business plan treehouse pr

Business Plan Thomas Harris

www.facebook.com/pr.treehouse

http://leahhowie.wix.com/treehousepr

www.instagram.com/treehousepr

http://www.instagram.com/treehousepr


http://www.facebook.com/pr.treehouse

Contents1. Executive Summary...........................................................................................................1

2. Company Description........................................................................................................1

3. Market Analysis.................................................................................................................2

Direct Competitors...............................................................................................................2

Indirect Competitors.............................................................................................................2

4. Service or Product Line.....................................................................................................3

The website.......................................................................................................................... 3

Visual Branding....................................................................................................................3

Future Services..................................................................................................................... 3

5. Strategy and Implementation Summary...........................................................................4

6. Organization & Management............................................................................................5

Project manager...................................................................................................................5

Contact liaison......................................................................................................................6

Web specialist......................................................................................................................6

Content specialist.................................................................................................................6

Marketing and promotions...................................................................................................6

Legal and business affairs.....................................................................................................7

Press officer..........................................................................................................................7

7. Operational plan...............................................................................................................7

8. Marketing & Sales.............................................................................................................8

Below the Line Marketing.....................................................................................................8

Above the Line Marketing....................................................................................................8

9. Financial Projections.......................................................................................................10

Future planned costs for the business................................................................................12

Advertising......................................................................................................................12

Radio adverts.................................................................................................................. 12

10. Appendices:.................................................................................................................13

1. Executive Summary

Treehouse PR was created from a simple small idea - why do musicians at open mic events not have enough promotion during their performance to let the audience know more about who they are and what they have to offer. Spiralling from this idea, a group of three individual media professionals and genuine fans of live music decided to join together to create a specialist PR agency based around open mic events and singer-songwriter musicians with even collaborations planned to work with poets, comedians and all different types of performers to give a platform that could benefit the three sectors of our intended services and our slogan to sum our whole intentions up simply - Treehouse PR hearing the musician and seeing the potential in them, the musician hearing us and our benefits and the audience's hearing the musician and what they have to offer - ‘We hear you, You hear us, They hear them’

2. Company Description

As the music industry is constantly evolving and changing, with a revolution of new and innovate ways to market, produce, distribute and consume music and the services around it - we knew we had to work within the research we had behind our intended audience to succeed but also have the ability to do this through innovate ways that would attract audiences and clients to work with us. We wanted to be the voice behind the brand of the musicians and acts that we would work alongside and aid their overall brand and its potential reach rather than control and manipulate it to suit our own objectives, resulting with a great reputation and rapport between the founders of Treehouse PR and the acts and venues we work alongside with. We provide the artist or act with guaranteed increase on their overall exposure. This includes working alongside them to create content online and use our social media platforms and website to give audiences some information on them, whilst also working with them on photoshoots and at our events to increase to a different type of audience rather than just online.

1 | P a g e T h o m a s H a r r i s

3. Market Analysis

After our initial research to see how many other similar companies related to the same field that we would be working on, we found out that not many cater to the needs of solely open mic singers, rather they just focus more on different types of musicians whilst also offering similar services we would also provide given that we are a PR agency. Treehouse PR operates as a B2C business focusing on our intended audience – the general public being the audience that listen and attend our artist’s events and presenting our products and services directly to them and the acts we work with. As consumers are known to make decisions on their opinions of overall status of the business and the quality that we emit, it's vitally important that we focus on building such a strong brand awareness, throughout our promotional material, reputation and services.

Direct Competitors ● Prescription PR ● Repeater Media ● Open Mic UK Music Competition ● Outspoken Open Mic (Facebook Group organising open mic events)

Indirect Competitors (Appendices 2) ● Spotify and other streaming services (offers audiences music they could potentially

hear through us also and live music recordings) ● Pub Nights that host open mic nights weekly etc (Live Lounge @ The Roadhouse

Birmingham etc)

Whilst looking at the direct competitors (appendices 1), the industry trend seems to as accessible and approachable to all different types of genres and types of musicians, for example Prescription PR list up to 23 different types of music PR they cater for – this is why we feel so strongly that our USP of being a specialist agency revolving around the services relating to open mic acts would work so successfully in differentiating ourselves from our direct and indirect competitors. Our constant ongoing research into the Birmingham music scene and the audiences that surround it will guarantee that our launch event and our social media and website content will be a success.

