6 assumptions arts organizations are getting wrong across the industry
Let’s be real: The coronavirus pandemic has been a hellish time for the arts sector. And now, with endless variants looming and audience slow to return, the light at the end of the tunnel feels further away than ever before.
But a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. There’s no better time than now to reconsider the traditional assumptions that hamper audience growth—and may even be alienating consumers.
Here are six to abandon today.
Assumption #1: Our target audiences want to hear us talk about ourselves.
Looking around at websites, marketing, and social media in the cultural sector, it’s clear that most arts organizations believe that their target audiences want to hear them talk about themselves. But if you compare this egocentric approach to the marketing in other sectors, you'll start to notice just how much it ignores the real life consumer.
For-profit marketers know an important truth: consumers have complex motivations for their purchases. They don’t buy something because of who they are, but because of who they want to become. They buy things that directly target a need they’re facing in their lives. Which means they’re not interested in your glowing bios.
What they really want to know is how your offerings will help them—how they will be tangibly transformed by the experience.
It’s a seismic shift, and a bit counterintuitive, but arts organizations who want to grow their audiences must stop waxing rhapsodic about themselves and their offerings, and begin to highlight the benefits of engaging with their offerings.
Spend the time getting to know your target audiences so that you can demonstrate that you understand them and the progress they’re seeking to make in their lives. This approach engenders a level of trust and loyalty that can’t be bought.
Assumption #2: Our patrons should love our art as much as we do.
We've been steeped in the cultural world for years. We live for our art. But the uninitiated, the Outsiders, have no context for this world. How do we get them to buy in?
Here’s what business theory tells us: Most patrons aren’t motivated purely by a desire to experience art. Rather, they’re simply looking for solutions that will help them make progress in their lives: to become more of who they aspire to be, to solve a problem, to eliminate a frustration, or fulfill a need.
You’re competing against a plethora of solutions for the circumstances your target audiences find themselves in. Whether the solution they ultimately choose is a product, a service, or your cultural event depends on how well your marketing and strategy demonstrates an understanding of their circumstances. For example:
The millennial seeking escape from constant connectivity
The romantic looking to impress their date on Valentine’s Day
The tourist (or suburbanite) who wants to experience a lavish night in the city
The tired parents who seek a fun but also educational experience for their children (and, honestly, a break from having to entertain them!)
The lonely working professional who wants to get connected to likeminded folk in their community
Understanding these motivations is a game-changer for audience development, because it can completely transform your marketing and strategy. Here’s an example of a nontraditional orchestra video ad that addresses a real customer circumstance.
Assumption #3: Arts organizations exist exclusively to produce, share, and ensure the future of their art form
In a recent analysis, conductor Tiffany Chang found that the mission statements of 71 orchestras across the United States share a boiler-plate template that, frankly, reads like an uninspired afterthought. Chang’s research highlights the implicit belief among many arts organizations that their mission should purely be focused on their art.
We hear it all the time: Our art is sacred; it must be preserved; we must expose our communities to it.
Why?
If your mission statement or your strategic plan doesn’t explain the impact you seek to make beyond art for art’s sake, you’ve got some work to do.
“But don’t arts organizations exist solely to create art?”
Priya Parker, in The Art of Gathering, says this kind of thinking is the perfect example of circular reasoning. Your art is the what, not the why. The product, not the purpose.
In other words, art is what we do. It doesn’t answer the “Why?” or “To what end?” question that we have to answer if we want to communicate our value to our community, justify funding, and attract donors and ticket buyers.
When we conflate category with purpose, we end up marketing in a very egocentric and product centric way that becomes a turnoff for anyone who’s not a loyal insider. And we end up centering a mission that is very difficult to measure.
Not to mention the fact that today’s consumer is making purchase decisions based on very different criteria. In their Marketing with Purpose Playbook, Microsoft says that "People buy from companies that stand for something larger than just what they sell." What are the tangible benefits of our art? It the arts organizations who are asking that question who are reclaiming their relevance in this new world.
It’s the arts organizations who take the next step in their mission statement by answering the question “to what end?” that are building vibrant community and weaving themselves into the fabric of their patrons’ lives.
Assumption #4: Our target audiences are inspired by lofty language.
