Gold Coast Airport Marathon: Marketing Plan & Strategy
This paper presents a marketing plan for the Gold Coast Airport Marathon, Australia's largest marathon event. It analyzes the target market — competitive and recreational runners across Australia, New Zealand, and the Asia-Pacific region — and outlines a marketing strategy built around the event's product, place, price, and promotion. Key recommendations include expanding promotional outreach into Greater China and Southeast Asia, adding Chinese-language materials and a Baidu search presence, and leveraging in-kind sponsorships to manage a constrained budget. The paper concludes with a seven-step action plan and a monitoring framework based on return on investment by geographic region.
- Market Overview and Target Audience: Psychographic profile of Asia-Pacific marathon runners
- Market Size and Participation Data: Regional participation figures and market potential
- Marketing Strategy: Product, Place, Price, and Promotion: 4Ps framework applied to marathon event marketing
- Action Plan: Seven-step plan for executing marketing strategy
- Marketing Budget: Cost estimates, in-kind sponsorship, and media rates
- Monitoring and Evaluation: ROI-based framework for measuring geographic campaign success
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What makes this paper effective
- Applies a clear marketing mix framework (product, place, price, promotion) to a real-world sporting event, grounding abstract concepts in concrete details.
- Supports strategic recommendations with specific participation statistics from comparable regional events, lending credibility to market-sizing arguments.
- Provides actionable cost estimates for radio and television advertising, demonstrating awareness of budget constraints and the limits of mass media for niche sporting audiences.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates evidence-based strategic recommendation: each proposed action — such as adding Chinese-language promotion or targeting Baidu — is justified by reference to market data, competitor behavior, or audience analysis. This links situational analysis directly to tactical decisions, a core skill in applied marketing writing.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a market overview and psychographic profile of the target audience, then transitions into participation data to size the opportunity. The marketing strategy section applies the 4Ps framework before moving into a sequenced seven-step action plan. A dedicated budget section weighs paid versus in-kind options, and the paper closes with a return-on-investment monitoring framework tied to geographic regions.
Market Overview and Target Audience
The market for the Gold Coast Airport Marathon consists of marathon runners from both the Australia/New Zealand region and the broader Asia-Pacific region. These runners may be competitive or non-competitive.
The target market has no particular ethnic demographic, but does have a fairly consistent psychographic profile. Those who would travel to the Gold Coast to compete in a marathon or half-marathon are generally of upper-middle-class or wealthy backgrounds. They may be expatriates living in Asia who are seeking a good reason to return to Australia. They are also likely to be competitive individuals with high levels of education and professional achievement.
Market Size and Participation Data
The market is broadly comprised of all marathon and half-marathon runners in Australia, New Zealand, and the Asia-Pacific region. The pool of active participants is estimated to be several hundred thousand, based on participation rates at comparable area marathons. The 2009 Hong Kong Marathon attracted 55,000 participants across all race distances. The Gold Coast Airport Marathon is the largest marathon in Australia, with 23,398 participants in 2009 (Gold Coast Airport Marathon website, 2010).
The largest marathons in the region — excluding shorter-distance events — are the Tokyo Marathon, with 27,386 starters, and the Singapore Marathon, which recorded 13,028 finishers in 2008 (AIMS, 2010). Based on these figures, the Asia-Pacific region and Australia demonstrate strong participation numbers, and the Gold Coast Airport Marathon has meaningful room to grow. There is no single authoritative figure for the total size of the target market for marathons or shorter-distance runs in Australia or the Asia-Pacific region; numbers can only be inferred from existing participation rates, as the sport is not centrally organized.
References
Gold Coast Airport Marathon website, various pages. (2010). Retrieved April 10, 2010 from http://www.goldcoastmarathon.com.au
AIMS website, various pages. (2010). Association of International Marathons and Distance Races. Retrieved April 10, 2010 from
Nielsen radio survey. (2010). Nielsen.au.com. Retrieved April 10, 2010 from
OzTAM. (2010). Consolidated metropolitan total TV share all viewing. OzTAM. Retrieved April 10, 2010 from
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