smArts & Culture | your arts marketing edge

Collective bargain

I heard about Groupon from the lovely and talented Holly on Facebook.

I noticed that she was sharing some kind of deal of the day, and one caught my eye. $20 for one kitchen and bathroom cleaning from Eco Maids, a company that does green house cleaning. $20! I figured that before the coupon expired in April 2010, my mother-in-law (whom I love) would be visiting, I’d be crazy busy, and I would want a clean apartment.

The second time I used Groupon, the Philadelphia Orchestra was offering half price tickets to one of three concerts. I snapped up the Karita Mattila coupon.

Groupon’s deals are only available if a minimum number of people sign up. Once that happens, they’re available to anyone.

That means that people who want your deal have an incentive to spread the word about it. Remember how I heard about it? From my friend on Facebook? That’s what happens when people really want your thing.

There’s one deal each day and it’s mostly regional (U.S.), so you usually wouldn’t be competing with businesses from New York for a Groupon feature if your organization is in Los Angeles.

According to their site, Groupon doesn’t charge to feature your deal. They take a portion of the sales dollars. If your deal doesn’t reach the minimum number of buyers, Groupon gets nothing. No matter what happens, there’s no cost to you.

Groupon says that 97% of businesses that are featured ask to be featured again.

Sounds like a good deal.

Would you try a service like Groupon to sell tickets or classes or whatever you do? For more info, visit grouponworks.com.

More than time, money, and word of mouth

Andrew Taylor posted something that particularly interested me the other day. Not that that’s unusual.

He talked about finding a new metaphor to describe a performing arts ticketing system in development.

“Human resources management” was one. The idea of putting people together, audience and artists, in a way that is meaningful, a way that is likely to be fruitful. Considering it to be collaboration.

In itself this is not a new idea -- the moment of performance as collaboration between artists, production professionals, and audience. But I like that this metaphor replaces that of transaction – we give the audience member, the buyer, something of value for his or her money or time.

The softer version of the idea that most of us reject – simply butts in seats -- is that if we do it right, the buyer comes back for more. We’re building relationships here.

Relationships figure into Andrew’s metaphor, but it’s not the whole story.

One of the things that drives me crazy about audience building is how patronizing (yeesh. No pun intended) it can seem. Traditional relationship-building doesn’t acknowledge that an audience member has anything to contribute beyond time, money, and word of mouth.

Andrew’s following post, about Doc Searles’ “intention economy,” a market where people’s wants and needs are made known and matched with opportunities, is in the same vein. In this market, providers of opportunities, including arts organizations, would compete for that person’s commitment. Dave, a commenter to the ticketing post, speaks of something similar – a request for proposals from audience members.

More and more, I’m thinking of audience members as respected partners, partners with untapped potential.

That’s hard to keep in mind when you’re harried and you’re the person who’s got to sell X number of tickets to X number of concerts because that’s the season and you aren’t in charge of the paradigm. Believe me, I've been there.

And I’m not exactly sure what this partnership looks like. More thinking needed.

If you sound different, will they come?

You know how you expect a certain tone of voice? A letter from your bank will never sound like an email from your best friend, for instance. At least I hope not.

Well, I really admire Fabeku’s voice.

I met him through hanging out online with Havi and a bunch of other marvelous people. Fabeku does sound healing. It’s not likely that I would be attracted to sound healing. I may do Dance of Shiva, but I’m not too far along on the hippie woo-woo continuum.

But I am someone who’s attracted to his writing voice.

Why?

It’s unexpected. Would you expect this post from someone who specializes in helping work out your problems with drumming?

Joey Ramone is my Life Coach

That’s right. He heals with sound and he’s inspired by the Ramones. Also, the Sex Pistols.

He has a free download called Sound Shifts Stuff, whose accompanying graphics depict B-movie ninjas. In fact, he’s been known to use the term ‘ninjarific.’

The point is, if Fabeku doesn’t sound like the stereotypical new-age guy – humorless, calm, and a little superior. He sounds just the opposite.

In other words, instead of talking to the hoards of people who are predisposed to look for help of this kind, he’s talking to a particular group of them. A group for which cartoon ninjas, punk rock, and chocolate resonate.

