Diversifying your audience? Diversify your marketing.
You can't keep doing the same thing and expect different results.
You know the saying that doing the same thing over and over and expecting something different to happen is the definition of insanity? Yeah. That’s true of marketing too.
Perhaps it doesn’t make you insane, but it certainly will be frustrating and potentially futile.
Expecting the marketing strategy you used for the last 20 years in your organization to magically produce some different audience members today is a bit like continuing to run many miles and expecting your biceps to become larger. That would be magical, and unlikely to occur.
If you want different people to come to your event/musical/show/studio/classes, you need to approach different people in different ways.
Post-COVID, there’s a fair bit of discussion in the arts world about audience members not returning to theatres and studios. This isn’t surprising. Pre-COVID, lots of folks who attended concerts, ballet, and theatre, were older people who had disposable income and time, who didn’t have child care commitments in the evenings, and wanted to spend time getting dressed up and seeing their friends in the lobby. Fair enough.
But now, lots of those people have opted out of big, crowded spaces. Some people lost jobs, or saw their income decrease over the course of the last several years. Some of your audience may have just become too old to think that heading out in the cold to the theatre is a thing they want to do. Or, maybe they’ve forgotten that they used to enjoy seeing the ballet and now prefer to sit with their cat and a book. Whatever the case is, if you are running an arts organization, you are likely feeling the push to go out and find some new audience members.
Let’s say the folks you want to introduce to the theatre/arts/ballet/fill-in-the-blank are from a different demographic. Maybe they’re younger, less white, and have kids. Maybe English is their second or third language. Maybe they don’t have as many grey hairs.
Putting up posters in the same locations, running the same radio ads that you always did pre-pandemic, aren’t going to attract new demographics.
Two things happened to me yesterday to really solidify this thinking.
The first was when I was on a call with a staff person at an HR department in a large, non-arts organization. They were trying to fill some positions, I was trying to get someone a job. I said I worked with a choir for newcomers, which is how I had come to know the person I was trying to get work for. The HR person sounded a bit surprised and said “I never would have thought to reach out to a choir for staff.”
So, (a), fine, I get it, it’s non-traditional. But (b) why not? Out there in the world is a captive audience of exactly the kind of people you want to attract. What’s stopping you from going out and getting them?
The second thing that happened is I went to a meeting with some other people with a volunteer-based arts org. We sat around and talked about basically what I said in the first 5 paragraphs above: audiences = old, not coming to concerts. Audiences need to = younger, diverse, interested in coming out at night. Great. Clear as day.
You want those different kinds of people to come out, you have to go get them, get them where they are (i.e. don’t expect them to come looking for you). And, you probably have to convince them a little bit why they should bother.
Want to get started? Let’s do it. Here are three tips to get you going:
If you want English-language-learners to come to your event, make a poster that uses graded English, along with your traditional poster. Put the poster with graded English* in places that are frequented by newcomers (libraries, literacy organizations, places of worship, etc.)
*If ‘graded English’ is a new term for you, no problem. This just means simplifying your English level. If you want some help doing this, check out my affordable membership options, and I’ll show you how (and even manage it for you!)
If you aren’t on social media in some form, find someone to help you and make it happen. You’re missing a chunk of your audience if you’re not on Instagram.
Go physically out into the world and connect with people who have your audience members. If you’re the HR person I talked about above, head out to the Newcomer Choir and recruit some workers! If you want kids and families to come to the ballet, go to your local dance studio and chat with them. Don’t forget the power of personal attention.
Ready to go, but still feeling a little stuck? Send me a note at info@orchardviewcoaching.com and let’s talk about it!