We also plan to give direct links to our musicians and acts content and use our social media skills and incentives to gain a mass following, resulting in benefits for local musicians that would have potentially got lost in the millions of songs on streaming services such as Spotify, a platform to gain attention to our local audiences, resulting in more bookings and success for them.


4. Service or Product Line

Treehouse PR is a specialist PR agency that specialises with a niche audience of working alongside mainly open mic singers and performers and giving them a platform to distribute and promote themselves in a way that is comfortable and natural to their intended aesthetic and sound.

The website (Appendices 3) Currently our website has different sections giving information about each of our acts. Our current 3 main acts each have a page with our promotional material we have made for them displayed, including photography, press releases and a performance/video shoot we created with them. We also have an about page to give a more personal basis to the behind the scenes of Treehouse PR giving brief information into the founders that run it. We also list events and reviews of our previous events.

Visual Branding (Appendices 4)Initially starting the planning of the design for Treehouse PR, we had planned to go with a vibrant colour contrasted against a black or a white, as we felt that this would be eye catching to an audience and would be recognisable for our brand. However, in the design phase we decided to go with a more traditional black and white as we felt this was the most fitting colour scheme for our brand. As colour can drastically change the unconscious opinion of a business, we felt that by our simple tones of black and white would show that we don’t have a specific genre and wouldn’t give an audience an incorrect opinion on what we offer. We also decided that we would go for a wooden-rustic aesthetic throughout in terms of background images for our website and our performances - our website contains a backdrop of a simple wood frame, alongside our black and white look.

Future Services Currently we are planning on developing the website and our social medias into app form available across different smartphone platforms, making our events page a heavily vital feature to the app, allowing for users to be updated with notifications of upcoming events and local acts or events that might be of interest to them.

We also aim to create a newsletter in the form of a direct email to users and our intended market audience who decide to set up. These will contain updates on acts, events and what Treehouse PR is currently working on. We feel that this will keep the interest of our brand popular.


5. Strategy and Implementation Summary

Following our extensive research into our intended audience for our PR company we found out that although live music used to be heavily regarded as having an active fan base (rather than passively listening to live music subconsciously in the background for example) meant that the audiences of live music would go to the effort of paying and watching to see live acts and making the conscious effort to visit venues and use the services provided in terms of entertainment to mass audiences. The music industry has drastically changed in comparison and although the live music industry is still booming and having large amounts of audiences visit live events, the impact social media and available online content from live acts and musicians has catapulted the attention to businesses, musicians and fans collectively engaging and communicating through the internet and the available resources it has to offer.

We initially decided that we wanted our social media presence to be a big feature of our brand as when the company was set up it was all about giving a musician a platform as that was what was usually missing at open mic nights and we felt that through the addition of an active social media presence it would boost the potential for an audience through various modern forms of marketing and promotion. We decided to straight away after completing the first starting steps in creating the company to begin the design of the website and create different types of bulk content on our different platforms so that once we finally launched the website and became more popular, we could be confident that our content online would have enough information and be interesting until our next updates detailing more about the artists we were to sign and the events we would plan.

Also by completing research on the creation and designs of a website, we were able to find out the importance of keeping details of the statistics of our website and social media so that we would be able to justify the importance of our presence online to other potential business partners to show the positive audience reach would had the potential to interact with, meaning that clients could see how valuable we would be in asset to them. We decided to also plan to contact potential business contacts that we think would find our company and website interesting (eg, venues, Birmingham Promoters etc) in hope that his would allow us to gain different types of visitors and platforms to gain exposure from within the music industry, showing how marketable our niche and specialist PR agency could be in association with them and how they could be certain without the risk of failure or failing to reach an intended audience.


Another initial strategy we had for our online presence was to create different incentives and competitions to gain followers and likes and a wide audience reaction on our pages to gain traffic to our platforms and this would guarantee a large amount of exposure for us, however we decided against this as we wanted to go with a more organic approach to viral marketing in terms of using word of mouth at different open mic events we would attend for research and through flyer marketing when we would be promoting our event, by simply just asking people to check out our Facebook page when we would be inviting people to the event – this worked out well in our favour as we did notice an increase in likes and followers once we did promotion as it allowed people who were genuinely interested in the music scene to get involved, instead of annoying large amounts of people on social media by spamming them with content they would have no interest in resulting in a bad reputation for our company.