His tagline is ‘Less stuck. Less struggle. More awesome.’

He explains his process by comparing it to baking a cake, with frequent loving asides to butter.

It filters out the people who don’t get him, who wouldn’t be a good fit.

If Fabeku didn’t let his personality shine through in everything he did, he wouldn’t be a good fit for me. I have no particular interest in sound or healing or sound healing. And yet I look forward to reading his blog – it’s a treat. If I were moved to hire someone to make things better with mysterious rhythmic music, it would be Fabeku, no question.

Is this something you could do -- experiment with not sounding like all the other dance companies or theaters or galleries in town? Even a little?

I know it’s scary to think you might alienate some of your audience. It’s scary for me, too. But if all the ways you talk to people – your web site, your email, your postcards – whatever – if they all were undeniably You, how would people feel about hearing from you?

Being more You

Is there a way to be more You?

Huh? What do I mean by that?

I mean getting closer to the essence of what your organization’s about. And when I say You, I mean You, the Organization.

Watering down what you are, hoping to appeal to a broader audience rarely works. I know it feels like you need to get more people involved. And your mission statement probably says something about reaching a wide audience.

I'm sorry. You are not Dancing with the Stars.

The people who love you don’t want a watered-down You. It’s better to have smaller numbers (without being exclusionary) and a bigger sense of commitment.

This has been on my mind lately. That’s because I’m having a shift in how I think of smArts & Culture and how I think of writing for you. What we talk about when we talk about marketing.

Back to being more You.

What does that mean? How can you be more You than you already are?

You could start by embracing your niche-i-ness, for one. Most arts organizations are fairly niche when you think of them in the context of anything else people might decide to do.

Are you doing an audience talk-back because it’s really You, or because every other theater in town does it? Is there a way to do it that’s more You?

Is bringing challenging music to your neighborhood your reason for being? Programming sure-fire hits out of fear of losing numbers can push away those people who would be loyal audience members otherwise. Is it worth sacrificing them?

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My heart kind of soared when I heard about the Étant donnés show (now closed) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Étant donnés was created by Duchamp specifically for the museum in secret! No matter what you think of Duchamp, you’ve gotta love that. The show features preparatory sketches, photos, collages, and other objects related to the piece.

That the show is so Philadelphia Museum of Art to me. It’s Duchamp, and our museum has lots of Duchamp. The much-loved late director Anne d’Harnoncourt, who is so indentified with the museum, was a Duchamp scholar and instrumental in the installation of Étant donnés and building the Duchamp collection.

The show didn’t feel like a crowd-pleaser. I saw it on its last weekend and the gallery was not mobbed, thankfully. There were certainly people intently studying the notes and objects, and people enjoying Duchamp’s particular brand of humor. There was a guard enthusiastically explaining the Large Glass to visitors hovering around it. But there were also people clearly puzzled or dismissive of images and casts of Étant donnés’s headless, splayed nude.

You could make the argument that the museum could have worked harder to engage these people, or you could say, that’s okay, it was an intriguing show that was not for everybody.

The point is, it felt very particular to our museum, very PMA. It warmed my little heart and gave me happy feelings about the museum.

That’s what you’re aiming for.

Test how your tagline measures up

Does your tagline give the reader or listener that “aha” moment about your arts organization? Or is it a generic dud?

Do you have one at all?

If your institution bears a vague title, or one that’s similar to your competitors’, a tagline can make all the difference in connecting with people who care about what you do.

A 10-point tagline evaluation is just one of the must-have tools you’ll find in Nancy Schwartz’s free Nonprofit Tagline Report: An In-Depth Survey and Analysis – Building Your Brand in Eight Words or Less. How does your tagline measure up?

The free Tagline Report combines results from a 2008 survey and the 2009 Nonprofit Tagline Awards. It’s packed with advice and examples that will help you craft an effective tagline and avoid common pitfalls.

