The Mission Paradox Blog

Visit Katya's Nonprofit Marketing Blog

Time to make another new friend.

Katya Anderson runs "Getting To The Point", a blog on Nonprofit Marketing.  She is also the author of the book "Robin Hood Marketing" which she describes as the concept of stealing corporate savvy to sell just causes.

If I nag her about it enough, she may even consent to an interview about the book on this here blog.

The Devil Figured It Out

Or to be more exact . . . the Devilvet.

Let me explain.

In the midst of a blog discussion called "Why the Audience isn't there" at Parabasis a poster named devilvet offers this comment:

Usually, the non-theater goer becomes a theater-goer because someone they know/love is in a show and they end up enjoying the show enough they might risk another show.

You can replace theater with any other art, music, dance, visual art.  The idea still holds.

Alright, let's think this through . . .

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Did you watch the Olympics? 

If you did, then you noticed that during a four hour block of TV tie, maybe only 2 hours of that was devoted to the athletic competitions.

The rest of the time was devoted to tell stories about the athletes.

So you hear about Michael Phelps and his diet or Dana Torres and her kid.

Why did they do that?

Because NBC knew that most people don't give a damn about diving, shot putt, whatever.

But what we do care about, and are curious about, is the lives of other people.

NBC understood that if they wanted you to watch the 4x400 track and field relay they couldn't talk about the history or track and field.

They had to tell you a story about one of the competitors and hope that the story was interesting enough to keep you around.

Why?

Because people will watch if they know/love someone in the competition.

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Let's get back the arts world.

Arts organization are great at promoting their work.

Many of them are horrible at promoting themselves.

That is a huge problem.

I can sense some skeptisms out there.  I'm sure you can think of plenty of artists who are constantly talking about their work . . . blah, blah, blah

But I'm not talking about artists promoting themselves as artists.

I'm talking about artists promoting themselves as people.  Living, breathing folks that people should actually give a damn about.

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I'll take it a step further.

I run the Marketing Department of a institution that has been around for 50 years.  Every year over a million bucks flows into this insitution fron ticket and subscription sales.

I have talked to a lot of the single ticket buyers and subscribers and I can tell you for a fact that they don't fork over that cash because they love a particular show.

The love/know/care about the institution.

Or to be more specific, they love/know/care about the people in the insitution.

Maybe it's the artistic director.

Maybe they have a favorite actor.

Hell, you would be amazed at the love our house manager gets.

If all you are doing is selling a particular stage play, or dance routine, or painting, or sculpture without helping your audience to get to know the people behind the work, then you'll be like the Olympics without all those "people" segments.

Just a bunch of nameless, faceless people going around doing stuff.

 

Beware The Empty House - Part 2: Tips For Filling It Up

Read Part 1 Here:

Alright, let's look at some strategic things you can do to avoid an empty (or sparsely attended) performance house.  And stay with me as you read the post, it may be a slightly bumpy ride for some but it will make sense at the end.

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1.  Know what you are up against

Let's imagine a theatre company that is planning their upcoming season.  Their inital intention is to do a musical in September 2008.  But instead of just sticking that show in the September slot, they do a bit of research.

Turns out that 10 other theatres (five of them large theatres) are doing a musical around the same time they had planned on doing their musical.

So this may be a good time for this theatre to ask themselves, "Do we really want to do this musical in September?"

Now there may be plenty of good reasons why the answer to that question is Yes.

There may also be some damn fine reason why moving that show to a different time may be the best move.

The important thing is that you have thought about because often times artistic performances fail to draw an audience because they were the wrong show at the wrong time.

2.  Track Your Sales

Yes, tracking your sales is an important part of building an audience.  I'll explain why in a sec but first let me talk about what I mean by tracking.

Most artists and arts orgs use some form of online box office or rent space in a venue that has a box office.

What's important is that somebody is collecting the sales reports that these things generate and keeping track of how sales are doing.

It can be as simple as keeping an excel sheet with the date and sales on that day.  It could look like this

8/20/08                      $198

8/19/08                      $320

Here is why that matters:

Let's say that you are looking at sales and you see a performance two weeks from now that have very low ticket sales.  Now you have the time to figure out a way to fill up those seats.