6. Organization & Management

Treehouse PR works as a flat organisation structure with three current strands, all overseen by the 3 co-founders of the agency. With future plans to expand and grow into a larger agency, below is a detailed summary of various job roles we aim to have within the business, as currently the roles are individual split and assigned to the 3 co-founders but with growth and extra finance achievable in the future, the extra staff and positions that will become available will allow for this growth.

As our agency is based in a city with large amount of students, we are open to allowing places for work experience and internships for up and coming media professionals. This is an extremely low cost and effective way of getting different types of work done within the business as most work experiences will be unpaid in return for the experience gained working within a successful company.

Project managerThis is the main role within the company. This person plans all the necessary work that needs to be done and makes sure that it is completed with the necessary time frame and budget. They delegate tasks accordingly and make sure every member within the team is pulling their weight and co-operating and communicating.


Contact liaisonThis role will be viable as it will allow for smooth communication between different acts, promoters, venues, potential sponsors, legal issues and business affairs that will arise throughout the business. This role requires an extremely strong communicator that will be able to be vocal, approachable and have a strong initiative to know when contact and communication is necessary.

Web specialistCurrently we have one web designer working on our website but the possibilities to split this job role up could potentially outsource this role into different sections of external staff - such as a developer, designer of the website and perhaps a app developer also if we decided to venture into a smartphone app for our business (with livestreams and notification updates on acts and events) Content specialistThis role allows a member of Treehouse to oversee the decisions of the creative input of the content that will produced. This includes managing a team of perhaps journalists, photographers, videographers and editors that would produce content for the website and other forms of media and material. This role also requires great communication skills and a passion for what Treehouse PR will be producing and the ability to be consistent with the professional tone and desired content that will be created.

Marketing and promotions This role is also another vital aspect to the success of an act within the company. By following the confirmation of the project manager, the marketing and promotions staff aim to curate a natural, fitting and appropriate presentation of the act and helps to give personality and individuality to the artist and to the overall business as a brand.

The marketing and promotions team carefully create a vision for the brand and how it will be perceived. They would liaise with the legal and business affairs team to make sure that any upcoming promotional techniques would be appropriate and that the business would be able to financially afford the marketing that would also ensue. They would help with the creation and consistency of flyers, posters, business cards, videos, adverts, websites and social media etc.


Creativity and a desire to innovate are essential skills for anyone in this role as of how important the visual aspect of the brand and the acts would be to the overall success and future growth. Communication is also a vital skill as the requirement to communicate effectively between different strands in the hierarchy will be the pin point of how successful a campaign will come together.

Legal and business affairsThis is the aspect of the business that looks over all the different types of legal aspects that come with running a business, including the financial aspects also.

In terms of the business and the artist, the legal team will be in charge of creating a contract that suits both sides and negotiate deals and sponsorship terms with other potential business clients. As the music industry is constantly changing in terms of legal issues as well as the other strands within the music industry, it is the job of the legal team to have a strong passion for the music industry as well as legal issues and new media – resulting in the business being confident that if any major changes happen within the industry the business and its clients, staff and overall brand will be safe and secure without the possibility of being sued or getting into finical trouble.

Press officer This is where a member of staff will be the main point of contact between the business and the media – making sure that what is meant to be represented is represented in the light and manner it was intended for, in regards to the opinions, reputations and overall positive coverage that is wanted. This could also include dealing with negative coverage if something bad happened within the business or as a result of an act making mistakes etc.

7. Operational plan

As we set up the business with minimal funds, we decided that it would be beneficial to create the business from our personal laptops and work from our bases at home and university as this would cut out initial costs at the beginning of the business that would be better used to aid our marketing and event planning.

As our business was created to service the Birmingham/Midlands area it was inevitable to keep our business city centre in Birmingham as this would give us the best chance to reach an audience as we were certain city centre is where the most of our intended audience would be able to visit our events and we would be able to easily work alongside a lot of musicians within the city centre.


We also aimed to work alongside with at least one student musician as we wanted to give a student a platform to get their music across as it is often difficult for a busy student to gain an audience whilst also studying and we felt that by looking for musicians in a city with over 3 universities’ it would allow us to complete this goal we had. In terms of long term goals, we set goals that the business would hopefully aim to buy an office space in the next 5-8 years from our starting point.

After speaking to different entrepreneurs who created their own businesses and bought office spaces to aid their upcoming successful business this felt like an achievable goal in the timeline of Treehouse PR and we felt that it was important to aim as big and successful as we could as this would inspire us to constantly work our hardest to create the best content for our acts, our audiences and our connections with business partners.

