In the book The Experience Economy we are reminded that work is theater and every company can find inspiration from the performing arts. So why is it that many arts organizations make theater feel like work? It is time for the arts to flip the tables and find inspiration from some of the organizations we helped inspire.
Last Wednesday, those lucky enough to attend the AEE Open Forum, had the opportunity to hear from Denis Weil, Vice President of Concept and Design at McDonald’s Corporation. This imaginative thinker reminded us all that customer experience design methods and practices are not strange foreign business tools that never apply to the arts. In fact it is art. Creating a complete experience eliminates distractions and allows audiences to focus and the art to work harder. McDonald’s is surly a leader in its dedication to studying and improving these experiences, but Weil insists that his ideas do not only apply to big organizations, but they represent a entrepreneurial mindset that can apply directly to the arts.
Enter the Immersive Experience Model. Weil suggests these 5 tools are a way of looking at your customer service journey and for McDonald’s they work to ensure brand loyalty. Here in a nutshell are Weir’s “5 Tools of the Trade.” Hopefully they will inspire your organization to examine your own experience practices.
5 Tools of the Trade
1) Focus on the Customer Journey
You must understand how people interact with your service and the different ways customers use you. In Weil’s slide presentation (click here to see it) he explains McDonald’s Service Blueprint, a system the company uses to analyze every moment a customer spends in contact with the store. Before you can get to the burger you have to enter the store and after you eat it you have to exit and even before that you figure out what you want is McDonald’s. You have to think about it all. The biggest lesson is to be intentional. And remember it is not just about adding things, sometimes it is about eliminating things
Arts Example: Joshua Prince-Ramus’ design for The Seattle Public Library applies focusing on the customer to architecture. He asked the library team to identify all the different uses of the library Those uses were then organized based on the number of times patronts were using the space for a specific purpose, and the bulding was designed accordingly. Watch the presentation here.
2) Tell a Story
Weil shared that McDonald’s has a story that has changed over time. From the beginning the company has a comprehensive approach to running a business. When the company expanded and added departments and the center of communication shifted, the original approaches had to change. These kinds of shifts are subject to the evolution of a culture. At one time preparing hamburgers in an open kitchen with an industrial process was a good thing. It insured quality. Today, industrial processes hold different connotations.
An important part of any story is the ritual. This is particularly important for McDonald’s or any organization with a big staff turn around or large volunteer groups. It gives returning customers something to hold on to. Think about how all McDonald’s bags come double folded. These little touches can go a long way.
Arts Example: Chicago Symphony Orchstra’s Afterwork Master Works cioncert series. The musicians don’t wear tales, the conductor speaks, and drinks are served at end. The story is, “ we want you to come to symphony after work and it is going to look and feel like something you want to go to after work”
3) The System, stupid!
There is a difference between component design and system design. A component has a specific function and solution. You can easily detail the design based on set criteria. What will this counter be used for and what will it look like?
To design a system is more difficult. You must have a goal, then test strategies and principles to get you to that goal. How will the production of this hamburger work and interact with the other components of the kitchen and “front of house?” In so many ways, this is the EXPERIENCE of Experience Design.
Arts Example: The Detroit Institute of Art has taken a look at the ways people interact with different periods and styles of art. Instead of treating all art the same, each section has its own feel. Information on contemporary art can be found on computer kiosks, while the modern art uses projected titles to group similar or related work. (see the photos in the slide show)
4) Experiment
McDonalds is a leader in experimentation. From its Innovation Center (located in the corner of a happy meal toy warehouse), the company can simulate any kind of situation from anywhere in the world to ascertain the impact of speed and productivity. They can recreate pick-up windows, interactions at the counter, and any kind of kitchen configuration. The objective is to make every moment in the store hold as much impact as possible. With or without the Innovation Center, surely arts organizations can see the importance of thinking through an evperience and do some kind of testing.
One important thing to remember is that this is not a focus group, it is an experience. Ideally you want to talk with a customer during the interaction and ask them to talk out loud about what is happening to them and how they are feeling.
Arts Example: The Art Institute of Chicago’s Red Cube Project asks participants to find 500 red boxes hidden throughout the city and document the hunt with social media. If the goal is to increase social media's impact on audience engagement, this project gives AIC one measurable event to test the effectiveness of audience participation on electronic platforms.
