BMB 630 Module 6 Milestone Two Example

Positioning, Target Segments and Marketing Objectives

[Student Name]

Southern New Hampshire University

BMB 630: The Business of Music Marketing

Milestone Two

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The organization, setting and figures below are a composite written as a model document. No real employer, client, colleague or patient is described.

Positioning, Target Segments and Marketing Objectives

Introduction

Milestone One identified four problems: an underused customer list, weak midweek attendance, a new theater drawing mid-sized tours and fan frustration with fees, with measurement weakness underneath all four. This milestone sets the direction for the marketing plan: what the venue should stand for, which customers it should serve first, what it should achieve by the end of 2027 and the strategies to get there. Each choice is tied to evidence from the situation analysis and the Module Two segmentation.

Positioning

Keller (1993) argued that brand value comes from what customers know and believe about a brand, built through clear and consistent associations. The venue already has strong associations: artists describe its sound and treatment as among the best on the East Coast club circuit, and regulars describe it as their room. The positioning statement for the plan is: for Richmond music fans and the artists they follow, the venue is the room touring artists ask to play and fans come back to, because it sounds better, treats artists better and knows its audience. Every message will support at least one part of that promise, and none will contradict it, which rules out discounting that implies the venue struggles to sell.

Target Segments

The plan targets three segments from Module Two, chosen by their value today and their value over time. Regulars, who produce 31 percent of ticket revenue, are the priority for retention. Genre loyalists, 14 percent of buyers and 24 percent of revenue, are the priority for frequency, since many attend fewer shows than their genre offers. Side-room discoverers, the youngest segment and the main source of future regulars, are the priority for growth. Big-show buyers will be reached mainly through artists' own promotion and paid media for specific shows, and lapsed buyers through a single reactivation test. This is a deliberate narrowing: in 2025 the venue spent most of its paid budget chasing big-show buyers, who are the least likely to return, while sending its most valuable customers the same newsletter as everyone else. Kotler and Keller (2016) note that targeting means choosing whom not to serve as well as whom to serve.

Objectives for 2027

Marketing objectives

Strategies

The first strategy addresses the underused list: segmented email by genre, presales for members and a loyalty program with tiers based on shows attended, with the Module Five media plan as its first season. The second addresses midweek attendance: a Tuesday and Wednesday discovery series pairing a rising main-room act with a side-room favorite, with member pricing and bar specials, so that midweek shows become an event rather than leftover dates.

The third addresses the new theater: the venue will give booking agents a presale offer, a members' presale that typically sells 15 to 20 percent of a show in two days, with the data shared with the agent. Agents choose rooms partly on expected sales, and showing them early demand is the venue's strongest argument against a larger room. The fourth addresses fees: the venue will display all-in prices everywhere it advertises a show, in line with the federal fee rule that took effect for live-event tickets in 2025, and will negotiate with its ticketing company to lower fees on side-room tickets. Haws and Bearden (2006) found that buyers judge price fairness strongly and react against prices they see as unfair, which suggests that showing the total price up front may matter as much as the size of the fee.

Positions Considered and Rejected

Three other positions were considered. The venue could compete on price, as the most affordable room in town, but its costs and artist guarantees make that unsustainable, and discounting would undercut the message that it is the room artists want. It could try to be the biggest, booking more national names, but it cannot match the new theater's capacity or its promoter's tour routing. It could position itself as the home of local music, which fits the side room but not the main room's business, where touring artists drive most revenue. The chosen position draws on something competitors cannot easily copy: twelve years of reputation with artists and agents and a loyal audience that trusts the booking.

Risks to the Strategies

Each strategy carries a risk. A loyalty program could become a discount program if tiers are built on free tickets rather than access and recognition, so rewards will emphasize early entry, presales and member events. A midweek series could cannibalize weekend sales if regulars simply shift nights, so it will feature artists who would not otherwise play the venue. Sharing presale data with agents requires care with customer privacy; only totals by date and region will be shared, never names. And all-in pricing makes tickets look more expensive next to competitors who still advertise base prices where the rule is not enforced, which the venue will address by explaining its pricing on its own channels.

Measurement

Each objective has a source: attendance from scanning data, members from the club database, email share from tracking codes, side-room conversion from ticket histories and complaints from the customer service log. A monthly dashboard will report all six to the general manager, with a fuller review twice a year. Baselines were taken from 2025 data so that the first review can show change against a fixed starting point, and any objective that proves unrealistic will be revised openly at a review rather than quietly dropped.

Conclusion

The venue will position itself as the room artists ask to play and fans come back to, target regulars, genre loyalists and side-room discoverers, and pursue six measurable objectives through four strategies that answer the problems found in Milestone One. Milestone Three will turn these strategies into a campaign calendar and budget.

References

Haws, K. L., & Bearden, W. O. (2006). Dynamic pricing and consumer fairness perceptions. Journal of Consumer Research, 33(3), 304-311. https://doi.org/10.1086/508435

Keller, K. L. (1993). Conceptualizing, measuring, and managing customer-based brand equity. Journal of Marketing, 57(1), 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224299305700101

Kotler, P., & Keller, K. L. (2016). Marketing management (15th ed.). Pearson.