The Adelaide Fringe Festival (aka Fringe) has become the biggest showcase of performing and visual arts in the southern hemisphere. The event runs for a whopping 31 days from February 17, 2023, with events in the South Australian capital and state-wide. Wondering how to promote a Fringe show and be part of all the excitement? We’ve pulled together information to get you started.

Fringe features thousands of artists, so as an event creator, you’ll want to prioritise promotion to attract a large and diverse audience. Fringe is run by the not-for-profit organisation Adelaide Fringe Inc. It’s an open-access festival, meaning anyone can register any event. From previous event data, more than 300 venues across the state collectively played host to more than a thousand shows. Events range from free outdoor mega-events to intimate food tastings, and just about everything in between.

This article looks at what event creators should consider when planning and delivering standout event experiences at Fringe.

Table of contents

Define your event

Types of promotion for your Fringe show

Marketing strategies to promote your Fringe show

Selling tickets

After the event

Promote your Adelaide Fringe show now

Define your event

Before promoting any Adelaide Fringe Festival events, clearly define your show’s goals, budget, and target audience. These key factors will inform the decisions you make as you move forward with planning your event. This section looks at hints and tips on how to get it right from the start.

Set your event goals

There are several things you might want to achieve with your Fringe show. Do you want to build your audience numbers? Sell out smaller events? Get great publicity that will increase your brand’s reach? Find out how to get SMART about event planning with Eventbrite. This is about setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals. You don’t want to be unrealistic or vague with your goal setting; otherwise, you might accidentally set yourself up for failure.

Set your budget

Budgeting is a crucial part of your planning. You need to know how much money to commit to necessities, plus paid advertising and promotions. Reference historical data and consider current event trends while budgeting. It’s also helpful to seek out buy-ins and partnerships with your event stakeholders. Once you’ve mapped out your basic expenses, you can make informed decisions about your venue, staffing, and tech costs. Using the right tools for budget planning will make this an easier task and give you a more successful event.

Who is your target audience?

The more you know about your target audience and where their eyes will be looking for entertainment, the better. You will find useful information about Fringe attendees and numbers in the annual review reports on the Adelaide Fringe website. In 2022, for example, almost half the Fringe attendees were in the 25 to 44 age bracket, and the average Fringe-goer attended 4.6 performances, so you might want to start by considering the kinds of unique experiences millennials are looking for.

Do a SWOT analysis

You can carry out a SWOT analysis on your own or with your team – it’s a lot more fun with others because the more people who are involved, the more creative ideas will percolate and surface. SWOT stands for:

Use this self-assessment tool to define and understand your competitive position. The understanding will inform strategic future planning for your event. Your strengths might include a strong, loyal following of fans, while a weakness could be several competitors in your sector or area.

Types of promotion for your Fringe show

Wondering what type of promotion you should use to advertise your Fringe show? Read on for tips on how to promote a Fringe show and finding your perfect marketing mix.

Print advertising

During Fringe time, people are out and about and looking for events to attend today, tomorrow, and next week. Printed materials such as posters and flyers can be seen by potential attendees already in the area, so they’re an excellent way to get your event in that coveted top-of-mind position.

It’s also worth looking into the official advertising available with Adelaide Fringe Inc. There are partnership opportunities to get your event into their official guide, school program, or accessibility guide.

Go digital

Capture the attention of your target audience with digital and social media advertising. As an event creator, you understand the attention economy and what your audience wants. Timing is important here – you’ll have the long-term lead-up, then building the excitement and buzz as your event dates approach, and finally real-time updates on the day. Use a planning calendar for social media outputs, and share it with partners and stakeholders.

Write an attention-grabbing event description

Pictures and videos are essential. However, Google searches respond to keywords and snippets. A great event description can attract attendees and create anticipation for the event. One well-written snippet can be used for your event listing, website, social media posts, and any printed guides you get listed in. Keeping your branding consistent will build trust from existing and potential clients.