5) Imagine Far, Plan Near
Be clear about your final destination but dream a little. Free yourself from restraints for a little while and dream. What could our organization be? Weil tells us , “If you only make incremental changes you never get to your final destination.”
McDonald’s knew it had to become a coffee destination to compete with changing markets. Although they started these efforts in Australia (they are now the largest coffee provider Down Under), the process of making McDonald’s a coffee destination in the US only started a few years ago. First they improved coffee, then ice coffee, and now they provide the complete McCafe. Once the final destination was chosen, the company developed a clear path to take them there.
Denis Weil and McDonald’s methods are important to understanding how people want to interact with you. These practices apply just as effectively to corporate America as they do to arts organizations. I encourage you to think about these ideas and use them. ANd plese keep us informed on your thoughts, your successes, and your failures. As an arts community we have much to learn from each other.
After Weil’s presentation he conducted three “Fishbowl” consultations. Check back here shortly to read some of the ideas they sparked in our fish.
Customer Service and front of house experience is something the folks at The House talk about all the time. We probably talk about it too much. But it's a challenge a lot of itinerant theatre companies face and we're no different: how to put your stamp on the lobby of a building you don't own so your patrons -- first timers or returning customers -- not only want to come back, but know how, and when.
The House started out pretty iconoclastic where front of house experience was concerned. Not only did the lobby of the Viaduct (the House's original home) feel more like a bar than a theater, there were no tickets and no programs. Instead, The House used trading cards -- a full deck constituted the program and a single card served as a ticket. This was a way of saying, "We're not your typical theater company." And it worked.
Fast forward to today. We have a new home at the Chopin Theatre in Wicker Park. The lobby feels more like a coffee shop than a bar, but we've tried to make the experience of coming to a House show feel like coming to a rock show. We ask our volunteer ushers to NOT ask our patrons to turn off their cell phones as they enter the show (who wants to get yelled at the second they enter a theater?). We purposely hire younger box office and house managers. We still use trading cards as individual tickets and sell full decks (complete with wrapper and -- sometimes, if we're feeling generous -- gum) at the ticket window. Our merchandise is sold out of a locked cabinet that gets opened during intermission and at the end of the performance. We sell 1" buttons, silk-screened show posters, and try, when we can afford to, to get everything designed by Chicago graphic artists who make posters for rock shows.
The Viaduct had the same set of bathrooms for actors and patrons. So even though we moved venues we've adopted the "no actor bathrooms" philosophy. Before the show and during intermission the cast hangs out in costume at the bar. And our curtain speech, performed impromptu nightly by an actor in the show, is welcoming, friendly, and only contains a brief reminder to silence your beepers.
However the feeling of a rock show doesn't inform our audience about who we are -- about how they can return to see more of our shows, which is an important part of lobby design, we realized.
So we have introduced traditional programs into the mix -- but we design our own. We've also introduced a donation box in our lobby to collect spare change on the way out of the theater. It's very DIY -- just a Plexiglas box with a pair of shoes from an old House show and a sign that says, "Help us cover our costs." And with our next show we'll again start selling subscriptions right in the theater at intermission, as the "subscription packet" we offer is just a rock poster with three tear-off tickets -- something you can buy at the show and bring home.
Despite all this we do sometimes feel like we're fighting an uphill battle -- with no permanent home and an ambiguous name like "House," people still sometimes think the Chopin is responsible for the performance they're seeing. But we try to make every person-to-person interaction with our company branded and hope something sticks.
I hope you will come check out the House experience for yourself and let us know what your customer experience is like. And if you are reading this blog…which you are, use the discount code “ArtsEngagementExchange” to get $10 tickets to any Thursday or Sunday performance of our current show Wilson Wants It All. (Purchase online or call 773.251.2195)
Over the next few months AEE will focus on an extremely crucial component in our efforts to attract and retain new audiences…CUSTOMER SERVICE.
Kicking things off will be the February 24th Open Forum: Beyond the Art: Build Audiences by Designing Branded Experiences at all Touchpoints. We will be hearing from Denis Weil, Vice President, Concept and Design at McDonald’s Corporation and he will be offering fishbowl consulations to three organizations. (We will hear more form those fish in later posts.) Make your reservations early!
