Markets are down, raise your marketing up!

Difficult economic times call for different ways of thinking about marketing. From arts organizations looking to fill a seat, to restaurant managers trying to sell a dinner, the issue is the same: how to keep patrons coming in and participating with your organization.

In many cases, an organization’s first response to needing to save money in a down economy is to cut costs, and often times the first budget to go is marketing. But when you stop to think about it, marketing is one of the only direct expense-to-income streams you have. Marketing is a revenue generator, not simply an expense, so your organization should be budgeting to market MORE in a down economy, and to market smartly as much as possible. Let’s talk about some easy ways to do this with a goal of not raising expenses or reducing revenues.

Let them know you care

First things first. Your patrons want to know that you understand what’s going on with the economy, and that you realize that it may be harder for them to participate with you. Let them know that you feel their pain, and “sell into the market” by changing your message to reflect your understanding. As an example, theater companies should let their patrons know about existing “pay as you go nights,” opportunities to usher before a show, or even ways to volunteer with the organization in return for access to performances. You may just get a long-term set of helping hands to move you forward. A restaurant can easily mention their regular happy hour specials, with a slant to “fill up on our great appetizers.” It gets them in the door, without a need to discount your product.

Sell them on the benefits

What are the benefits of going to a musical performance or having a nice dinner out? How do those things change when society is stressed by the economy? Focus on relaxation, peace of mind, fun with friends, and “escape” to your patrons — all things that “get them away from it all,” even for a short time. Starbucks became successful because people found that they could enjoy a small indulgence for just a couple of dollars. People are looking for excuses to “treat themselves,” especially when they have already decided to curtail their big vacations and new tv purchases, and savvy marketers should jump to fill in the gap.

Offer helpful information that allows people to participate more easily

Are there factors around participation with your organization that you can help streamline for your patrons? Is your venue near public transportation? Let your customers know they can save money on parking by taking the train to your stop. Are there other things to do nearby that could save time for them? Remember the coffeeshop/laundry combination, where people drop off their clothes and then go next door for a cup a joe? Examine the process that someone needs to go through to participate with you, from calling to make a reservation or buying a ticket, to getting back home again, and look for ways to turn lemons into marketing lemonade.

Make partnerships and market together

Who nearby has a business or service that is complimentary to your own? Arts groups and restaurants make wonderful partners. As an example, let’s say an arts group and a restaurant both have an email list of 1000 people, respectively. Both can, of course, create a special offer that gives their customers 25% off their product. Unfortunately, this creates discounted revenue from people that are knowledgeable about your organization and are already ok with paying the full regular price. While promotions based on price can be effective in getting new customers, you should avoid using price to try to influence existing customers.

If the arts group partners with the restaurant however, its easy to send a 25% food discount offer to the arts patrons, without discounting their arts event ticket price. The restaurant gets exposed to 1000 new people vs. their same old list. In reverse, the restaurant would send a discount arts ticket offer to its restaurant patrons, as a benefit to an experience to be had after dinner. Both groups double their exposure, and provide a benefit without cannibalizing their existing customers with a discount offer of their own. Powerful and effective collaborative marketing at its best.

Add value instead of discounting

It can be difficult to resist the powerful urge to use price as a way to market to your existing customers. But tough times do call for a little more “bang for your buck” to get people in the door. Instead of offering a discount, what can you add of value to the experience? Can you create a value that does not cost you money where one did not exist before? It could be as simple as getting your email list to respond to an offer for priority seating in your general admission theater — let folks who respond to the offer into the theater first as a benefit to being on your email list, and then open it up to everybody else. Doesn’t cost your organization anything, but creates a value idea of “getting the best seats.” Talkback sessions with your show’s director or cast members are another free and easy value, that also helps people to understand the work to a greater degree. Or tell your restaurant patrons that on Thursday nights, the executive chef will come to each table and explain the history and the influences of the dishes he or she has created. Again, that knowledge exists, the chef exists, and you can create an interesting, valuable benefit for free, where one didn’t exist before.

When times are tough, organizations that market smartly can create revenue in new and interesting ways, that get the attention of the public. While people may quickly get used to discounts, you stand a great chance at getting and keeping their attention by creating promotions that bring value to their lives in other ways. Get your marketing team together and brainstorm on some of these no-cost ways to drive participation, and odds are you’ll enjoy no-risk rewards!

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So many content management systems, so little time!

As arts marketers, we know that having an up-to-date website is one of the primary ways our patrons find out about our activities. But after serving on the board of a small community theatre group, I know the pain that cultural groups feel when they have to wait for that one board member to update the website. Or perhaps it’s waiting for your friend’s cousin to respond to your email that it’s time to put up the cast list. The great news is it doesn’t have to be like that.

Imagine a scenario where any company member who knows how to use Microsoft Word can login and make changes to their section of the website? That updating the content could be shared by multiple people without getting in each other’s way? It’s called a Content Management System (CMS) and it should be a part of every marketing plan for arts organizations.

What is a content management system?

Here’s a great definition:

A CMS is used to edit your website by giving the user an interface where they can log in and make text, graphic or structural amends to then publish the new pages on the live website.

So the important thing to know is that arts groups can make changes to their websites by just logging into a webpage using an ordinary browser. No dreamweaver, frontpage, or other web-editing software needed. Let’s look at an example.

