Ideas

As the weather gets colder and windows get frosty, arts organizations are gearing up for their annual holiday shows. But in the flurry of the season, it’s hard to keep up with the competition. 

Your organization is competing with streaming services, ticket brokers, and dozens of other holiday events in your city. Plus, people are inundated with shopping ads that clutter the digital landscape. Revenue from holiday shows or end-of-year fundraising campaigns are crucial for many organizations, which means it’s time to level up your digital advertising game.

So, how do you cut through the noise, so you don't get iced out this winter? Read on to find out!

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.

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?

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.

Warm weather is just around the corner, which means it’s time for spring cleaning! Now’s the moment to tidy up your CRM, spruce up your emails, and say goodbye to the marketing efforts that haven’t been “sparking joy.” With limited resources at your disposal, though, which projects should you tackle first?

Earlier this month, we released the 2021 Performing Arts Ticket Buyer Usage Study, based on survey responses from over 17,000 ticket buyers at 48 performing arts organizations. Be sure to read the full report when you’ve got the time—and check out the Key Findings Summary for a quick overview—but here, we’ve distilled the findings down to identify the top four investments worth prioritizing, based on ticket buyer behavior today. With this to-do list in hand, you’re on your way to a squeaky-clean digital foundation!

The past two years have brought turmoil to us as individuals, digital marketers, and arts supporters. Our industry has faced an incredible amount of uncertainty and financial strain, while the happenings of the world around us have taken an emotional toll on our hearts. And yet, we’ve stuck to it. We’ve persevered. Why? Because we know the power of our industry. We know that the arts have the ability to change the way people see the world and their place in it, and that is undeniably worth it.

The arts help us heal from our history, even beyond the past two years. The arts help us remember the importance of connection and regain inspiration amidst the turmoil. The arts make this world a better place. So, we push—the world needs us to.

As we rebuild and reimagine the possibilities of our extraordinary sector, abundance is ripe to think big and beyond what we’ve been able to before, to disrupt the status quo, and to see new potential in our digital strategies.

As soon as Instagram launched Reels in August 2020, two things came to mind: 1) my “healthy” level of screen time was out the window, and 2) this is a game-changer for arts organizations on social media. For the sake of your time (and interest), I won’t detail the first point—but the second is worth a bit more conversation. 

So, should your organization take the plunge into Reels? First, let’s talk about best practices, tips, and advice to help you decide if Reels are right for your organization’s social content strategy. 

March 2020 feels like decades ago, but it was just one year ago the U.S. went into lockdown. We released a blog post to help arts marketers navigate these uncharted waters, but it was uncertain where this pandemic would lead us.

Throughout the course of a year, we saw the sheer resilience of arts administrators in the face of crisis. We pivoted to digital programming to bring art into our audiences' homes. We officially want to discard the word ‘pivot’ from our vocabulary. We explored new ways to keep our audiences engaged. But most of all, we were consistently reminded just how passionate and inventive the arts and cultural community can be.

What is the impact of the pandemic on arts marketing? Capacity Interactive conducted a survey of 53 diverse arts and cultural organizations, collecting data from FY2019 and calendar year 2020, with WolfBrown as research consultants advising on the methodology, survey design, data visualization, and analysis.

We’ve outlined key takeaways to help you understand the data, and posed key questions to help you build stronger foundations for your organization. If you like this blog post, be sure to check out this livestream recording with more insights and in-depth strategic recommendations for the months ahead.

Before you start reading, though, treat yourself to a deep breath: we are a year into this pandemic and it has had a profound impact on all of our lives. All of the data we are about to explore is inextricably tied to the loss and trauma we’ve endured to varying degrees. Give yourself some grace, snuggle a nearby furry friend if you have one, and get ready to dive into the data.