Talk to the media

Reach out to the media to promote your event. Naturally, avoid pestering them and talk to them professionally, considering the following:

Media partnerships sell tickets, so spend time communicating with all media channels in advance – this will help make your Fringe event a success.

Ticket giveaways

Complimentary tickets are sought after in the event promotion world. In advance, free tickets will create a buzz around your show. Consider the following for freebies that could be an excellent ROI:

Reach out to influencers

Influencers can be mega or micro. Small groups of peer endorsements can add up if they get widely shared. To reach a greater potential audience, target social media influencers who share passions that are parallel to your show’s goals and theme. Live music discovery is heavily influenced by word-of-mouth and social media, so it’s a powerful marketing tool.

Use your vendors

Establish partnerships with the venue and other vendors to standardise your Fringe event promotion across all your marketing channels. Great communication is vital for everyone involved, so take the lead and suggest ways that you can be helpful to your partners. They just might come back at you with a better suggestion. Within privacy laws, you can share your email lists with your partners and venues in return for theirs, to pool together your pre-existing audiences.

Marketing strategies to promote your Fringe show

There are many ways to promote an Adelaide Fringe Festival show, but getting your marketing strategies in place early will help ensure your promotion and ticket sales go well. Get your event noticed and entice audiences to attend by casting your efforts wide and using as many methods as possible.

Improve your website

A dedicated website to promote your event will strengthen your SEO footing and potentially get you on the first search engine results page (SERP). At Eventbrite, we’ve made it easy to integrate your assets, such as images, videos, blogs, and more, to keep your event page constantly up to date.

Improve your searchability

Good SEO will ensure that your event can be found easily by those looking for a fabulous Fringe event to attend. Find a unique hashtag for your event and use geo-specific hashtags to target locals. You can change your hashtags and monitor the results to find which ones work best for your Fringe event.

Get social

Make the most of your social media accounts in the lead-up to your Fringe event by posting regular updates. Impress your audience by exploring Omnichannel marketing – integrating and automating multiple social media accounts to save time and effort. The goal is a high-quality, seamless, and effortless customer experience across email, SMS, and social media. Building your brand consistency in this way will create trust with existing and potential customers.

Selling tickets

Event-goers like to have options, so take advantage of this and offer a variety of ticket types. Different ticket types can suit and attract different audiences. This section looks at jazzing up your ticket offerings and using promo codes to sell more tickets.

Early bird tickets

Offering a price incentive for participants who get in early can provide valuable insights as payback for the minor cost. Early bird tickets can help you encourage sales at the start of your advertising campaign and give you more certainty as your audience grows. Understanding the early interest in your event lets you tweak promotions and target those most interested in your Fringe show.

Group tickets

Group tickets can encourage more sales by locking in additional people. Offering a price incentive for groups of participants is particularly attractive during Fringe because many groups of friends and work colleagues are looking for an event to enjoy together. It’s easy to structure your discount campaigns to incentivise ticket sales – set up promo codes and tiered ticketing from your Eventbrite event dashboard.

VIP tickets

If your event is on the medium or larger size, think about premium-priced VIP tickets. This will appeal to people who are highly interested in your event or invested in the scene you’re operating in. Think premium seating areas, goodie bags, talent interactions before or after the show, and anything else that can add value or create a memorable experience. Why not set up a secret VIP experience for influencers and media reps? Don’t forget exclusive surprises to get them talking about your event.

Bundled tickets

Seek out win-win partnerships that could increase your tickets sales with bundled tickets. Join forces with a local restaurant to create a unique themed dinner, for example, and offer the dinner and show on one ticket. Working with local businesses can increase your promotional reach by tapping into local word-of-mouth marketing. It also lets you pool some of your marketing spend and piggyback off each other’s strengths.

After the event

Once your event has finished, there’s still work to be done to wrap things up. Time to reach out to your attendees and find out how to improve for next time. Here are some post-event activities that event creators should consider:

Promote your Adelaide Fringe show now

Now you’ve gained a good understanding of how to promote a Fringe show so that it stands out from the crowd, head to Eventbrite where you’ll find the ticketing and promotional tools to create a memorable event experience.