Following the Open Forum, will be two learning circles on the topic of customer service. Applications are now being accepted for participation in these valuable workshops. Click on an event to learn more or to apply.
In addition to these workshops and events, you will be hearing from peers and experts on the AEE blog, so we hope you will check back regularly. And to get ourselves in the customer service spirit (sounds fun huh?), check out a few of the articles below that we think will help spark ideas, questions, and solutions regarding how you relate to your customers and how they relate to you and your venue.
Customers Demand Engagement : From campaign- to consumer-centric
From eMarketer.com, 1/29/10
“According to the Alterian "Annual Survey 2009" report, marketers must move from siloed campaigns to listening to and communicating with consumers across channels.”
Email Collection Must Be a Top Priority
Posted by Erik Gensler on the blog of his company, Capacity Interactive, 9/26/09
“Your box office staff should be required to ask for an email address. You can have the staff ask ‘Would you like to join our email list to receive news and special offers?’”
Think outside the point of sale. Customer Service is about the physical space as well: Obstacles speed up exiting crowds
From Discovery.com, 11/30/09
"If you've been to a big concert, or a ball game, with a big crowd of other people, you know what happens when it's time to leave. No matter how big the exit is, everybody gets jammed up and it goes really slowly. Engineers in Japan have been looking at what's going on and how to fix it."
A pleasant front of house experience will bring your audience back again and again and help identify your brand. It can also help grow your audience by reaching out to new constituencies you may had overlooked, such as customers with disabilities. Learning best practices for your front of house, and making ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) improvements may jump start that ideal Box Office experience.
Inspired by this idea and OPEN DOORS' workshops "Inclusive Arts and Culture Project", I knew that The Department of Cultural Affairs had to further this cause by making all theaters accessible and user friendly. I am not talking about the physical requirements that we all know we should be offering. That's the easy part. It's the simple customer service gestures that makes everyone's experience important. Take for instance that annoying clip board that been kicking around you desk for years. Pull it out and bring it to your box office. This can be a valuable tool for anyone needing a flexible writing space. There are so many simple tips like this one which cost us nothing but create long lasting patronage to our theaters.
I hope that anyone interested in exploring these issues will join us for our THEATER AT WORK FORUM on February 1st at 6pm. The event is free so please come be part of this important conversation. Click here for more informaton and I look forward to seeing you there.
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Claire Geall Sutton is the Director of Theater for the Department of Cultural Affairs
Many of you may have followed the Chase Community Giving Program on Facebook. With this project Chase claims, “We’re exploring a new way of charitable giving – harnessing the power of social media to give individuals and communities a voice in corporate philanthropy.” So engaging your audience and testing the limits of your network were crucial to winning one of one hundred $25,000 grants and becoming a finalist for the $1,000,000 prize.
Out of more than 500,000 charitable organizations, only two Chicago arts organizations received the first round prizes and are in the running for the big check. Congratulations The New Colony and Sideshow Theatre Company. When many larger (much larger) organizations were dismissing the opportunity as too big a project to undertake, these scrappy bands of theater makers took up arms and successfully energized their patrons.
I followed up with both companies to learn a little bit more about their tactics to engage and gather online votes. Here is what they had to say:
Sideshow employed a variety of tactics to engage our audiences and collect votes and we had a really good time doing it!
We not only messaged our friends and family constantly - through email, Facebook messages, and personalized notes, but also through phone calls. Sideshow has a full on phone-a-thon each year to stay connected with our donors and we used that opportunity to ask for support. It took off like wildfire - we encouraged our supporters to become advocates and help us get more votes. From there, supporters spiraled out into their communities and campaigned on our behalf. It was amazing and touching. We contacted friends, acquaintances, and family who have blogs and other websites and requested postings. We contacted our alumni associations (both university and high school!) and got some support there. We then reached out directly to the community - we camped out all day at a local coffee shop, with our computers ready to directly collect votes. We talked for hours about who we are, our upcoming projects, and gained a lot of exposure just chatting with a laptop over coffee.
