A critical investigation into the promotional tools and techniques used in music tour management: a case study of the strategies employed by The Saturdays 'All Fired Up' tour.

Abstract

The live music is a saturated market, in which to stay competitive, management need to do all they can to stay current and in the media limelight. Successful marketing and promotional campaigns are useful in gaining and sustaining a competitive advantage over others in the market, with a variety of tools and techniques now widely available to utilise. The intent of this study is to critically investigate the promotional tools and techniques employed by The Saturdays All Fired Up tour, arriving at this through the objectives of looking at how well these were developed, how well they were received by attendees and suggesting areas for future improvement. A quantitative data collection self administered questionnaire was used to collate data from tour attendees, using a snowball sampling method. The finding of this research highlight the move in promotional activity to more online methods, and away from the traditional routes of marketing that were once favoured. There are a high proportion of fans that use and are highly influences by social media promotion, and also rated that word of mouth recommendations were a key factor in their decision to attend the tour. Conclusions drawn from the research findings illustrate a direction in which would best utilise future tours promotion materials most efficiently; illustrating that encouraging and developing online promotion and word of mouth would be a successful strategy to explore in the future.