Blacktown Key Venues secures Australasian Leisure Management Local Government Communication and Marketing Award

The wide ranging ways in which the Marketing and Promotions Team at Blacktown Key Venues communicates with customers and stakeholders about its range of facilities, services and programs has been recognised with the presentation of the Local Government Award in Australasian Leisure Management’s Industry Communication and Marketing Awards.

Formed in March 2015, Blacktown Venue Management Ltd manages Blacktown City Council’s sporting facilities and its five aquatic and recreation centres under the banner of Blacktown Key Venues.

The venues themselves range from Council’s flagship sports facility Blacktown International Sportspark Sydney to the other sporting facilities including Joe McAleer Oval, Blacktown Football Park and Anne Aquilina Reserve which are used for first grade cricket and NSW premier league football.

Blacktown Key Venues also manages the award winning leisure and aquatic centres in Blacktown Aquatic Centre, Blacktown Leisure Centre Stanhope and Emerton Leisure Centre.

Rounding up the aquatics facilities are the City’s two seasonal swimming pools, the Mount Druitt and Riverstone Swimming Centres.

In order to communicate effectively with customers and stakeholders about the range of facilities, services and programs that Blacktown Key Venues offer, the Marketing and Promotions Team utilise a variety of engagement channels.

The variety of channels also ensures that Blacktown Key Venues cater to the needs of the varying demographics that visit its facilities each year.

Media
The media plays an integral role in promoting Key Venues facilities, achievements, milestones, activities, events and programs. 

Developing strong relationships with the media has led to a range of positive news stories and strong editorial content which successfully promotes Blacktown Key Venues to the public and the industry.

Advertising
The diversity of key venues facilities and programs sees the use of targeted advertising to assist in reaching the right audience for a facility, program, activity or event.

Blacktown Key Venues has developed a number of successful advertising campaigns to promote its activities.

Other forms of advertising used by the Marketing and Promotions Team include cinema advertising and letterbox drops. 

Community Engagement
Blacktown Key Venues facilities and programs serve the sport and recreation needs of not only the City but the region. Its links to the community can be displayed through involvement by our venues with select educational, community and charitable programs and events.

A great example of this is through the involvement that Aqua Learn to Swim, Council’s own learn-to-swim program, has with the community. Since launching the new learn to swim program in October 2015 the program has not only grown as a swim school brand but has also become a means of educating people about the importance of learning to swim and water safety.

Aqua Learn to Swim and it’s mascot, Pip the Penguin, regularly attend community events including Australia Day, Blacktown City Festival, Dive-In Movies at the aquatic and recreation centres, as well as visiting the pre-schools run by Blacktown City Council’s Kids Early Learning section. 

Digital
Blacktown Key Venues’ excellence in marketing and communications relating to digital extends beyond the internet. This action items looks to build on existing digital platforms and develop new channels of communication through search engines, industry and business sites. 

The Marketing and Promotions Team continually ensure that its website content is timely and relevant while also working with Google to ensure that venue information is up to date as well as being optimised when people search Blacktown Key Venues facilities.

Further to the above we also focus on utilising digital channels by distributing an eDM newsletter each term to the Aqua Learn to Swim database of around 5,000 families. 

The newsletter is a way of keeping parents up to date with important information and key dates.

Social Media
Blacktown Key Venues sees social media as a key driving force to market and communicate key messages to the community.

Its approach to social media is to ensure the publication of active, engaging and accurate content and to deliver, acknowledge and respond to content in a timely manner with open lines of communication with its customers.

Each month the Marketing and Promotions Team devise a social media calendar to ensure that key information is communicated to customers managing seven Facebook pages creating content that is venue specific, but also recognising content that can be cross-promoted across pages.

Commenting on Blacktown Key Venues' Award, Australasian Leisure Management Publisher Nigel Benton stated “Blacktown Key Venues has set a new benchmark for how local government communicates on its aquatic, fitness, recreation and sport centres and programs.”

Images (from top): Blacktown International Sportspark Sydney, the Mount Druitt Swimming Centre and Pip the Penguin promoting swimming lessons.