Traditional arts marketing tends to live in the zone of transcendence and awe, regularly employing language like “joyful,” “nostalgic,” “rhapsodic,” and “sumptuous.” But what if your target audiences don’t find themselves at the pinnacle of Maslow’s hierarchy of human need? What if they are currently prioritizing belonging, or health/safety? (Ahem, covid.)
Reaching these audiences requires more down-to-earth language about the benefits of engaging with your art. What are the needs of your target audiences? What language might appeal to the deep human need for, say, belonging? What language what might convince those anxious about the pandemic that your art is the best solution?
Give it a try. Instead of putting your art on a pedestal, write the way your target customer talks and you’ll find that selling tickets gets much easier. Here’s an example to get you started:
Assumption #5: Our haters aren’t worth engaging with.
“If you ignore the haters,” says innovation consultant and entrepreneur Mike Maddock, “You are ignoring your biggest Achilles' heel.”
While your loyal audiences can be counted on to tell you what you want to hear, the haters (or outsiders) will tell you what you need to hear. And that’s where the opportunities for innovation abound, as Aubrey Bergauer discovered.
The great innovator Henry Ford put it this way: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.” Unpacking why you failed to attract certain consumers could be the key to discovering a much greater potential for success than you ever imagined.
Sure, it’s easier to get answers from the folks who are already on your CRM lists. But if you ignore the ones who aren’t, or fail to follow up with first-timers who never returned, you’re taking a big risk. “Someone who can deliver a better solution will steal away your customers as soon as they do,” says Mike Maddock.
Here’s more on how your haters can help you be more innovative.
Assumption #6: Traditional marketing strategies still work.
Technology has changed our world profoundly over the last 20 years. And not only do today’s consumers distrust traditional marketing, they rarely even see it anymore. Who doesn’t have an ad blocker on their internet browser these days? Do we even notice the ads on social media anymore? With paid streaming, we get to skip commercials on TV, too. Clearly, traditional marketing is no longer serving arts organizations or their target audiences.
There’s a better way. McKinsey reports that online reviews, social media conversations, and word-of-mouth recommendations account for more than 60% of a brand’s visibility during a customer’s purchasing journey. In fact, a full 20% of all US brands are sold through family or friend recommendations alone.
How can arts organizations tap into this free marketing engine?
A great way to start is to employ social proof in your marketing. Feature your customers: their reviews, their testimonials, their post-concert reactions captured on video. Why does social proof work? It builds immediate trust. As Jochen Grünbeck, author of Smart Persuasion, writes, “Copying what other people have done feels like a quick and easy way to make safe choices.”
If you want to take it to the next level, says marketing expert Mark Schaefer, you need to activate social sharing. Give your followers good stories that they can’t help but share, and suddenly your reach has expanded dramatically.
What’s a share-worthy story? Something that creates a strong emotional response:
A local wedding with a tear-jerker of a story is elevated to the next level when a curtain opens to reveal the local orchestra playing a heavenly processional.
A 100th birthday party for an elderly Marine veteran brings friends and family to their feet when a troupe of opera singers arrive singing a powerful rendition of the Marine Hymn.
A mini documentary featuring a couple that had their first date at the symphony decades ago and are still going strong.
A visit to a famed eatery in your community, à la the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Your marketing content, writes Schaefer, “should be viewed with the same esteem as your company’s products. It should be good enough to be a stand-alone product that customers look forward to receiving.”
Stop putting out egocentric marketing that ignores your target audiences. Start sharing stories that spark the desire to share.
Start pivoting today
This week, review these common assumptions with your team. Identify where these beliefs are showing up in your marketing, on your website, in your mission statement, and across your social media—and start taking these steps to put the customer at the center:
Step 1: Find out what real life needs your target audiences have. Identify how your art can help.
Step 2: Tell your followers how your offerings will transform them. Invite them to use your art as a tool to improve their lives.
Step 3: Explore the tangible benefits of engaging with your art, and center your mission around one of them.
Step 4: Build trust by writing with empathy in everyday language.
Step 5: Ask your haters what you could do better.
Step 6: Shift away from event marketing. Start investing more of your marketing budget into shareworthy storytelling.
