculty

Of the faculty, 91.8% is white, 8.2% is black/African-American, Latino/Hispanic, Asian, or

other. This group consists of 52.2% female and 47.5% male.

Ethnicity of City of Dubuque

Age of City of Dubuque

6
The graphs include data provided from the 2010 census. However by referring to other areas

regarding demographics within the community, it can be inferred that not much change has

occurred over the years. Therefore, the information provided would be an accurate estimate.

Market Behaviors

The beginning of the Fall semester tends to be a popular time for attendance of Heritage events.

This is due to the recent influx of students (incoming freshman, returning undergraduate

students, etc.), along with events being held throughout campus to ring in the new semester.

There is a spike in activity when new consumers are being integrated into the culture at UD,

however, there is trouble maintaining interest in performances, activities, etc. throughout the

year. Because students tend to go home for holidays, attendance in that aspect decreases.

However, on average, the general public is more willing to be present at performances/shows

around the holiday season which should be make a positive impact due to 50% of sales coming

from a general audience.

SWOT Analysis

Strengths

The strengths of the Heritage Center are accessibility to students. Plus, free parking after 5 pm. A

downside to this however, is that when theatre events take place during a weekday during the

semester, parking is limited because students park on campus.

7
Weaknesses

The weaknesses are limited financial resources (dependent on the University of Dubuque).

Furthermore, student employees can not work during school/class hours and are most likely

unavailable to work during holidays).

Opportunities

Opportunities are more student organization performances/events in the Heritage Center. There

is also the opportunity with increased funding to bring in shows and events that are currently not

shown in the community.

Threats

Threats are that food and drinks (even water) is not allowed in the theatre, which might move

people to different venues. A large majority of consumers like to have some sort of food or

beverage while watching an event, and for some of those with medical conditions, it is even a

necessity.

Competitors

Alternative providers form another threat to the Heritage Center. The biggest competitor is the

event venue Five Flags downtown Dubuque. But also other entertainment options like the two

movie theatres in Dubuque. With the AMC, the new Phoenix theater, and Five Flags there are

more options for entertainment in the community. All these other options offer some amenities

not currently allowed at the Heritage Center.

8
Keys to success

Tapping into available market via students and staff; family packages to extend to DBQ

residents; partnering with other organizations such as nursing homes, daycares, primary and

secondary schools, etc. Social media presence, relevant content

Critical issues

A couple of issues that the Heritage Center faces are the following. First, a decline in attendance

over the summer and holidays, because most students go home. Usually, people spend money on

entertainment like Heritage shows when they have time, so this is really challenging when it

comes to student attendance. Another issue is that while the Heritage Center offers $5.00 rush

tickets for students, only 7% of the students that go to Heritage Center theatre events buys these.

This could either mean that the rush tickets are not advertised enough or that there is something

wrong with the strategy used. We come back to this in our marketing strategy.

9
Marketing Strategy

Marketing Objectives

Our marketing objective is to increase attendance at University of Dubuque theater events by

15%. The marketing plan we have provided will be implemented incrementally beginning at the

start of the Fall semester of 2018 and we will measure the result of our efforts by tracking an

increase of ticket sales over the period of the 2018-2019 academic year. We will call all our

efforts of this campaign the "Welcome to Campus" campaign as it is important to target

incoming freshman and converting these students into customers for all the four years they will

go to the University of Dubuque.

Target Markets

The Heritage Center has a large target market consisting of different groups. According to Tom

Robbins, the most important target audience are all University of Dubuque students:

undergraduate, graduate and LIFE program students. The second priority are prospective

students, followed by University of Dubuque staff and faculty. The Heritage Center also targets

alumni and lastly the general audience (all residents within a 50 mile radius). Interestingly

however, is that the general audience generates the most revenue and that the Heritage Center

can not operate without the revenue generated from this target group. This is because other

priority target groups like University of Dubuque students as well as University of Dubuque

faculty and staff are offered significant discounts on the regular ticket price.

10
Pricing ​ PrcingPricingPricingPricingPricingP ricingPricingPricingPricingPricingPricing

Student Discount

The priority target audience of the University of Dubuque Heritage Center are its students. To

increase attendance, the Heritage Center offers an last minute discount called their "rush tickets".

These "rush tickets" are available for purchase 90 minutes before showtime. Students can

purchase a ticket at this price to particular shows for only $5. The problem here however, is that

it is creating a situation in which the Heritage Center is unsure of how many students they can

expect in attendance. Their data on student ticket sales shows that at on average, at least 50% of

students purchase a rush ticket. Because of the high number, we propose to switch up the

available period of time you can purchase a rush ticket. Instead of pushing it off and not having

students commit, switch this deal up to an early bird discount. Now, you are creating

commitment, you can expect a number of students in attendance, and students will go to your

event over a different last minute offer, because they already paid for a ticket. Furthermore, we

recommend only offering this discount for the first 100 tickets purchased. This gives students an

incentive to buy early and to act fast.

Additionally to switching up the student discount, we like to add another discount for students.

When they bring a friend or family member who is not a UD student, faculty or staff member, or

alum, they can purchase half priced regular tickets for these people on the condition that these

tickets are purchased by a University of Dubuque student.

