Ideas

The fall season is a lot like the digital landscape: things change fast. Just as green leaves fade into yellow and the air turns crisp and cool, digital marketing trends, platforms, and evolutions evolve at the speed of (dwindling) light. With recent news like the crumbling of third-party cookies and Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) becoming the only Search ad format, you may not have heard about the quiet, iterative updates to Google Ad Grants over the past few seasons.

Hi, CI! is a series featuring the best team we know—the Capacity Interactive team! Today, meet Olivia Lowe: a CI Digital Marketing Analyst and dancer, problem-solving physicist, and strategic thinker who empowers arts marketers to be creative.

Back in March, I began my workday like any other day: coffee in hand and brimming with confidence in the direction of web analytics platforms. But then I received the same breaking news that blindsided analytics experts: Universal Analytics (UA) would be sunsetting in 15 months—faster than previously forecast—and Google Analytics 4 (GA4) would become the website analytics solution starting June 30, 2023. 

This means big changes for your organization. How do I know? Google Analytics is the go-to web analytics platform for arts organizations (in my 8+ years at Capacity Interactive, I’ve seen just one organization use a different platform). So chances are, you use it—and to keep using it, you have to migrate to the newest version, which is GA4. 

Ask the Industry is a direct line of advice and inspiration from organizations learning and sharing valuable lessons. We hope these insights spark new ideas at your organization.

In 2022, it’s essential that arts organizations consider staff wellness as an integral piece of organizational culture and help employees prevent or manage burnout. Among the leaders in this is Celebrity Series of Boston. We asked Courtney Burke, Director of Marketing and Communications, “How do you prevent or manage burnout in the arts?” Courtney answers everything from industry-specific challenges and budgetary support to hybrid work and self-care.

More than 82% of the U.S. population uses social media and arts marketers are no strangers to the demands of churning out fresh content to keep those users engaged. But are you prioritizing the right content for the right platforms?

When you hear the word “blog,” it may evoke the late 90s or early 2000s. In those heady days of the internet, it seemed like everyone, and their dog had a blog they used to change the world.

But what if we told you that blogs are not only still relevant but are also often underutilized? What if we told you a blog could be more than just the centerpiece of the 2009 Meryl Streep and Amy Adams foodie feature, Julie & Julia? What if we told you that blogs could supercharge your SEO efforts and powerfully drive organic traffic?

Creating blog posts focused on what people are searching for will drive users directly to the blog article in question, straight from the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). These types of blogs will introduce new users to your organization. So, how do you get started? We're here to help you!

Picture it: an enthusiastic ticket buyer opens a new browser window and types in your organization’s name. They’re ready to book a ticket to enjoy a special night out. But wait! What’s that at the top of the search engine results page? A ticket reseller! Before you know it, your eager attendee has bought their ticket from someone else.

The Google Grant is a powerful tool that supports nonprofit organizations with free media dollars for search engine marketing efforts, but it can’t always compete with paid search in the rankings. If you’re seeing declines in your Grant performance, it’s time to incorporate branded paid search to help your search ads break through the competitive landscape.

Accessibility: for those of us who aren’t experts, it can be an intimidating mountain to climb. The marketing team at CI aimed to make our social content more approachable to people with varying access needs like blindness, deafness, and cognitive disabilities.
Still, we struggled with imposter syndrome, self-doubt, and, perhaps most importantly, perfectionism. We knew that taking the time to craft a social media accessibility strategy was crucial, so we decided to take action this year.

We’re sharing our journey with you, imperfections and all, to highlight the questions we asked ourselves, the roadblocks we encountered along the way, and the learnings we’ve discovered. Of course, your organization’s experience with navigating accessibility will be different, and the best practices you find for your organization will differ from ours, but we hope you feel inspired to consider these six important questions.

At CI, we’ve long advocated utilizing YouTube advertising if you have the content to support it. Historically, we saw it as an excellent supplement to other channels, driving strong video views and brand awareness, but not many direct conversions.

But lately, we are seeing a shift, with YouTube also driving some stellar ROIs—sometimes even stronger than what we see reported on display and even Facebook—in addition to remaining a reliable tool for awareness.

Whether you’ve been advertising on YouTube for years or have never taken the plunge, now’s a moment to consider if an increased investment in YouTube could help you achieve your marketing goals.

At CI, we often talk about the importance of creating timely, relevant, and authentic content. It’s created at the intersection of what’s going on at your organization and what is going on in your audience's lives. This is a huge reason we create the Social Content Calendar for Arts Marketers as a resource.