And since 61% of arts people surveyed reported their taglines to be ineffective …

Here’s what else you’ll find:

• 8 Key Findings on Taglines that Work

• 10 Have-Tos: Your One-Stop Checkup for Powerful Taglines

• 5 Should-Dos for Even Greater Impact

• 4 Main Tagline Types and a Million Variations on the Theme

• The 7 Deadly Sins

• The 9 Snores

• The 5 Best Ways to Antagonize Your Audiences

• Nonprofit Tagline Trends

• Verbatim comments from Tagline Award voters

• Nonprofit Tagline Award Winners, Finalists, Entries, and Survey Respondents

I’m no different from you.

When I created my business, I give it a deliberately vague name that referenced the arts. That’s because I didn’t know if my services would be narrow or broad. Would it help to use “marketing” or “communications” in the name if I eventually offered development and strategic planning consulting, too? I did lots of public relations consulting at the beginning. Now? None at all (by choice).

As smArts & Culture evolved, I’ve played around with different taglines. When I realized that I wanted to focus on people -- arts managers – rather than institutions, I changed my tagline to reflect this move.

Want to know how your tagline (or lack of one) stacks up? Go download the Nonprofit Tagline Report now. It’s free.

What gives you an advantage in arts marketing?

Nope, it’s not money.

Some arts marketers are naturally gifted writers. Some overflow with creative ideas. Some seem to squeeze more out of their tiny marketing budgets than is humanly possible.

Maybe they have a leg up on the rest of us. Or maybe they just keep taking in as much as they can about marketing the arts that they love.

You have the chance to keep getting better at what you do – connecting to your organization’s biggest fans.

One way is to sign up to be on the smArts & Culture VIP List. You’ll get discounts on different ways to learn, and exclusive articles written with arts marketers in mind, like:

• The secret to writing when you’re out of ideas

• How unspoken objections hurt you

• The #1 reason why arts blogs fail

• How to find the elephant in the room

• Email your patrons can’t resist

• The one fix that moves patrons to buy

• Are you having an identity crisis?

• Do you use the right social media metrics?

• Is your arts marketing budget shrinking?

My next bi-weekly email to the smArts & Culture VIP List goes out tomorrow.

Thursday.



If you think you’d benefit from regularly honing your arts marketing skills, find out more about the smArts & Culture VIP list by clicking this link. It’s free.

Want to shake up your arts marketing?

It’s November. Your season is in full swing and you’re insanely busy.

That doesn’t mean you have to put your own professional development on hold.

Did you know that you can take a free ecourse that gets right to the point and tells you how to put marketing ideas into practice for your organization immediately?

It’s an ecourse called “Shake Up Your Arts Marketing.”

What’s an ecourse?

It’s a series of emails with lessons that are short and sweet. “Shake Up Your Arts Marketing” is a free 5-lesson ecourse that arrives in your inbox every 4 days.

To get your first arts marketing lesson now, fill out the form with your name and email address, and hit “Send me the ecourse.”




P.S. I hate spam as much as you do. smArts & Culture will never sell or trade your email address – ever.

(If you’re reading this post in a feed reader, like Google Reader or Bloglines, click here to the original post to sign up for the ecourse.)

When your arts patron asks, why aren’t you doing … ?

“Uh, well, actually we’ve been doing XYZ for the last two years.”

Do you sometimes find yourself in this awkward conversation with a patron? The one where she asks, why isn’t your arts organization doing such-and-such, when the fact is that you’ve been doing it for quite some time?

That’s a signal that you’re doing something wonderful, something your people care about, but you’re not communicating it effectively.

Over this past weekend, we were planning to shop at the Wegmans, so I took a look at their weekly flyer in advance. I found that the front page was dedicated to showing customers that instead of raising prices, they've lowered them in the last year. Instead of just the usual “every day low prices” claim, the copy shows empathy for the shopper:

A year ago, the economy was in tough shape. Stocks were falling and prices were climbing. We knew people needed a hand.

The page is filled with specific price comparisons, this year to last: chicken breasts $1.97/lb compared to $2.69 in 2008; flour $.99 compared to $1.49 in 2008; eggs $1.39 compared to $2.19 in 2008.

They’re not just saying they’ve lowered prices, they’re showing you.

So is there something you’re already doing, something that’s meaningful to your patron, that you haven’t put front and center? Is there a way you could show her?