11
Public Relations ​ PPricinggPricingPricingP ricingPricingPricingPricingPricingPricing

Increase Student Organization Partnerships

Increasing collaborations with student organizations on campus can improve attendance by 1)

genuine interest and guaranteed attendance by all interested members of an organization, 2) more

student engagement. "HPAAC" (Heritage Performing Arts Committee) is a student organization

open to the entire undergraduate student body. They invite all members to vote on proposed

events and they offer free food for taking part in this. Plus, they host events after the shows they

collaborate on. With your purchased ticket, you have entrance to their post-show event which

includes meeting the cast, free food etcetera.

Partner with UD Talks

UD Talks is a new organization on campus that published podcasts featuring students, staff,

faculty and makes announcements for campus activities. UD Talks publishes their podcasts for

free on Google, Itunes and other platforms. They are easily accessible and free to listen to. We

recommend that the Heritage Center collaborates with UD Talks. They can announce theatre

events and invite performers to talk about the show to promote the event.

Student Events Calendar

From the surveys we handed out in our classes, we found out that most students are unaware of

the theatre events that are going on and find the current ways in which they are exposed to the

advertising from the Heritage Center ineffective. Most of the students that took our survey let us

know that they never read the Spartan Scoop or look at the posters on campus in which theatre

12
events are announced. Therefore, we recommend that the Heritage Center collaborates with the

Student Government Association as well as the Office of Student Activities, on the universal

calendar in Outlook (connected to student's UD outlook account) as well as the calendar on the

website of the Student Government Association. This way, students can easily check their

outlook calendar for upcoming events.

Digital Marketing ​ ricingPricingPricingP ricingPricingPricingPricingPricingPricing

Web Advertising

The target audience of Heritage Theatre events include students from the University of Dubuque.

An online tool that University of Dubuque students are required to use on a daily basis is the

university's Moodle page. This website (​http://udonline.dbq.edu​) is different than the school's

official website (​https://www.dbq.edu​). The Moodle home page currently has a banner/header

displaying a slideshow with advertisements for the Undergrad/Grad programs, Life program,

Seminary, etc. Ads intended for

people who are interested in these

programs displayed on a website

intended for enrolled students. We

propose to use this slideshow for

ads for the Heritage Theatre events

to reach students through a medium

they are required to access daily.

13
Email Marketing

From the survey we handed out to students, we learned that most students do not read the weekly

"Spartan Scoop" email in which Heritage Center events are announced. The Heritage Center

sends out emails to students themselves, but we learned from students that these are also not

opened often. To be succesful, organizations should integrate the email marketing program with

the other channels they advertise through. Like discussed earlier, consistency is extremely

important. A good idea would be to send consumers who have tried buying tickets online, but

ended up not buying tickets, an email to remind them of the tickets. The IT department can help

identifying these customers. It is easier to convert these individuals into customers than sending

mass emails. In addition, revenues generated from these follow-up emails are three to nine times

higher than other approached. (Baack, 2016). . We also recommend to improve the layout and

frequency of emails send to students. By providing a more appealing subject line the chance of

consumer interactions would be greater. We also suggest that the Heritage Center in

collaboration with the University of Dubuque changes the email list for students. Instead of

sending everything to everybody, we would like to see the option of subscribing to categorized

emails. This way, you only send emails to students that are actually interested. Options for

subscriptions could be: Heritage Center events, Free Food events, Educational Events, All

events, etc. Targeted emails experience a conversion rate 5 to 10 times higher than mass emails

sent to the firm's customers (Baack, 2016).

14
Social Media Marketing

Social media can drive traffic to the website

of the Heritage Center, it keeps current and

prospective customers engaged, it enhances

the image of the HC, and it boosts organic

search rankings and increase sales (Baack,

2016) which goes hand in hand with our marketing objective of increasing attendance. The

Heritage Center is active on social media, which is great because the most important target group

according to the HC is UD students. From our survey we learned that the majority of students

prefers being notified/made aware of HC events through social media. However, we are missing

consistency and adequate posting frequency. The profile pictures used on the social media

channels are not consistent, nor is the content posted. The message should be the same on all

channels. Furthermore, social media is updated weekly or bi-weekly when 3-5 times per week is

preferable for Facebook and daily (up to two times) for Twitter and Instagram (Thill, Bovée,

2017). As the Heritage Center finds UD students so important, they should really spend more

time (and money) on social media. After Facebook, Instagram was ranked runner up in

popularity amongst 18-24 year-olds, but content on Instagram is updated the least.

Location-Based Advertising

Another advertising effort we recommended to the Heritage Center is geotargeting through social

media to University of Dubuque students to increase traffic and enhance brand image. This

15
means that money will be spend on advertisements that will only show up in the newsfeed of

social media users who:

- Are using social media on or around campus

- Are between the ages of 17 and 29

The cost of this advertising effort is extremely low compared to the rate of return of this

investment. The Heritage Center can reach anywhere between 500 - 1000 people who fit this

category by spending $2 a day. In addition to this, we recommend that the Heritage Center

invests in creating SnapChat Geofilters on the days of and the days approaching the theatre

event. We know from statistics that our primary target group, UD students, are heavily invested

in Snapchat. A geofilter would show up when a Snapchat picture is taken on or around campus.

