Here at Sumo, we pride ourselves in being completely immersed in the arts and cultural sectors. So, with the start of a New Year, we thought we’d join the ranks of Top 10 lists and make our own. Here’s what we think will be the Top 10 trends in Arts Marketing 2010.
Get a seat at the big table
Larger arts venues are increasingly talking about the lines between marketing and programming blurring, and now is the time to make sure that your organisation is taking the input that you can give seriously, not just in developing marketing, but in the strategic direction of your organisation as a whole.
The future of the arts is audience focused, and who better to lead the cultural organisation of the future then the people who understand audiences best (that’s you).
The Big Idea
With marketing budgets falling it’s time to get creative, and I think this pressure will make 2010 the year of the big marketing idea, we need to forget about the status-quo, ditch the ordinary and strive for extraordinary.
We need to forget about just being on Facebook and Twitter and do something different with social media, we need to rethink marketing that targets everyone and use segmentation in more effective ways.
Become fanatical about effectiveness
How effective your marketing is at delivering the desired outcome is going to be more important than ever in 2010. You need to ask everyone involved to prove the value of the activities that they are delivering for you, and measure the results of everything you do.
Create experiences that can be shared
Crowd-sourcing and co-creation were big news in 2009 and I don’t see the trend towards audiences participation going away. ‘Create experiences that can be shared’ is something that I have heard people talk about at a lot of conferences in the past few months and I totally agree.
Make sure everything you put online can be sent to a friend, linked to on Facebook and posted on Twitter.
Real time reviews
People are increasingly sharing more of their lives then ever before, and a big part of this is posting reviews of everything they buy, listen to, watch, visit. Changes to Google mean that any comments people make about attending your arts venue will appear prominently in search results.
How can you encourage people to post reviews and share their experience with others?
Choose your medium
Your organisation doesn’t need to be on every social network, now you have had a chance to experiment it is time to prioritise what is working for you, and consider leaving websites which don’t seem to be adding much to achieving your goals.
Reinventing print
You know that your arts venue has several audiences who are motivated to visit for a wide variety of reasons, but does your print reflect this. Most arts venues tend to have a generic leaflet aimed at everyone, but with cheap digital print, isn’t it time to segment your audiences and create leaflets aimed at each group.
Policy
A lot of people have been asking me about how they can create a social media policy for their arts organisation, I think that a formalisation of the way that organisations are using websites like Facebook and Twitter is to be expected, this will also include how you’ll measure success.
Mobile Friendly websites
One of the stories which I think will be big news in 2010 is the mobile web, with 3% of internet traffic in the UK coming from mobile phones (and half of that from iPhones) it is time for arts organisations to start to think about a version of their website which will work well on a smaller screen.
Value
Value was a big trend in 2009 and I expect that to continue in to 2010. Arts organisations are well placed to take advantage of the trend towards cheap days out and need to promote the value that they offer without cheapening their brands.