The more we could personalize how we reach out to our community, the more support we gained. People got to learn more about Sideshow, but they also learned about who we are personally and individually. We are giving Sideshow faces to go with the name.
Andy Hobgood (Artistic Director; The New Colony)
When we saw Chase Giving, we actually waited until 10 days before voting ended to start. We wanted to see the scale of voting before we defined our campaign – did we need 2,000 votes to win? Or 20,000? We are always careful about only engaging our supporters when we know their efforts will be worth their time. As soon as we saw that we COULD win Chase Giving if we got at least 1,500 votes – we sprang into action.
Our main strategy was to define for our supporters WHAT Chase Giving would mean to us. They needed to know WHAT they were voting for – and why they should be as passionate about us winning as we were. We alerted our whole network of the opportunity, but then we took the extra step of contacting members of the network who were gatekeepers to other large networks. By getting them onboard with how much of an impact they could actually make for our company – they then became ambassadors of TNC to their own networks.
The Sunday night before voting closed - we had the entire company at HQ working on computers, spread all over the place. Everyone just worked together calling friends, emailing, facebooking, etc. I seriously should have taken pictures - it was absurd. People were in the living room, dining room, bedroom, foyer, sharing computers, some were on "making snacks" duty in the kitchen while others were working, it was a lot of fun.
Once our supporters started sharing our message, which was now also their message, the votes came rolling in and won us the $25,000. It all came down to defining a goal that everyone wanted to be a part of reaching, and then empowering them to help us reach it.
Now both of these deserving organizations need your help to reach their goal of $1,000,000. You get up to five votes, so follow these links and show our fellow Chicagoans some love. And there is only 3 DAYS LEFT!!! So tell your friends
Vote for The New Colony by clicking here
Vote for Sideshow Theatre Company by clicking here
I am the director of an organization called Accessible Contemporary Music that exists to promote the music of contemporary composers through, among other things, live performances each year in several different venues around town. As such I am always working to expand and diversify the audience for our concerts and to introduce new people to contemporary Classical music. In my mind there is an ideal but highly elusive group of people I am especially interested in reaching that I think of as FINDs, short for Friendly, Intelligent, Neglected and Diverse.
FINDS are generally educated, curious, open to new experiences and are interested in the arts but don’t necessarily interact with them on a regular basis. Because they don’t regularly attend plays or go to concerts or museums, FINDs can be hard to reach in the traditional way, but they make perfect audience members because when they do come out they are enthusiastic and happy, even grateful, to have been exposed to a new experience. And if you can get them out the first time, they are likely to return.
But finding them is difficult. They are like skittish animals on a nature show. There is no one habitat in which they can be found, no one hobby or defining characteristic pinpointing them. However, I recently encountered a whole herd of FINDs at once and it got me thinking.
My wife is a designer of fashionable handbags for women who bike and as such has become very active in the biking community. When she was invited to go on a “cocktail bike ride” and asked me to come, it sounded like a lot of fun.
The idea was that we would dress sharp from the waist up but wear practical clothing that allowed for safe and comfortable biking from the waist down. We would bike to four tony restaurants or bars, have a drink at each and then hopefully not crash on the way home.
We showed up to the first place a little late and sat at a table with three other people. We ordered a light dinner and drinks and started talking. We were sitting with a graphic designer, a lawyer and a Columbia College professor. As I talked to them and told them about ACM it became clear to me that these people were FINDs. They did not know much about contemporary Classical music but were very interested when I talked about it. They had been to the Modern Wing and a play here and there but did not regularly attend arts events.
Everyone I met that night was the same way. Without exception they were intelligent, interested in the arts and open to new experiences but completely under-utilized. I exchanged cards with everyone I talked to and several of them joined ACM’s email list. I have seen three of the people I met that night at our concerts and they were thrilled to have been turned on to something they didn’t know about before. Each of them has brought someone else and has told me that they now forward our email newsletters to their circle of friends.
I have found that promoting our live events face to face in social situations is an effective and lasting way to create a connection with this type of under-utilized audience member who would never have heard about the organization otherwise.
Since that night I have encountered FINDs in wine tastings, book clubs and in my Spanish class. I joined the Ravenswood Chamber of Commerce and met them at our community events. I have seen them taking guitar classes at the Old Town School. There is a lecture series at a bar called the Map Room that is especially popular with FINDs.