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The high-impact, low-cost marketing trick that everyone forgets

"Nothing Stops a Bullet Like a Job."

Wow. Does that line freeze you in your tracks?

This powerful tagline belongs to Los Angeles’ Homeboy Industries and it’s the winner of the 2009 Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Awards in the Jobs & Workforce Development category.

Nancy Schwartz, president of Nancy Schwartz & Company, the organizer of the competition, calls the tagline a “high-impact, low-cost marketing tactic often overlooked or under-emphasized by nonprofits.” The company’s 2008 survey found that 7 in 10 nonprofits rated their tagline as poor or didn’t use one at all.

That’s a shame.

An effective tagline can instantly communicate an organization’s message. A tagline can work magic when your organization’s own name is vague or confusing or generic. How many theaters and museums are named after a founder or major donor? If a patron isn’t familiar with the institution, the name alone may say nothing to him about what makes it amazing.

As I’ve said before, I love the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s tagline: Making great music personal. It creates the expectation that a LACO event isn’t going to be just another classical music concert; it’s going to be as much about me as it is about the performance.

Taglines entered into the competition this year numbered 1,702. More than 4,800 nonprofit professionals voted on 60 finalists to choose the 13 winners.

In November, Nancy Schwartz & Company will publish the 2009 Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Report. Sign up to get the report and get inspired by more than 2,500 taglines that were entered this year and last, as well as The 10 Have-Tos for Successful Taglines, and The 7 Deadly Sins – What Not to Do.

For the full list of this year’s winners, visit Getting Attention, and then sign up for Nancy’s informative email update. Subscribers get a free copy of the Tagline report when it’s released.

Nancy’s also facilitating a half-day workshop on crafting potent taglines at NYC’s Support Center for Nonprofit Management on Tuesday, November 10, 2009. According to her blog, there are only a few seats left. Find out more about the nonprofit tagline workshop by clicking this link.

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Arts marketing book review: 30 Days To 3,000 Facebook Fans

Recommended

The title of this ebook kind of makes me cringe.

30 Days to 3,000 Facebook Fans. It smacks of those get-rich-quick internet marketing schemes.

But it’s really not like that.

The author, Nick O’Neill of Social Times and allfacebook.com, uses the “30 days” format to encourage you to tackle one aspect of your Facebook strategy per day, along with an action step. He breaks down the process into manageable form, even if you can’t possibly devote time to Facebook every single day for a month. This 72-page ebook was written for small and medium-sized businesses, but there is much here that will benefit arts managers.

Besides step-by-step instructions and advice for setting up your Facebook page, optimizing your page for search engines, and leveraging Facebook applications, 30 Days gives you lessons in brand building and marketing copy writing. It explains how to integrate and promote your fan page through your existing marketing mix.

Some parts of the ebook however, like the detailed sections on Facebook advertising, assume knowledge and experience with online advertising that arts people may not have. Terms like CPC and CPM – cost per click and cost per impression – are not explained, for example.

The value of the “3,000 fans” concept is debatable, though. In fact the author says in his introduction “The measure of success should not be whether or not you’ve attracted 3,000 fans but whether you’ve attracted a large number of targeted fans.”

Nick outlines tactics like contests that reward people for recruiting friends in a smart and sophisticated way, and I’m sure they’re effective. But fans that are motivated solely by helping out a friend will not be engaged by your Facebook content, and either just ignore you, or un-fan you eventually. You want people who love you.

The bulk of the book, though, is valuable to even to arts people who are fairly familiar with Facebook. The detailed how-to’s alone are worth the reasonable $19.95 price tag. And for people who are new to Facebook or new to marketing, 30 Days is a valuable read.

Facebook will continue to introduce new features and change its rules, so Nick has promised to let customers know as the ebook is updated.

Social Times also has a much simpler overview of Facebook page strategy in a 9-page PDF available for free. (Hat tip to Beth’s Blog for pointing me there.)

Get 30 Days To 3,000 Facebook Fans here.

Note: for some reason, these allfacebook.com URLs are rendering tiny today in Firefox, so if you're having the same problem viewing the pages, try another browser.

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