Top Marketing Ideas From Beyond the Culture Sector
Written by: Christina Poulton
Approximate read time: 5 minutes
Often the person doing the marketing for a creative project is also producing it/ performing/ making/ fundraising and wearing many other hats besides. In that situation it’s easy to fall back on the same old tried and tested formats. But we also know that a lot of arts marketing is quite ‘tired’ when compared to other sectors and that often we’re writing arts chat for arts industry people. We go through the motions of copy, image, press release, some social posts, without having the time to think about how we’re approaching it.
Most other industries think about this stuff all day long because they have massive marketing departments and a budget to match. But that’s good news for us because this article borrows four of their best ideas, so you can pick and mix some new approaches for your next project
The thing they all have in common is that they start with the audience: who is going to watch/ read/ buy your work needs to come first, and this should then shape every decision about how you market your work. If you show a standard brochure entry for a contemporary dance event or an art installation to a member of the public, it’s usually so full of arts jargon that their first question will be “but what actually is it?”
A marketing colleague shared a brilliant example of this- he started at a new organisation and was given a children’s event and told it was an easy sell because every other event like this had sold out. And yet no one was buying tickets. When he compared the marketing copy to the previous events it was immediately obvious why. Guess which one of these two sold the most tickets to the audience: parents looking for something nice to do with their children?
You and your little ones can explore a magical world together. You’ll be welcomed by two friendly bears and invited to snuggle down on a cushion before the magic tricks and laughter begins. Meet funny characters and make your own puppet to take home.
In the heart of the woods, amidst the trees, a lone rosebush stands, sheltering two animals. From discarded dreams, they fashion their woodland home and fill the trees with colour. Through mime, melody, and shadow, their story unfolds—join us on this ethereal journey, where ordinary moments reveal extraordinary wonders.
Give away all your secrets
People want to know what they’re getting before they commit. If you buy something online you’ll read reviews, look at photos, get detailed specifications, watch a video, sign up for a free trial etc. If you're booking a city break you can see the entire journey and all the sights on YouTube from your sofa first. Gamers watch someone stream playing an entire video game before they buy it.
Often in the arts though there’s a tendency to hold back on content, to not ‘spoil the surprise’ for audiences, even though we know that well known stories always sell better than new writing for example. We know that audiences like familiarity so create that familiarity in your marketing. Share as much detail as possible on the content and also the experience. Artists often hate their work being compared to other things, but describing a story as “Love Island meets Trainspotting” lets you know what to expect. Describing it as “an immersive searing commentary on relationships in today's society” doesn’t. Make sure your copy actually says something.
Focus on what people get, not what you made
Ipod sold itself as “1000 songs in your pocket”, rather than describing the technology or the storage capacity like every other MP3 player. Parker Pens market themselves as a gift rather than as stationery because they know that’s why people buy them. Both centre the audience- what they want and what their experience will be.
The National Trust did a significant and pretty successful rebrand when they stopped focusing on the historic houses and artefacts in all of their marketing and replaced it with the experience that visitors want from a National Trust visit- a memorable day out with family in a beautiful place. If you look at the primary images they now use in their marketing they’re almost exclusively of visitors, not of their properties. What do people get from engaging with your creative work and how can you use this in your marketing?
Fall in love with data
Your audience usually engage with your work online at some stage and the beauty of this is they leave data footprints. Social media and your website automatically collect analytics for you to see what’s happening. People often follow a series of steps to directly engage with or buy your work, (called a sales funnel), for example from a social media post, to your website, to the specific event page, to an online shop or ticketing site.
The data can show you where you lose people on this journey and you can then make improvements. If no one is clicking on your social post or opening your newsletter in the first place it doesn’t matter how great your online shop is if people don’t get to it. If most potential customers are clicking through but you lose them at the point of the event or product page, you will need to take another look at the copy and images you’ve used. If they’re clicking through to buy but not completing the purchase then the complexity of the purchase process may be putting people off. This gives you data you can work with and make improvements on. Eventbrite recently swapped the order of the steps in their checkout process and saw up to twice as many customers buying tickets.
There are loads of other ways you can use the data, including A/B testing and looking at when and how your audience engage with your content.
Find your 100
So the story goes that when Chet Holmes (America’s top marketing exec) was hired to sell magazine ads early in his career, he was given a list of over 2,000 businesses to send flyers to and cold call. He didn’t contact a single one. Instead he identified the 100 biggest ad buying companies and made it his mission to win them over one by one, landing huge deals only a few months in. His motto was “Write down your dream 100 clients. Do anything you can to win them.”
You can apply that idea to how you promote your work- think specific and face to face (whether in person or virtual): building relationships with individual teachers rather than emailing thousands of schools, holding exclusive events for a handful of potential buyers for your artwork, building a loyal repeat audience for your dance company. Replace your magazine ad with conversations on Linked In and Twitter. Take the money you would have spent on flyers and posters for each tour venue and instead use it for someone’s time to personally invite relevant community groups and social groups to each performance.
For more inspiration from other sectors, I’ve found this Marketing Examples website really interesting. And if you sign up to their newsletter they send 6 very short examples of effective marketing to your inbox. Culture for Hire also has some useful resources on prioritising your audience.