It would promote the event at a low fixed cost.

Content Seeding: Contest

Most people will compete in competitions, especially if they believe they can win (Baack, 2016).

With a small student population, the odds of winning a school contest are relatively high. To

encourage involvement, following the Heritage Center on social media, and to generate traffic

and improve brand image, we suggest that the HC hosts a giveaway for every theatre show in

which they target students. Financial incentives are proven to create the most involvement, and a

financial incentive for the HC could be giving

away free tickets as a price. The example

below is a tweet the HC could send on

promoting a contest for an event coming up.

16
YouTube

From the age group 18-24 (most UD students), 94% uses YouTube (Forbes, 2018), furthermore,

YouTube is the fastest growing social media networking site (Baack, 42016). We recommend

that the Heritage Center creates their own YouTube channel (some content is posted by the

UDBQMedia Channel, but most of it is outdated: the last video uploaded was the Christmas

show update 5 months ago) to announce events, share promotional material from performers,

post pre-and post show content (like interviews with the performers) and advertise on this

platform. Furthermore, YouTube can generate revenue from views, which can be used towards

the advertising.

Marketing Expense Budget

The current Advertising budget of the Heritage Center was $80,000 for the school year 2017 -

2018. This number does not include the cost of "hiring" graduate assistants who are assigned to

tasks relating to advertising efforts. By looking at the pie chart, 38.7% of the current budget was

spent on print advertising such as newspaper ads, flyers, brochures, magazines, etc.

17
Because the Director of the Heritage Center has identified the primary target audience of the

Heritage Center to be the its students, we like to recommend to increase the chunk of the budget

spent on Digital/Social Media, as this is the best way to reach this generation of students. Instead

of spending only 8%, we recommend at least doubling that number and taking money from the

print and or direct mail budget. We also like to decrease the money money spent on Graphic

Design and partner with the Graphic Design students on campus and the department. We have

great Graphic Design students on campus and we should use these resources. We propose the

following budget:

For a good Rate of Return on this investment, we should get more money back than we put into

it (Burney, 2018). The ROI on this investment should be at least 25% based on our investment of

$80,000 for the 2018-2019 school year.

18
The Heritage of Dubuque is practicing a pulsating advertising budget (Tom Robbins, 2018). This

means that there is always money spent on advertising, but that more money is spent during

particular months. This occurs when the semester is approaching to turn new students into

customers. Most money is spent in August and September, because this is when the Heritage

Center is warming up incoming students to attend their events. They invest more money here,

because they know that when they turn these new students into customers, they will most likely

be customers for the rest of their educational career at the University of Dubuque. We definitely

recommend continuing this schedule. As former freshman students, we know that the first few

weeks on campus, students send a lot of pictures to family, friends and other acquaintances over

social media. It is smart to spend more money during this time, but especially on social media.

The SnapChat filter, like discussed earlier, would be used heavily during this time.

Implementation of the Marketing Strategy

We recommend implementing our strategy at the beginning of the Fall 2018 semester. It is

important to make sure these changes are a slow progression so as to avoid an overload of

information creating the opposite of the desired effect. Overall, our goal is to encourage students

to participate in Heritage events. As previously stated, this should be down at a progressive pace

to discover what is working and what is not working. By taking things step by step and

experimenting with different methods of advertising, marketing, etc. it is easier to decipher

methods that should be explored further versus thrown out.

19
References

Baack & Clow, 2016, Integrated Advertising, Promotion and Marketing Communications, 7th

Edition, published by Pearson Education, Inc.

Burney, 2018, Track Maven, "Marketing ROI" retrieved on April 20, 2018, retrieved from

https://trackmaven.com/blog/what-is-good-roi-for-marketing-campaigns/

College Factual, "University of Dubuque Diversity", published in 2018, retrieved on April 30,

2017, retrieved from

https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-dubuque/student-life/diversity/

Inclusive Dubuque, "Dubuque Demographics", unknown publication date, retrieved on April 30,

2018, retrieved from

http://inclusivedbq.org/community-equity-profile/dubuque-demographics/dubuque-demo

graphics/

Murnane, Forbes, "Which Social Media Platform is The Most Popular in the US?", published on

March 3, 2018, retrieved on April 28, 2018 retrieved from

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinmurnane/2018/03/03/which-social-media-platform-is-

the-most-popular-in-the-us/#2d951ddf1e4e

Thill, Bovée, "Excellence in Business Communication", Pearson textbook 2017, retrieved on

April 28, 2018

Thomas Robbins, Director of the Heritage Center, in-person interview (April 2, 2018)

20
Undergraduate University of Dubuque students, data collected from surveys handed out in

classes (April 11, 2018)

Information collected:

Students Satisfaction: Affordability Awareness Prefer to Prefer to be

participated Scale of 1-10 know in notified by:
advance vs. method of
last minute advertisement

15 AVG: 5.3 AVG: Highly AVG: Majority 64% = 53% = Social

Satisfied Unaware ADV. Media
46% = Email

21