You might remember seeing Genuine Skagit Valley on the blog a few months ago. That campaign was all about paid ads, and this one is event project management for two key fundraising events for the organization that happened within three days of each other.
Woods MarCom doesn’t typically offer event project management or planning as a service. Still, when I had the opportunity to work with Blake—the amazing Director for Genuine Skagit Valley—I couldn’t pass it up.
We worked for almost a year to put these events together, and we were thrilled to see them come to life bigger and better than ever.
About Genuine Skagit Valley
Genuine Skagit Valley is an organization dedicated to promoting agriculture and agritourism in the Skagit Valley. Their mission is to help sustain farming for generations to come.
One way they do that is through fundraising events. Their two major annual events are the Skagit Tidewater Boil and the Skagit Farm to Pint FEST.
Tidewater Boil is a family-friendly seated dinner, a traditional seafood boil, featuring locally sourced ingredients like crab, shrimp, potatoes, and corn. This event sold out at about 120 people, and happened on a Thursday evening.
Farm to Pint FEST is a beer festival paired with locally-sourced cuisine, featuring local brewers using donated malt from Skagit Valley Malting. Each brewer was paired with a local chef who created an appetizer bite featuring a locally grown ingredient. This event had a standing-room capacity of around 600-650 people and was held on Saturday.
Both happened on the same weekend in September, so you can imagine why they needed help with event project management! I also assisted with digital marketing to improve ticket sales for both events.
Check out more pictures from both events!
Challenge: Organizing and Managing Two Back-to-Back Events
Blake initially approached me to help with project management of the two events. Planning and organizing two events on the same weekend is a lot for their small team to juggle on top of their other workload, and they wanted extra support.
Midway through our planning, our strategy evolved to include digital marketing based on the work we had done together for a separate campaign. The frameworks we already had in place guided our digital marketing strategy for the two events.
In the past, both events had been well received, but we knew there was opportunity to grow attendance. With these being somewhat new events, with only a few years of history to draw from, growing the audience was a key priority.
Event Project Management Approach
Blake and her team already had a framework in place for planning these events. They’re both hosted annually, so they knew what needed to be done, they just wanted help in executing.
We started planning in January for the September events—it felt like a lot of time back then but it went quickly! I restructured the framework to get as much done as we could as early as possible. I used Asana to assign certain team members tasks and deadlines to ensure everything would happen on time and on budget.
I had bi-weekly meetings with Blake to get progress updates and adjust timelines as needed.
As we got closer to the events, it got a little complicated with all the moving parts and navigating the hiccups that come with events. And this isn’t something you can really plan for—it just naturally happens closer to the event. So we planned for the time that would take to contact stakeholders and make sure everyone was on the same page.
Our Strategy to Increase Ticket Sales
In addition to planning the events, I also managed a paid ad campaign to help Genuine Skagit Valley increase ticket sales.
We decided to run Meta and Google Display ads for both events to let people know tickets are available for purchase. This was the fastest and most efficient way to generate ticket sales a month before the events.
Results From Event Project Management
Both events sold out for the first time, with record crowds packing the tent both days! Tidewater Boil sold out within a week of starting our marketing campaign, and Skagit Farm to Pint FEST also sold out and was much bigger than expected.
Some high-level results of our efforts are:
- A 300% revenue increase overall.
- A 60% ticket sale increase for Farm to Pint FEST.
- A 46% ticket sale increase for Tidewater Boil.
“Woods MarCom has been a game-changer for our digital marketing and strategy outreach. Not only has working with Rachael been a pleasure, but the impact and results from our campaigns have far exceeded expectations. Thank you, Rachael!” – Blake Van Roekel
Looking at 2026 with Genuine Skagit Valley
I’m still recovering (and icing my back!) from the epic September weekend, and can’t wait to start planning for 2026! Since we already developed a solid framework and templates for future events, we can rinse and repeat what we did this year while improving on certain areas. Hopefully, one day we can accommodate even more people at each event!
If you ever find yourself in Skagit Valley in the fall, I highly recommend attending these two events to get a true local feel of our community.