8. Marketing & Sales

As the business is launching on a modest budget without the aid of any large scale sponsorship from other companies, marketing is a crucial feature to expanding the awareness of our agency and brand. From previous research into our intended audiences, it is evident that the basis for communication to this audience is through digital platforms - such as social media and online websites containing content of interest for them.

Below the Line Marketing

We will conduct various different traditional below the line promotion techniques, including flyers and posters and the promotion of our event and social media around various areas of the university and Birmingham city centre. We will also aim to flyer at different open mic nights that we attend to aid our research and spread the word on a friendly basis one to one with potential audiences. Although this will come with the cost of printing for flyering, we feel it will be beneficial to make a personal connection with people and the aid of networking will allow our brand to spread through word of worth and potentially allow us to gain contacts of musicians, promoters and venue personnel that could be interested in working with Treehouse PR.

Above the Line Marketing

In terms of above the line promotional techniques, we strongly promoted the business through our website and social media platforms. Our website detailed everything a user would need to know about what the agency does and lists our current acts, events and contact information. We will use our Facebook to gather likes and attention to our upcoming events and also create separate Facebook pages for our acts so that we can use


the full potential of Facebooks social features to gain likes and followers through communication between the act and their personal friends, resulting in a direct link to our treehouse PR page.

We also use our Instagram account to market our business as Instagram is one of the most popular ways of promoting a brand and getting a name across through a very strong aesthetic and visual based medium. As we are confident in our ability to promote the consistent of the look of brand and the visual aesthetic that we are aiming to achieve, our posts on Instagram will be directed to our intended audiences, with the incorporation of hashtags allow our posts to be seen not only locally but worldwide, gaining recognition in ways that wouldn't have been possible before.

We also have planned to include the incorporation of perhaps a live stream of our event - there are various different platforms that could be used to do this but we would hope to create it through our website so that it gains the most attention as it has the most information about or company displayed. The use of a live stream during our event would allow us to be seen as a company that uses technical advancements of social media platforms to our advantage, allowing our event to be watched worldwide to people who are interested in live music. This also means that perhaps if our event falls on a date that people may not be available to come, they will still be able to watch the stream online at their own time and pleasure.

This also allows us to create a user account within our business, meaning that in order for users to watch the stream, they will have to sign up by giving us their email address, resulting in the loyalty of an audience being able to be updated via email of our upcoming events and plans. If the event and livestream become a success, we could then potentially look into sponsorship of the stream by collaborating with other companies to aid both our potential, and thus being able to monetise the stream by advertising the sponsor.

Gaining coverage in press formats, radio adverts and perhaps local television adverts in the future will allow us to expand our brand as much as possible. Due to the initial low start-up costs however this will likely won’t be feasible due to the expensive costs of advertising this way (e.g. the smallest advertisement in the Metro newspaper is roughly £130) but will be something that we will be aiming towards in our future plans. (Example of Press Release – Appendices 5)

9. Financial Projections

Initially we planned to gain funding through the services provided to students at


Birmingham City University, however our application was received late and we didn’t qualify for funding within the set time provided for applications. One of our main aims was to keep the start-up costs as ineffective and low as possible whilst still remaining a high consistent level of professionalism and class to our business. Luckily due to our networking and media relations within the industry we were able to gain valuable services for low costs and sometimes even free in return for experience for that individual.

Name Information Cost

Rose Villa Tavern - Venue Right in the centre of Birmingham’s popular area of the Jewellery Quarter, this was a perfect venue for us as after completing research around it’s main audience and the location, it hosted a lot of acoustic events before that were successful and also situated in a scene where the demand for live music is evident (with venues close by such as UPRAWR and The Asylum)

- FreeInitially our planned ideas for funding were to aid with the usual expense of hiring a venue for an event, however due to one of our team members of the team working at the rose villa and being a considerable asset to their team the manager agreed to give us a room in the venue for a night free of cost, as long as the bar made up to around £400. We were delighted when we heard that following our extremely successful and busy launch night we made around £700+ for the venue.

Conor O’Rourke - Musician With years of experience in the industry, Conor was extremely co-operative and helped to propel our brand to his vast amount of networking contacts

- Free

Emily Rose - MusicianCurrently our youngest act with Treehouse PR, bright and bubbly Emily Rose is currently studying in

- Free


Birmingham whilst trying her hardest to boost her upcoming music career and was grateful and constantly accessible to work and communicate with us and our plans for her brand.