The truth is that FINDs are everywhere but they have to be engaged on their own territory. They don’t respond to mass mailings or impersonal marketing techniques. Friends and socializing are important to them and they want to feel they’re part of a community. It’s a lot of work to go to these events after business hours but I have found that it’s worth it. FINDs are loyal, curious, often connected to large networks and they have been mostly overlooked by arts groups. They are the audience we as arts promoters most need to tap into.
But we’ll have to do it the old fashioned way: in person and face to face.
I’m excited to be able to share some of what TimeLine Theatre has been able to do using Return-On-Investment measurements. Through an AEE Learning Circle with Philippe Ravanas in 2007, and a generous implementation grant from the Chicago Community Trust, we have been able to build a solid foundation and start creating effective tools to measure ROI.
Over the next few blog posts I will share portions of a presentation I gave at the recent National Arts Marketing Project Conference about how TimeLine has been using ROI. I was thrilled at the response I have gotten (in fact I’ve been asked to give it again at another NAMP-sponsored workshop in Minneapolis in April, maybe I’ll see some of you there), and I hope you find this useful in jump-starting your efforts.
Some of this may be elemental, but it is a really good look at the kind of practical tools you can take away from the Learning Circles. Look for information about the next round of Learning Circles coming soon. I highly suggest you sign up.
First, a little about TimeLine Theatre. We are in the midst of our 13th season as Chicago’s only theater company dedicated to presenting stories inspired by history that connect with today’s social and political issues. We produce four mainstage productions running at 7-9 weeks each, plus a play-reading series and occasional off-night productions. This is a large challenge with just four full-time employees to keep it all going, although we do have part-time front-of-house and technical staff, plus approximately 100 artists who work on our shows during a season.
Recently we completed a six-month, sold-out run of our Chicago premiere of Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, to which I give credit for a nearly 50% increase in subscriptions this season. The success of productions like these supports TimeLine’s ambitious goals. Our annual operating budget has risen at a rate of approximately 15% per year for the past several seasons; for 2009-10 our budget is approximately $800,000. Of the total, just under 10% is allocated to marketing. Due to the economy, our marketing budget was cut 16% from last season — I have to say that the knowledge gained from measuring ROI has kept the impact of those cuts to a minimum.
KEY LESSONS & FIRST STEPS
FIRST — The return-on-investment formula itself. You can refer to my slide show to see this formula. If this is the one thing you take away from these posts, you have a powerful new tool that can make a difference at your organization. (If you would like more details about Philippe's ROI Learning Circles visit our Resources Center by clicking here.)
Having this standardized, mathematical equation is incredibly helpful. In this case, math truly is your friend! Learn it. Use it regularly. By distilling any project down to one number — a percentage — it really does provide a simple way to compare diverse projects in terms of their costs vs. benefits.
SECOND — The need to embed tracking mechanisms into as many marketing efforts as possible. I’ll talk more about how I’ve used our database, simple paper coding as well as Google Analytics coding to track return-on-investment.
THIRD — The importance of keeping in mind both realized value (already realized sales) as well as potential value (future sales). Some projects are just as important for their ability to attract new customers who may not yet be tied to real dollars as for the actual sales they bring in over the course of a particular project. If you don’t remember this, the ROI formula can sometimes lead you astray.
FINALLY — I tried not to let myself get overwhelmed. I breathed. I measured one project. Then another. You can’t tackle your entire marketing mix at once, and I think you’re doomed to failure if you try. But every measurement taught me something. I made changes or different choices, and sometimes saw improvements. And I keep gradually adding to what I know.
For me, marketing has always been a fun game. But now instead of being essentially a game of chance, I’m much more playing a game of strategy.
THE POWER OF CODES
I started out tackling the more “traditional” marketing arenas — direct mail, subscription order forms, ticket sales. The only tools I needed: My audience database and tracking codes.
I was already using some codes but we seriously stepped it up so that I was putting codes on everything. You may already be doing this kind of thing. If not, a few ideas of how we implemented codes:
We set up every code we use in our database so it is recorded at the time a sale or donation is entered.
