How Your Business Can Benefit from The Cabbagetown Festival
The 44th Annual Cabbagetown Festival will take place on Saturday, September 9 and Sunday, September 10, 2023. We estimate the local economic impact on the weekend of the event will be over $3M.
Our mandate is to increase longterm traffic to the area by presenting Cabbagetown as a viable shopping destination and showcasing local businesses to the wider Toronto community. To this end, we plan to provide a full road closure along Parliament St and Carlton St. We need your help with animating the street! We anticipate 60,000+ patrons will attend the 2023 Festival and we encourage you to take advantage of this by activating a 10×10-ft space on the street!
Not sure what your business’ event marketing plan should be? Consider using any one of these six ideas for promoting your business at the festival.
1. Host a Fun Activity
Creating experiences is the best way to connect with new visitors and customers. Not sure how to promote your product or service? What you do to attract customers doesn’t always need to be directly connected to your business. Consider hosting a fun activity, such as a photo booth, dunk tank, face painting, or lawn games!
2. Give Away a Product
“Having manned plenty of vendor booths, I can attest that the offer of anything FREE—whether it’s a tote bag or T-shirt—helps attract people like flies to honey. But traditional promo products aren’t your only options. Consider matching the product to the event and the needs of the attendees.”
3. Give Away a Service
Your massage business could offer FREE, five-minute shoulder or foot rubs while your barber business could offer a FREE hot shave. The sky is the limit!
4. Give Away a Consultation
If you provide a complex service, such as home remodeling or interior design, consider offering information about your services and signing customers up to receive a free in-home consultation.
5. Feed the Crowd
Everyone loves FREE food and drinks. Try handing out samples of your food item or beverage at the event. Even if you’re not a beverage company, something as simple as handing out ice water in reusable cups with your logo on it can get attention.
6. Hold a Contest
You can hold a contest on the spot, such as a prize drawing for a $100 gift card to your restaurant or a FREE personal training session at your gym. Consider collecting business cards or having people fill out entry forms in order to register for the prize.
7. Sell Something
You can go beyond promotions and giveaways to actually sell products or services. You could take these sales beyond a one-time event by including some type of special offer along with them. If a customer buys food from your booth, for example, consider including a coupon good for a discount off a meal at your restaurant, a buy-one-get-one-FREE deal or a FREE appetizer. Asking if the customer wants to sign up to receive promotional emails from you can be a way to get a new customer through event marketing.
8. AND MORE!
Of course, just participating in the event does not guarantee success. You may also want to consider:
Choosing the right employees. Selecting outgoing, energetic workers who can approach strangers with confidence and draw a crowd to your booth can be very helpful when event marketing. Introverts can work the event, but you may want to put them behind the scenes stocking supplies or doing booth setup and teardown if they’re not comfortable talking to strangers or drumming up booth traffic. Make sure you have enough staff on the day of the event—you never want to leave your station unmanned.
Marketing the event. To make the most of the event, you may want to think beyond relying on the BIA to get the word out. Sure, we’ll be promoting the overall event, but amplifying the promotion and also emphasizing your role in the event can really help.
Tell your customers you’ll be participating in the event via your email newsletter or other email marketing messages, signage or flyers in your location and through good old word-of-mouth. Social media can be a vital part of a promotion. Consider hyping the event on all of your social media channels, and using the appropriate hashtags and keywords the BIA has chosen so your post will pop up when people search for the event. Be sure to tag us @Cabbagetownbia and use the hashtags #CabbagetownTO.
Using giveaways to get something. You can’t expect people on a hot day to give you their email addresses in return for a cup of water. But if you’re giving out something more valuable, you can ask attendees to give you their business cards, sign up to get your email newsletter, or fill out a contact form in return for the freebie. Finally, don’t drop the ball after the event is over. Within two weeks after the Festival, use the contact information you gathered to reach out to prospects. Best wishes for a successful festival!
MORE ABOUT THE BENEFITS TO YOUR BUSINESS…
7 Ways Careful Event Planning Can Benefit Your Small Business
So, you want to plan an amazing event to promote your business? Have you ever stopped to consider the very real business benefits you can unleash, by planning and executing an outstanding and memorable event?
How Street Fair Booths Can Benefit Every Type of Business
A study by Eventbrite reveals that 80% of millennials went to 3+ food or drink festivals in the last year. Incredibly, 99% of millennials said they would recommend a product they liked at a festival to family and friends. This means that festivals are positively ripe with opportunities to expand your business.
To discuss how you can participate in the festival or potential sponsorship opportunities, contact Matthew Mohan, Executive Director to book an appointment today. We’re here to support you! If you’re ready to join us now CLICK HERE for our Participation Form.