Jake Warner - Musician Jake is another student who was also trying to get their music to the masses.

- Free

Flyering - We printed 200 flyers and promoted them around university and popular areas in Birmingham

- £100

Posters - Event posters promoted around university and popular areas in Birmingham

- £100

Facebook Boost - A marketing tool part of business pages on Facebook. For a cost we could advertise our social media onto people’s pages suggesting for them to like it and follow us. We could limit the audience to a specific age range that suited our intended audience and location, interests and choose

- £14


to keep it going for a certain duration.

Future planned costs for the businessAdvertisingWe aim to include advertising to the website as this will allow for collaborations with sponsorships to gain revenue through link clinks. This will allow us to advertise on other musical related website, and also include ads on our website so that in turn we can earn profit from it. By using ad spaces to forward our brand, this would cover some start-up costs without the aid of additional funding. As the website grows and traffic directly to the website and social media becomes more popular and consistent, we will be able to gain more justification for higher priced adverts.

Radio advertsWe would also like to advertise our brand and awareness through local radio adverts. Although they are out of our budget currently, the benefits and publicity it will allow us to gain are worth the price and will result in a lot of direct attention to our company. (Appendices 6)


10. Appendices:● Appendices Prescription PR ● Open Mic UK Music Competition ● Outspoken Open Mic (Facebook Group organising open mic events)

Appendices 1 – Direct Competitors

Prescription PR


● Open Mic UK Music Competition


Outspoken Open Mic (Facebook Group organising open mic events)


Appendices 2 – Indirect Competitors Spotify – With thousands of playlists with thousands of followers on one of the biggest music streaming services, it shows that the demand for singer-songwriter and open mic style music is there for an audience.


Pub Nights that host open mic nights weekly etc (Live Lounge @ The Roadhouse Birmingham etc)

Appendices 3 – The Website


Appendices 4 – Visual Branding


Appendices 5 – Example of proposed Press Release


Contact – Thomas, Leah or Claire FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Telephone – 07564941434 4 TH MARCH 2016

Email – [email protected]

Website - http://leahhowie.wix.com/treehousepr

BIRMINGHAMS NEWEST OPEN MIC LAUNCH NIGHT

FRIDAY 1ST APRIL

4TH MARCH 2016 – Treehouse PR is a specialist agency organising the promotion of upcoming open mic performers in the West Midlands. We aim to give some of the most talented singer songwriters, comedians, poets and all other types of open mic performers a platform to shine and to get their name out there.

“Everyone’s experienced going to an open mic night and missing the name of the shy but amazingly talented singer that played when you were standing at the bar ordering your drink! With the aid of Treehouse PR we wanted to change that and although are acts may have a small and modest fan

base in their upcoming journey into the music industry, we wanted the audience to know there would be a place to find out more about them – through Treehouse PR’s services”

– Thomas Harris (Co. Founder)

Hosted by the one of the best pubs in Birmingham, The Rose Villa Tavern, in the heart of the Jewellery Quarter, on Friday 1st April at 8pm up to 5 talented and unique open mic performers will be gracing the stage and showcasing their talents!

Treehouse PR – ‘We Hear You, You Hear Us, They Hear Them’

Appendices 6 – Radio Costs“There will also be the cost of the creative. A general rule is that developing the ad should cost no more than 10% of your budget – around £250 for small stations and £2,000 for some of the most



popular stations. These fees include script writing, actors to speak in the ad, music and sound effects. However, if you’d like a popular song it can cost up to £25,000 in licensing fees.

To give you an idea of costs don’t expect to spend less than £1,000 per week when advertising on a large regional radio station. As radio advertising works on repetition it’s always recommended to run a campaign for at least 4 weeks, and to repeat it a couple of weeks later. To complement your radio advertising you can also advertise on the radio station’s website.

The advantage of this is that many radio listeners frequently visit the website of the station that they listen to, enabling you to reach the same audience in two mediums. Advertising online is also considerably cheaper than radio advertising, with costs starting from £100 per 50,000 impressions.

- http://www.marketingminefield.co.uk/radio-advertising-costs/#sthash.JZGtqGPp.dpuf


http://www.marketingminefield.co.uk/radio-advertising-costs/#sthash.JZGtqGPp.dpuf

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