grab bag blog

Marketing the arts can be a confounding experience. Some events seem to sell themselves, some you can’t give away tickets for it. When a show sells well, it can seem like the show sold itself. Other times you put in long hours of sweat and toil, but audiences jsut aren’t interested. This is why marketers are always experimenting.

Granted, experimenting with your marketing plan can be hard. In science, when you want to test something out, you control for all of the other variables so you can see the change that happens when you manipulate just one single thing. You generally can’t do that with arts marketing because there are so many variables you can’t control, like competing events, weather, or the fact that you are always producing different shows with different casts and messages. What works once might not work again, or a reliable marketing tactic might not work this particular time. But this is no excuse to not try.

Tinker Around the Edges

Always start with a familiar plan. If you’ve been doing this for even a little while, you have a sense of what has worked and what hasn’t. (If not, then you need to survey your audiences!) Do you always buy radio ads and billboards to specifically target your audience demographic? Then stick with that. But set aside 10-15% of your budget to try something new and different. Try a new kind of social media content marketing aimed at a new demographic. Buy ads in a different publication. Offer a unique discount in partnership with a company near your location. Do everything you can to track the engagement with this new venture. If it works, stick with it. If not, try something else next time.

The same goes with your messaging. Does your email newsletter have a standard format? Find a part of that format and change things up. Or do something completely different for just one email. Do you get a better engagement rate? If so, stick with it. If not, go back to what works.

Don’t bet the farm on something new, but always be evolving in small ways. When you find something that seems to be working, slowly increase your investment in it and reap the rewards.

Always Be Learning

None of us work in a vaccuum. There is marketing happening every day all around you. Spend time observing what other messaging is happening in your area, as well as what other organizations are doing around the country, even around the world. Subscribe to marketing magazines. Follow organizations like yours on social media. Learn to spot when you see something effective and write it down. Use it as inspiration for something you could do differently in the future.

Right now, there is somebody struggling with your exact same problems somewhere else, maybe on the other side of the city or on the other side of the country. Develop relationships with other marketers and ask for help when you need it. Here in Chicago, the theatre community is super tight, so marketers reach out to each other constantly to ask what kind of challenges other organizations are facing, if they are doing anything innovative, or if they could help you in any way. You don’t to rip off somebody else’s idea, but knowing how other organizations are engaging with their patrons can help inspire you to look at new ways to communicate with your own. The Chicago theatre community recognizes that a rising tide lifts all boats, and getting more people to see theatre in general is a win for all theatres.

Accept That You Will Fail

There will be shows that don’t sell, not matter how well you do your job and how innovative you are. Maybe you just don’t have the budget to achieve your goals. Maybe it’s a bad time of year. Maybe there’s just too much competition right now. It happens, and it will happen to you from time to time. The important lesson here is not to get discouraged. You’ve got to play the long game by marketing your organization, not just a single show. You’re building an audience base and a marketing machine over time. The highs and lows will even out over time. As long as your average is improving over the long term, you’re succeeding. Every day is a new opportunity to find something that you do better or just differently, and see what happens.