ARE YOU TALKIN’ TO ME?

As president of the Pleasanton Cultural Arts Council, I wanted to continue our dialogue on Marketing the Arts that we began with our Social Media Seminar. My background is in advertising and marketing with an ad agency called Ogilvy & Mather. I worked on products like Maxwell House Coffee, Hallmark Cards, and even Fruity and Cocoa Pebbles. And the strategic framework that is used in developing marketing plans for these big brands with big budgets is the same for small brands (read struggling non-profits) with little or no budget. So please join me in our blog and let’s take the arts to a new level!

Jill Vellinger
President, Pleasanton Cultural Arts Council

One reason marketing efforts fail for non-profit arts organizations, whether they use traditional media, like newspaper and radio, or emerging social media, like Twitter and Facebook, is because there is no well planned overall strategy behind them. The answer is not to blame the media, as in “I’ve had no luck with Facebook”, but to go through the discipline of crafting a strategy for marketing the overall organization, and the individual event.

 At the PCAC seminar, Marketing with Social Media, presenter David Perry touched on the importance of Brand. He said your Brand was your promise. Most of us in the arts have a mission statement for our organization, and from that we can extract a brand promise. But there is another aspect to identifying what your promise should be, and that is understanding your target audience.  Back in my days on Madison Avenue, each brand we worked on had a well defined target audience that described the person to whom we were selling. We knew the sex, age range, and likes and dislikes of our current users. But we also knew that a brand could die out if we didn’t seek to expand our user base, so we often had a secondary target audience. That way, when we crafted a message, both the primary and secondary target audiences knew we were talking to them.

 Whether you are selling a product or selling a seat to a performance, the marketing disciplines are the same. So let’s look at an example. We will call it The ABC Symphony Group. The ABC Symphony Group has been around for 15 years. It plays primarily classical music. Attendees to the performances are primarily the friends and families of the performers, and those who appreciate classical music. So if we had to guess at the Primary Target Audience, the person who is the current ticket buyer, we might guess that it is:

• Women ages 55+ who appreciate classical music and have attended prior performances. They have more leisure time and are involved as volunteers in their community. They want to enjoy time with their friends and they want to make a mark in their community.

 Let’s stop here for a moment. Why just women? Surely people attend the performances as couples? Yes, they probably do, but it is usually women who organize the social calendar and purchase the tickets, so your media vehicle (where you advertise) and your message (how you advertise), and even your actual performance, need to take this in to account. But if you just stop here, you have a problem. This group is aging, and if ABC Symphony does not make an effort to reach the next generation of ticket buyers, they will be performing to a very small audience. So a Secondary Target Audience might be:

• Women ages 40-55 who have middle-hi school age kids at home and work full tie or part time. They have very limited time and what they do has to really be worth their while. They look for things to do that are good for the whole family and are a good value.

 I think we can all see that although ABC Symphony will be putting on two performances a year, they might come up with very specific ideas for their program and their marketing efforts based on a good understanding of the Primary and Secondary Target Audiences. They may have a recognition rewards program for their Primary Target Audience communicated through their membership mailings, and they may have a special offer program for their secondary target audience communicated through Facebook and something like Groupon. They may also choose to feature a high school performer for a brief solo.

Now it’s your turn. Look at your organization, examine your brand. Let the right people know that you’re talking to them!