Unleashing the Power of Arts Marketing Dollars
When setting marketing budgets for season planning, many arts and entertainment organizations are being asked to do more with less; so how do you ensure that every marketing dollar is as impactful as possible? With ticket sale goals growing by larger margins year over year (especially post-pandemic) organizations are struggling to find the most efficient way to get impactful messages in-market that drive home goals and support their bottom lines.
Addressing these challenges can and should be a complex journey. Outside of digging for funds in the couch cushions, how can arts marketers push harder with less to work with?
Creativity is Key
Digital offers seemingly endless possibilities to marketers if you know where to look. Investing the time up-front to develop a creative strategy that solves for your unique business model, season layout, or performance calendar will pay reliable dividends. ASYMM develops unique strategies for every partner. While out-of-the-box, templated strategies can be appealing they often come with capability restrictions and budget minimums. By taking a strategic approach to working through these challenges, rather than around them, we leverage any number of creative tactics to help up-level your results.
It’s Not All About Direct Response
The most important aspect to getting creative with marketing strategy is careful consideration for how paid vs earned tactics are being deployed. You can email blast all of your previous ticket buyers, but this tactic can lead to over or under saturation of key audiences. How can you keep your patrons engaged without unnecessarily inundating them with marketing messages? While you have their attention, it’s important to strike a balance between driving toward your goals and providing authentic content that keeps patrons and prospects interested and engaged.
Email, organic social and website content are all efficient channels for connecting with your audience; supporting your earned audience networks with lead generation, in the right channels, at the right times, can increase your return on investment significantly. Recent legislation and news regarding privacy constraints have put 1st Party Data at the forefront of every marketer’s decision-making. The growth and nurturing of this key audience segment is foundational to the success in bringing in new audiences year over year who will become loyal patrons.
Maintaining Presence
When the budget is tight, it can be tempting to cut marketing dollars for content marketing, influencer marketing and SEO. The secret sauce is a strategy that marries thoughtful flighting with impactful channel deployment. Where are your audiences, and when should you be reaching out to them with certain messaging? If your paid media is siloed from your earned, you are doing yourself a disservice by missing the beautiful collaboration of the two that can yield efficiencies, performance and, most importantly, an evergreen connection with your patrons.
Regardless of budget, there are countless ways to achieve your goals through creative, strategic, data-driven approaches. While paid media can be the focus for investment in budgeting, there is a limitless variety of ways to make investments go further through partnerships that provide insight and support wherever needed. Step outside the box and unlock an unending world of digital marketing potential.
