Ideas

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.

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. 

I hear these requests far too often from arts marketers. I don’t blame them for wanting something fast and inexpensive, but these timelines and budgets are incredibly unrealistic and create a domino effect that causes more work, lots of headaches, and ultimately leads to poor websites that keep our industry in the dark ages.

Seattle Opera launched a new website in July – not just a new design, but also a new CMS and a new e-commerce engine. It was almost a two year ride to get here. 

I was the project manager from the start to finish and reflected on a few items that made this project successful, plus some advice I wish I had at the start.  

We compiled survey data to create benchmarks to help you compare your digital marketing efforts with other performing arts organizations.  Our report looks at social media, digital advertising, analytics, email, mobile and website maintenance.  

Facebook advertising more effective than banners.

To further our goal of providing current, industry-specific benchmarks to the performing arts industry, we took a comprehensive look at digital advertising performance, specifically retargeting banner and Facebook campaigns.

Arts marketers often ask me questions like, “What percentage of advertising budgets are most arts organizations spending on digital ads?” and “What percentage of tickets are most organizations selling online?” 

I've worked with a lot of arts orgs and I've seen some similar characteristics among the ones that are succeeding with their digital marketing. Here are seven characteristics of the orgs that are flourishing:

If you sell tickets or accept donations on your website, you are, at least in part, an ecommerce company.

Do you know why users are coming to your organization’s website? I mean specifically. Can you tell me what percentage are coming to purchase tickets, what percentage are coming to research your upcoming show, what percentage are coming to find directions to your location? Do you know if the users were able to complete the task that they came to your site to do? Were they satisfied with their visit?