Oregon Bach Festival | Case Study
Double-Digit Growth Across Every Channel: A Content-First Marketing Transformation
The Organization
Oregon Bach Festival is one of the premier classical music festivals in the Pacific Northwest, presenting a two-week program of performances each summer. Affiliated with the University of Oregon’s School of Music and Dance, the festival attracts audiences and artists from across the country. Despite strong programming and institutional support, the organization’s marketing had not kept pace with the digital landscape—and they knew it.
The Challenge
The festival needed to reach beyond its existing subscriber base. Traditional marketing—print ads, press releases, email to the house list—was activating the audience they already had. It was not building the audience they did not have. Social media was underutilized, content was sporadic, and there was no strategic framework connecting digital activity to ticket sales.
The Strategy
Gold Sound Media developed a content-forward marketing approach that turned artists into the festival’s most compelling sales tool. The centerpiece was a series of long-form artist profile pieces published to the festival’s website in the weeks leading up to opening night. These profiles were then distributed across platforms—cut into short-form content for social media, featured in email campaigns, and shared by the artists themselves.
The strategy worked because it gave audiences a reason to care before the first note was played. Each profile created a connection between the audience and a specific concert, driving traffic to the website and converting attention into ticket purchases.
The Impact
Organic audience growth, measured year-over-year from January through July:
Instagram followers increased by 105%. Twitter impressions increased by 72%. Facebook impressions increased by 14%. Website traffic increased by 12%.
Overall concert and event attendance for the 2019 festival was estimated at 21,500 people.
Every channel grew. The content-first approach created a compounding effect: artist profiles drove social sharing, social sharing drove website traffic, and website traffic drove ticket sales.
The Takeaway
When content leads and marketing follows, every channel reinforces the last. Oregon Bach Festival’s growth was not the result of any single tactic—it was the result of a strategic system where every piece of content served both visibility and revenue.
What the Client Thinks
“Working with Jonathan Eifert at Gold Sound Media for the last three years has been invaluable to Oregon Bach Festival and University of Oregon’s School of Music and Dance. His advice and expertise have been instrumental, but his strategy and execution at the regional and national level have been even more impressive. He is a steady voice, a facilitator of fresh ideas, and an excellent collaborator. It’s obvious that he truly cares about our success.”
— Josh Gren, Director of Strategic Communications and Marketing, UO School of Music and Dance & Oregon Bach Festival