Arts Intranet

The 2019 National Arts Marketing Project Conference in Miami, FL was my first arts administration conference and I had a wonderful time! As an individual artist cultivating diverse audiences as well as an entrepreneur serving clients across the arts ecosystem, #NAMPC was the most ideal professional development for both my artistic and administrative growth. 

Gaps in perception. Limitations of perspective. Failings of imagination. We can call them many things, but we all have them. And when it comes to building audiences for our arts organizations, they can really cause us trouble.

Try taking a youngster to a museum. It’s not easy. Where will you put the stroller? What about the crackers and the Cheerios? Such practical thoughts, and others like them, run through the minds of people who are interested in participating in the arts—but haven’t yet committed.

If you could attract neophyte audience members and get them to return by buying them a glass of wine, wouldn’t you do it? And if it was even easier to get them to the next step, becoming regulars—say, all it took was greeting them by name—wouldn’t you do that?

Comprehensive marketing planning will help you know your consumers better, which will help you maintain deeper connections and relationships with them. The process, while rigorous, provides the best way forward to understanding all the issues surrounding marketing efforts.

To communicate effectively, it really helps to know who you’re communicating with. As an arts marketer communicating on behalf of an organization, audience research is one of the most important tools we have to understand who our audiences are and what they want.