A lot of organizations, particularly smaller ones, wait until a day or two before a show opens and then go nuts trying to fill up a house.

By then, it is likely too late.

Tracking sales allows you to see what performances dates have the potential to be empty and gives you times to address the problem.

Here's another cool things tracking sales allows you to do.  Imagine I add a third column to my "sales tracker" excel spreadsheet and now it looks like this:

8/20/08               $198

8/19/08               $320                            Print Ad In Newspaper X ran on 8/19

Did you notice that?  I added a column where I placed any advertisement I did on that particular day.

Now we not only have way of tracking sales to avoid empty house, we are also have a basic way of seeing how effective our advertising and promotion is.

As we track sales over a period of time if we notice a sales bump every time we ran in Newspaper X but don't see a bump when we run in Newspaper Y, then we have a better idea on how to spend our advertising dollars.

3.  Know Your Sales History (if you have it)

Yesterday, we sold $921 worth of tickets to our show that opens on Sept. 11

Now here's the question . . . is that number good or bad?

Without some context, i.e. sales history for similar shows we have done, we don't really know.

I understand that some organizations are very small/low on resources so they may not have kept a record of how sales were 2 or 3 years ago.  That's fine.  But that's no reason not to start.

Think of it this way, if you follow step 2 and start tracking sales and then keep updating those records for a year or two, suddenly you have usable sales history.

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Alright let's try to put all these pieces together:

We talked yesterday about how an empty performance house can have a negative impact on the few people that did show up.

If you are only getting twenty people in a space for a show, the ability to draw in just a few more people can make a HUGE difference because now the house is no longer empty . . . it may not be full, but it isn't empty.

Now if you look at three steps I outlined today you see that the key to avoiding empty houses is proper planning

Proper planning means not putting your artistic performance in a slot where there is so much competition that it doesn't stand a chance of being seen (Step 1)

Proper Planning means keeping an watchful eye on your ticket sales so that you can spot problem performances and deal with them LONG BEFORE THEY ARRIVE (Step 2)

Proper Planning means knowing your sales history so that you can decide in advance whether or not a problem performance is REALLY a problem performance (Step 3)

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Yesterday I promised that I would teach you have to fill up a house, even with short notice.

I lied about that.  Sorry.

The truth is, all the ways to fill up a house on short notice are really bad.  You have to give away tickets, or charge so little for them that it's basically the same as giving them away.

If you follow the three steps I gave above, then you will not have to worry about doing anything with short notice, instead you'll have plenty of time to think of a plan, execute it and avoid the nightmare of an empty house

 

Beware the empty house: Part 1

An empty seat.

As an arts marketer, I hate those damn things.

Every time I see an empty seat I think of money lost . . . of opportunity lost.

So while I except that empty seats are a fact of life for 99.5% of the artists and arts orgs our there, I still don't like them.

But I have an additional, slightly different, reason for hating empty seats.

You'll hear people often talk about the negative psychological effect an empty house has on the artists on stage . . . and you'll certainly hear about the effect it has on the bottom line.

But what I have noticed over the years is that an empty house has it's biggest negative impact on the few people who decided to see your show that night.

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I think back to my Executive Director days.  It was a bad night for us.  We had maybe 20-30 people in a venue that held 220.  To me, that's empty.

The Chairmen of our Board showed up that night (isn't that always how it works?) and he pulled me to the side.

I expected a lecture about the low attendance and I got it, but not the way I expected.

He said "Adam, you've got to get more people in here, because if you don't, the few people that DO show up will think they made a bad decision by coming here."

That statement is actually deeper then it appears. 

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Let's say you are watching TV.  You turn to a basketball game.  When you turn to the game you see a TON of empty seats.  Yeah, there are a few people there . . . but mostly you see empty seats.

What's your first impression of the home basketball team?

That they aren't very good.  Otherwise more people would be there.