Finally, we created reports that connect the codes to actual dollars earned, in order to have totals from which to calculate ROI. Most are housed within the database and can be obtained with the running of a report. If you follow along on the attached slide show, you can see examples of reports for subscriptions and single tickets. If you spend some time at the start organizing how the codes are set up and how they connect to income, it will be fairly easy to extract the information when you need it.
EXAMPLE: Subscription form code “RenewMail1”. I probably spent less than $1,000 on this effort (stationery, envelopes, flyer, postage), but this single mailing to current subscribers asking them to renew for the following season garnered $68,000+ in income — or more than half the year’s total! Of course I always knew this simple mailing was important, but now I am aware that it is the single most valuable marketing communication we do each year.
My slide show in the Resources section includes several other examples of measurements via codes, including an analysis of several seasons of TimeLine’s subscription brochure, especially an assessment of the brochure’s impact in attracting new subscription orders.
For now, I think this may be enough to digest in one blog post. I will be back to continue this discussion. Stay tuned, next time we will talk about ROI as it relates to your “Online Toy Box.”
This holiday season the AEE is feeling the warm glow of friends. Consider the shoutout returned Gordon Mayer at Nonprofit Communicator Blog and Kerry Reid at Performink. We like you too.
But while those fuzzy holiday feelings warm us from the inside, we know that outside the walls of our respective institutions the snow has begun to fall and we are facing the challenges that come with holiday competition and year-end appeals. So we thought we would throw a Yule log on the fire and share these posts that caught our eye as the end of 2009 draws nigh.
So professional anxiety aside, we also face the personal anxiety of holiday shopping for our loved ones. I’m wondering if anyone out there has great gift ideas that allow us to communicate our appreciation to others while supporting the arts. Tickets, memberships, donations, merchandise…what are you gifting this season?
]]>The final session of our Learning Circle: “Asking the Right Questions: Using Research to Build Audiences” just finished so, before I sat down to write this article, I thought I’d review some other AEE blogs just to see if anything was relevant. The first one I found was a November 11 posting from Northlight Theatre’s Marketing Director Chad Peterson, blogging from the National Arts Management Project Conference held in Rhode Island. I got more than I bargained for. It is an affirmation that many of the same business issues Circle participants identified are shared, for better or for worse, with other arts organizations across the nation.
One point that Chad made really struck a chord,
“Customers are changing their decision-making process. As a result, there’s a shift fromcompany-driven marketing to consumer-driven marketing.”
In order to successfully market to arts consumers, questions must be answered first to find what is important and has value to them, and then, how and when to reach them. This is where “knowing how to ask the right question” enters the process.
Audience research is far more than merely an in-program survey with questions about demographics and “how did you learn about us,” perhaps only done to satisfy funding requirements. Purposeful audience research is fundamental to your entire operation, and as such, must be carefully planned and agreed upon throughout your organization. Effective research can lead you to understanding audience motivations and what is of value to them, identify new target audiences to target, make informed decisions on budgets, fundraising and promotion and recognize potential collaborations with other organizations
Circle participants learned the in-depth process of creating sound research including how to:
1. Identify their top marketing issues
2. Translate these issues into research questions to qualify and quantify solutions
3. Determine the most appropriate research techniques
4. Identify their research audience
5. Compose their survey questions
They heard success stories from two participating marketing directors who used what they learned in class to increase the number of completed research surveys and how to select and entice patrons to participate in 1:1 interviews.
The three presentations from the Learning Circles are in our resources you can link to them here.
Asking the right questions: Session 1
Asking the right questions: Session 2
Asking the right questions: Session 3
We encourage you to look through them to help you get started. If you have questions please feel free to start a thread in our forum or leave them as a comment on the blog. Not only will we answer but we’ll ask our Learning Circle participants to give their viewpoints. One thing we all learned is that research is a “team sport.” It’s a process that can be fine-tuned by discussing the issues with others whose organizations have similar research objectives to yours.
So, I’m really glad that I agreed to blog about my experiences at this most recent NAMP (National Arts Marketing Project) Conference in Providence, Rhode Island. Not necessarily because I’m a dedicated blogger, but because knowing that you’re going to have to pass on information has a tendency to focus your energies in a way that merely absorbing a presentation does not. It activates your listening—at least that’s been my experience, and that was certainly the case at NAMP.
