Ideas

The 2017 Arts Industry Digital Marketing Benchmark Study is available for download and this sixth edition holds a ton of new data to help you market smarter. We rethought our approach to make sure we’re giving you the metrics and key performance indicators that can fuel conversation about growth and help you make informed decisions. It’s double the length of previous versions, since the data’s cut in a couple new ways. Here’s a guide to help you get the most out of it.

Let’s hop into our digital marketing time machines. The year is 2012, and the 92nd Street Y, in partnership with the United Nations Foundation, established #GivingTuesday. The power of social media was used to launch a movement of philanthropy in communities worldwide.

The road to social content bliss is often met with some challenges along the way. Whether you’re creating content from scratch or only have a small pool of artist-approved assets, you don’t have to put the brakes on creativity. That’s right. There are solutions ahead.

Arts marketers from two different organizations and genres discuss their social content challenges and how they found solutions to keep their content fresh and engaging. 

Let’s say you have twelve delicious donuts in a box. You bring them into a classroom of first-grade kids, frothing with glee after recess. You put the donuts on a table. Cake donuts. Glazed donuts. Different flavors. They smell good. They’re even still a bit warm.

You say, “Who wants a donut?”

What happens? All thirty kids come rushing to the table and start grabbing donuts in a fierce dustup of flying sugar, elbow jabs and colorful uses of the word booger. 

Hi, CI! is our monthly series featuring the best team we know - the Capacity Interactive team! You will learn more about the people who help arts organizations market smarter. This month, we’re featuring one of our Digital Marketing Analysts who’s a passionate and versatile dancer,  discovered digital marketing through a Peace and Conflict Studies major, and helps arts organizations create social content that connects with fans on a personal level.

Ask the Industry features advice from arts marketers in their own words. We hope you can learn from them and it will spark new ideas for your organization.

This month, we’re asking, “How do you manage multiple social content creators and contributors?”

Natasha Porizkova and Bill Spellman (AT&T Performing Arts Center), Laura Bowman and Jonathan Stiles (Pennsylvania Ballet), and Nessa Ferrell (Wolf Trap) discuss how they successfully work with multiple departments and stakeholders to create compelling social content, and their unique roads to get to this crucial point at their organizations.

Campaigns with ticket-selling objectives receive a good amount of fanfare in the digital realm. But what if your goals aren’t directly tied to online ticket sales? Whether you’re looking to fill workshops or promote thematic offerings, digital campaigns are crucial members of your marketing ensemble.

Hi, CI! is our monthly series featuring the best team we know - the Capacity Interactive team! You will learn more about the people who help arts organizations market smarter. This month, we're featuring our Director of Business Development who is passionate about visual arts, a dedicated yogi, a self-proclaimed coffee snob, and a strategic fundraiser. 

In the past two years, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) has worked closely with their CI team to use digital to holistically change patron behavior around purchasing membership to their organization. Not only have memberships grown across the board, now online purchases are a key mode of membership sales.

They’ve done this through long-term campaigns that cultivate a healthy membership pipeline. Rather than short, one-off campaigns centered around immediate membership wins, MFAH’s approach has led to sustained growth and strong ROIs. Read on to learn how!

I founded my video production company when I realized that all of my college dance footage was fuzzy, far away and completely unusable. There was clearly a need for better quality performance video, and I wanted to be the one to lead the charge.

Now, my company, Nel Shelby Productions, creates marketing videos and fundraising videos and on-camera interviews and films and documentaries. Still, the biggest part of what I do is document performance.