So if someone buys a ticket to your dance recital and they walk in the venue and only see a few people in the seats, what's going to be the first impression of your work?

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The point I'm making here is that people are influenced by numbers. 

Small numbers influence them to think one way.

Larger numbers influence them to think another way.

So one of the best skills any artists or arts org needs to develop is the ability to fill up a house.

And let's be clear here . . . the house doesn't need to be full, it just can't EVER, EVER, be empty.

Tomorrow I'll offer some tips on how to fill up your house, even on short notice.

The Best of The Blog - Right Up Front

On the home page of the blog, I have added  some links to my more popular posts.  I also have a link to my free ebook, Three Tips For Making More Money From Your Art.

Needed: Web Designer

Consider this an open call from some help:

I need a web designer to help me build a site that will allow me to do the following:

1.  Host this blog.

2.  Host any ebooks I write

3.  Capture emails from people who visited the site

4.  Handle some basic ecommerce (i.e. taking Paypal payments)

A good example of how I want the site to function is available at sethgodin.com .  It's simple, functional and it gets the job done.  I don't need fancy bells and whistles.

The ideal designer for this project would be someone with a passion for web design, can work quickly and has some ideas about what good web design is (and isn't). 

He/she doesn't need to be a full time web designer, or even that experienced . . . I'm just fine with someone who wants to take this project on to add to their portfolio.  Maybe even a professional artist that does web design as a hobby.

I got money.  I'll pay for good work, but this isn't a "get rich" project. 

What I can promise the designer is a little money in his/her pocket, a client (me) that respects them as a professional . . . and when the completed website gets seen by the world, I'll make sure they know you were the one that made it happen.

If you are interested email me at mission.paradox@yahoo.com and let me know why you want the job. 

Blogging In House

My day job now has a blog which you can read here.

It has been a processing bringing the blog to life and it taught me a few lessons that I can share.

For any blog to effective, it has to be timely, candid and generally worth reading.

Organizations shouldn't see a blog as a marketing tool.  It isn't.  We did start a blog thinking it would help us sell tickets.

Blogs are communication tools.  Not marketing tools.

The hardest thing for any organizational blog to achieve is the candid part.

Organizations, even us noble arts orgs, are trained to only let the world know so much about what we are doing.

When we talk about the show, we say how great the actors are.

When we talk about a playwright, we mention what a joy they were to work with.

While privately, we may feel like the show sucks and we wish the playwright would be get hit by a train.

A good blog is a place where at least some of those "internal feelings" need to come out.

So check out the blog and see if it meets the standard I have for good blogging.

If it doesn't, let me know.

Time's Up

At my day job, the first show of the season begins Sept. 11

That means the most important days to me, as the marketer of the show, are the days between now and September 11.

Every ticket we sell (you sell) before the performance begins is a GREAT sale because once the event begins, everything is up for grabs.

The show could be fantastic and you sell out every seat.

Or it could be a dud.

As a marketer, you can't control that.  What you can control is how many people are willing to commit money to an event, before the event actual begins.

In many ways, I see my job as an arts marketer the way a theatre director does.

Once the show is open, I'm done with it.  Or at least, I should be done with it.

If the show is going on and I'm still actively trying to find new ways to sell tickets, then something has gone wrong.

There are a couple of lessons for you, if you agree with where I'm coming from.

1.  Start Marketing Early - As a rule, I like promotion material to start being in front of people's eyes 8-12 weeks before an event begins.  But if you can go earlier, even better.  For example, if you come to our show in September, you'll get a postcard telling you about the show in January.

2.  Give yourself enough time to market an event.  Before the event begins, time is a marketers friend.  When the event starts, time is the marketers enemy.

Some New Friends

It's my civic duty as a blogger to occassionally introduce you to cool blogs.

So here are two:

First, Extra Criticum.  It's a place to get thoughtful commentary on the performing arts.  It's a very cool site (and I love the pink color on the site)

Second, we journey to LA to check out Mick Montgomery's blog, The Art of Function.  The blog focuses on creativity and how we use it in every day life.

Check them out.

Patience and Luck

Seth Godin on patience and luck