Here’s a website for a breeder of Australian Shepherds who has graciously allowed me to use her site as a demo.

A sample wordpress-based website content management system

Looks like a pretty normal site, right? This site used a software called WordPress. If you’re a blogger, you know that WordPress is usually used for blogs, but it also works very well as a website content management system. If you could see the bottom of the page above, you’d see a link to login to the site. Let’s see what it looks like when you login.

The inside of a wordpress website

As you can see, once you’re logged in, you find a menu system that allows you to create, update, or delete posts and pages on the site. Let’s edit the post “Show Ring update.” Simply click on the name of the post, and you’ll see:

Editing a post in wordpress

If you noticed that it looks a lot like Microsoft Word, you’re right! Once we’ve made our changes, we just save the post, and it is automatically updated on the actual site. Then we breathe a sigh of relief, for our editing is done.

Imagine the possibilities. You can easily have multiple people be responsible for updating different parts of the site, because they are empowered with the ease of doing so. Response times for website updates that rely on an outside person disappear.

Look and feel via “themes”

One of the other nice aspects of using a content management system like WordPress is the availability of themes to change your site’s look and feel. A theme is simply a way to change the look and feel of your site, without changing the content underneath. So an actor can change costumes, but the actor doesn’t change. There are thousands of developers who have already built free theme “costumes” for your site, and they are available for the download. If we go back to our example above, let’s change the theme of the Australian Shepherds site. WordPress comes with a bunch of built-in themes.

choosing a theme in wordpress

We’ll just choose a theme, click on it, and it automatically changes the site to reflect the new theme. Let’s choose the first one here, which has sort of a cowboy look to it. When we go back to the front-end site, we see:

The new site, after we changed the theme

As you can see, this is a totally different look and feel for the site. While probably not the best choice for someone who shows championship dogs, you get the picture.

In short, this ability makes it ridiculously simple to update the look and feel of your arts website, without a lot of effort or expense. There are many free themes for wordpress available, have a look. While you’re doing that, I’ll change the site back to the regular theme before the owner discovers her dogs showing up in the wild West.

Ok, so how do I get WordPress?

You can download it for free at www.wordpress.org. Or better yet, check with your hosting provider that hosts your website now — many of them offer a “1-click install” of WordPress, which will allow you to get started and play around easily. Or tell your current webmaster you’d like to host the site on a content management system like WordPress, and he/she will be able to make it happen. There are many content management systems to choose from, but WordPress is a good choice for simple websites.

You may not choose to run out and convert your arts website to use a web-based content management system today. But if you’re empowered with the knowledge of the benefits of running your site on a platform like this, you’ll be better prepared as an arts marketer to make good choices the next time you revise your website.

For more information on website content management systems, we recommend:

http://www.wordpress.org

http://joomla.com

http://drupal.org

Where are you @ with email marketing for your group?

The invention of email was a gift to arts marketers. Zero cost and instant up-to-the-minute communication with plain text. Nice. Then came email marketing with graphic newsletters. Even better! Your copy and your brand’s “look and feel.”

When used correctly, graphic email marketing is one of the most effective ways to keep up a conversation with your patrons. Make sure they are saying more than “unsubscribe”!

1. Don’t treat your messages like ads, even if they really are.

Write each message as if you were writing a sweet note to Mom (Hi, Mom). Create engaging and intelligent content that people at least have the potential to enjoy reading. Some background on the performers or the show. A backstage interview of the director. A short note on something that make this arts experience especially relevant. In the way you would talk to Mom. You wouldn’t send Mom an ad, would you?

2. Don’t send the same content more than once to the same group of people.

People don’t like getting what they’ve already read. Make sure that each email you send is unique — something must be different, and it must be right at the top. You’re not only trying to sell attendance to your event, your selling your own words in your message. There are a lot of things happening with your event — update your patrons with unique content each time. Even rewording things helps in a pinch.

3. Don’t just send one big image of your ad (and a reminder of #1 above).

A couple of years ago, major email clients began to hide images by default, in an effort to protect kids from questionable content. But it also often blocks out good content. Many of your patrons will look at your beautiful graphic, and see a smart little red x instead of your image. At that point, the next steps for many folks is “delete.” The most effective arts email marketing campaigns use both text and email. Have a graphic at the top that looks great, and then the offer in text underneath the graphic. If your patron doesn’t see the image, he/she can still see the offer in text. I have seen click-thru rates soar just from using this technique.

4. Don’t send too often.

Ask yourself: how often do you like to receive email updates from your favorite arts organization? Daily is out. Weekly — yes, if there is a major event coming up and I’m getting a lot of neat things each week like artist interviews. And monthly or even quarterly is just fine the rest of the time. You need to keep in contact to make a “touch” on the relationship, but make sure you tailor it to the circumstances of your organization.

5. Don’t wait too long to send.

On average, 33% of all people with email addresses change them during the year. Without a recent note, you risk your arts patrons forgetting who you are, and getting them to sign up with their new email address is a lot more difficult. You don’t want them getting your email and saying “Who is this?” Make sure you keep your list alive by sending out at least a short but interesting note once a quarter.

As arts marketers, we have the benefit of being able to champion the products of a field that lends itself well to communication technology. With a few safety checks before we hit the send button, you’ll strengthen your relationship with your patrons, and make it easier for them to engage in the good works of your organization.