The post Marketing is Experimentation first appeared on Grab Bag Media.
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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.The post Marketing is Experimentation first appeared on Grab Bag Media.
]]>The post Don’t Compromise Your Programming first appeared on Grab Bag Media.
]]>It usually starts at the beginning of the year, sometimes late in the previous year. Stakeholders in the company gather to petition for this show or that show. There is a lot of conversation about what fits the company mission, what is artistically challenging, what audiences want. But one of the biggest considerations is always: what will bring in the most cash.
And, inevitably, this will lead to some form of compromise where the company programs a number of splashy shows that draw the biggest audiences so that they can take a loss on their more “artistic” programming, those shows not as many people come to see. It’s an artistic compromise.
I get it. I’ve been involved in enough season planning to understand it. But it’s ultimately not a winning strategy in the long-term.
Consider this from an audience development perspective. If your season starts with Pirates of Penzance, then features The Pillowman or a deconstructed version of Troilus and Cressida, and then finishes strong with Nine To Five, who exactly is your audience? The people who see the first show are probably not the ideal audience for your middle show, and possibly not quite in line with the final show either. Three shows, three different audiences. Your ability to get people hooked show after show and become long-term patrons, subscribers, and donors is completely derailed by this strategy.
Your organization needs a clear and consistent artistic product in order to build its audience, and with it, a stable revenue stream. Your season programming cannot be all things to all audiences. Your audience demographic cannot be “all people, 18-85.” (Yes, I have had people tell me this was their target audience before.) Hard as it may seem, part of making art is making tough choices. Choose the genres, the topics, the themes that you most want to present and either stick with.
Or, if your company really, really wants to produce different kinds of products, then you have to split your programming up. Make your mainstage programming all classic American musicals, but then have a separate “sub-season” devoted to edgier, complicated, avante-garde works. Call it your After Dark Shows or your Cutting Edge Program. Split your programming so that you can more effectively market each program to the audience that most wants it. You’ll probably need to be a pretty big organization to pull this off, but it can work.
Otherwise, you have to pick the thing you’re most good it, the stories you most want to tell, and focus on just that. Embrace a strong identity and a fervent audience will come.
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]]>What if I put the meal right in front of you, so you can see it and smell it and hear the fresh-from the grill sizzle? I take you into the kitchen and show you how it was prepared and let you meet the chef. I walk you through the garden where the food was grown. Then I bring you back to the meal and tell you the price. Are you going to buy it now?
The first tactic is traditional, old, stodgy marketing. It’s a commercial of a car on a highway with an attractive lease offer. The second tactic is content marketing.
There are a few ways to do content marketing. One is to give your buyer something they already want or need. You offer them a free e-book with insights into problems they may be having or you offer them free webinars to an expert talk about their problem. Once they’ve decided that they trust you, they’ll hire you to provide a certain service or product.
I’m on a lot of those emails lists. Too many. That’s how people often sell services.
I’m interested in selling products, specifically arts products. Books, movies, live performances, etc. And to do that, I follow the same gameplan: I offer as much related content as I can. Selling a book? Give away excerpts online. Even better: serialize most of it online, enticing people to come back regularly to read more. Hyping a movie? Send your director and stars around to do interviews and tell stories about how the movie was made. Producing a play or dance piece? Post videos of your rehearsal process. Get your performers to tell us how they are approaching the art and why it’s important to them. Publish research and early design sketches.
This may seem like you’re giving the meal away for free, but you’re not. The best part is the actual product: the performance, the book, the live concert. You are simply walking people through the garden and the kitchen. You are building the hype. You are showing people all the pieces of your puzzle, but not the whole. And we, because we are human beings, are hardwired to want to complete that puzzle, to close the circle. We want closure.
Let people smell the steak and hear the sizzle. They’ll be begging to taste the full meal, no discount required.
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