Ideas

Marketing, when effective, reaches the right audience at the right place at the right time. It connects ideas and benefits with the people who want them. Arts marketing is no exception. In fact, it is one of the most challenging sectors since we, as art marketers, rarely have any control over the “product” for which we are raising awareness and creating demand.

Let me take a wild guess...Your organization’s open and clickthrough rates are 20-30% and 2-3%, respectively.

Good news: You’re average.
Bad news: You’re average.

So your goal is to get in better shape. Congratulations! You come up with a diet and a workout routine and plan to make significant life changes to get fit. Before you begin, you weigh yourself and take measurements to track your progress. Just like in fitness ads, you need a before and after picture. You can’t have a goal weight or waist size without knowing from where you’re starting.

This year we are presenting our sixth annual Digital Marketing Boot Camp for the Arts. To commemorate, we did what any sensible digital marketer would do...we created an infographic! Enjoy.

I want to tell you about The Perfect Website Redesign Project. It happened about a year ago with the Palo Alto Dance Theater Company (or PADT for short), an arts organization started by a group of software engineers in Silicon Valley with a mission to balance the lives of desk-bound coders with inspiring dance programs. My firm had been selected to overhaul the existing website and build a new experience that would:

• Better represent the breadth of the organization's offerings.
• Increase online donations.
• Increase ticket sales to performances.

As arts marketers, we’re always looking to optimize our digital campaigns and be more efficient with our budgets. We have to or we'll see a direct impact on ticket sales. 

This year, I’m speaking at Digital Marketing Boot Camp for the Arts on how to get direct feedback from your customers about their experience on your website – by running your own user tests.

In addition to good old-fashioned surveys and Google Analytics, there’s another way arts marketers can solicit feedback – walking up and talking to patrons!

You’ve heard it over and over again...video is powerful and sells tickets. It’s on your list to make an amazing season video this year, but how do you even begin?

Twitter is one of the world’s most important digital communications channels with 310 million monthly active users. Since its launch in July 2006, Twitter has been embraced by all levels of political campaigns across the globe, helping elect candidates like Barack Obama and oust dictators like Hosni Mubarak.

Similar to the arts, great sports content is born from gripping moments that aren’t scripted.  These moments can be a rare commodity but when they arise, we as marketers must be ready to capitalize.