Arts Marketing - Essential Internet Marketing Top Tips for marketing your arts event/organisation
1. Plan and research – have a vision and a marketing strategy from very early on in the development of your idea (event/organisation) and understand how this vision and strategy fits with your intended audience.
2. Know your audience – your online marketing strategy should target those groups of people that are more likely to respond to your marketing message. In essence you are talking to people that want to listen to you, so understand your audience's needs.
3. Online networking - use other arts organisations networks to cross promote. This is an efficient way of getting your marketing message to a wider targeted audience. Grow your online community using online social media tools. These tools are free, efficient, easy to use and very effective.
4. Talk to people at every opportunity – don't under estimate the value of word of mouth marketing, integrated with e-mail marketing of course.
5. E-mail marketing – keep it personal and targeted. Do not do group e-mails. Do not spam. Make sure you understand the legal implications of e-mail marketing.
6. Have a web presence (not having a virtual presence can put doubts in people's mind about how serious you are). Keep your website up to date, make it engaging (and usable), interactive (web 2.0 features) and integrate with your e-mail marketing, for example, signpost from your e-mail to your website, follow through with call to action i.e. book this event tab.
7. Don't do it alone, have a team around you with complimentary skills to you. Invest time in marketing your event from the very beginning, it's not just about putting up a poster 3 weeks before your actual event. It's more effective if you co-ordinate your marketing from the very start using the help of experienced people and a variety of online tools.
8. Don't do DIY marketing, poorly designed posters/flyers do more damage than good to your arts event/organisation.
9. Make sure you have good PR contacts and links to local and national media. Produce professional press releases - journalists/publications want to fill their pages and more likely to promote your event/organisation if you make it easy for them. They will also want good images to accompany the press release.
10. Learn from what worked and most importantly what didn't work. Evaluate your online marketing strategy in order to improve it the next time around.