I’d strongly encourage anyone who can to attend in the coming years—if you’re anything like me you’ll get far more out of it than you would just reading the synopsis of some guy who happened to be there…
But, I was there, and here’s some of what I came away with:
The main thing that popped for me, which was reiterated over the course of the conference, was the change in consumer behavior—ranging from how they learn about their options to how they communicate and interact with us to what they expect out of us. Here’s a quick distillation (taken in large part from the Keynote Address by David Court of McKinsey & Company, and the Plenary lunches over the next few days) but with addendums gleaned over the rest of the weekend as well):
Customers are changing their decision-making process. As a result, there’s a shift from company-driven marketing to consumer-driven marketing. Essentially, you have to be ready when they make the decision to come to you.
These days, we can’t depend on the traditional process of establishing awareness, then building brand familiarity, then customer loyalty. Now, patrons consider an initial set (and a strong brand will still put you in this initial set), add or subtract options, then actively evaluate each to reach their decision.
So we, as organizations, have to answer some questions: What happens when a consumer makes the decision to come to us for information or to purchase a ticket or subscription. How easy is that process for them? What is our point of sale impression for last-minute ticket buyers, both online and in person? How can we make sure that we are visible when they make their final decision? How can we take control of their purchasing experience?
Further, different people make decisions in different ways and must be marketed to in ways that address the differences in their decision making processes, and we need to be aware that their needs and desires will change based on their current level of engagement with the organization. When crafting our message, we must be aware of the multitude of different decision-making journeys and customize our message to appeal to those different segments.
This leads us to two things—segmentation and customer experience—neither of which is a new concept, but both of which are becoming more and more important as the consumer takes further control of their individual process. It is imperative that we not only provide top-of-the-line customer service that matches a patrons expectations, both at the point of sale (whether online, on the phone or in person) and at the point of engagement (show attendance, etc.), but also that we put ourselves in a position to be noticed when the patron makes the decision to explore their options. Further, we must be adept at tailoring our message to appeal to the patron segment that we are reaching with it. We must recognize that our brand and message will interact with everyone slightly differently and adapt to that—put our messages into their words. In addition, we must fine tune our timing. Once we are familiar with our patron segments, and how they respond to our message, we must make sure that they get the right message at the right time—what method of communication works best at each point in their journey?
In real terms, for me, this boils down to: THIS is when a long-term subscriber wants to receive a message about how glad we are to have them as a part of the organization and need their renewal commitment for the coming season, but THIS is when a multi-show Single Ticket Buyer wants to hear about the upcoming shows to pick which they want to see and perhaps consider a package should the line-up and benefits prove worthy, and THIS is when a one time buyer wants to hear about the next show and how convenient it is to get here and buy a ticket at the last minute, etc. etc. etc. These senses of timing may not fit the institutional calendar (“But we need subscription money to start coming in by X date!”), but we have to ask ourselves whether we’re missing out on revenue because our carefully crafted message is reaching someone who isn’t inclined to respond to it in the way we’ve framed it, or is reaching someone who is likely to respond to it, but is reaching them at the wrong time…
Our best weapons in accomplishing all of this are clarity and authenticity. The best way to be heard above the noise of the marketplace is to be so clear that you rise above the clamor. We must eliminate confusion and avoid misperceptions, and always strive for that clarity of message.
A chorus that I heard over and over was the need for personalized messaging (which luckily is becoming easier and cheaper to realize, as printer capabilities grow and there’s more competition in the sphere of variable data printing), and the need to test as much as you can. How can you know whether your piece is messaged correctly for a targeted patron segment, if you’re not asking them, or observing how they react? In an industry where the data can be so easily skewed by a breakaway hit show (was it the photo and tagline you used for the show, or was that show just going to explode regardless of what you did?), testing is an imperative.
Bringing those questions home and asking them again in our Theatre brings us closer to beginning to shape our plans for this and coming seasons.
I hope reading this reawakens these questions for you (even if they’re questions you were already aware of, returning to them from time to time can serve to keep you on task and on target). And I encourage you to attend the next NAMP Conference.