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By Michael Kilgore
It’s
a brave new world out there. Technology is changing daily, and we’re
scrambling furiously to keep up. Many of us in leadership positions are the
wrong age and at the wrong point in our careers to easily embrace change. At
the same time, we’re afraid that we’re going to miss the next big thing.
Here’s why technology is important. We have to deal with fragmentation of
media, decreased arts coverage in newspapers, competition for our patrons’
time and an on-demand, downloading, time shifting society.
Our younger audiences are children of the computer age. And they trust each
other more than they trust us or our advertising messages. We all need new
marketing items in our digital tool belt, like:
iTunes. You may just think of this as a way to manage your personal music
collection. But it has business applications, too. Build songs from your
upcoming Broadway season or a music series as a program. Then export that as
an iMix and publish the links in your blogs, e-mails and Web sites so people
can find yours among the 1.3 million iMixes already out there.
Search engine optimization. There are two ways to influence searches:
organically and for a fee. First, try to legitimately load up your site with
as much relevant content as you can. Research what affects changes in your
placements. Once you’ve done all you can organically, then figure out which
ad words you want (and can afford) to own. If you’re not on the first page,
you’re toast.
SMS (Short Message Service) or text messaging. It seems like a no brainer.
There are 200 million wireless subscribers, and 12 billion text messages
sent monthly. Eighty-five percent of those aged 18 to 28 text daily.
However, owning your own short code can be pretty expensive. If you find a
text-messaging company or radio station partner, it might be worth it to get
into the pool. Additionally, some think the upper age range of this segment
will fall back to e-mail once they get jobs and are working in front of a
computer all day.
Social networking sites. MySpace has 70 million people. Facebook has 35
million. Most of the college students I talk to only use Facebook. There’s
one school of thought that these mega-sites are just too big and that
ultimately people will gravitate to smaller, more specialized interest
sites. Additionally, as more and more marketing goes to these sites, so does
resistance.
E-mail. Not so new, but still useful. A recent Pew study released this year
found that 91 percent of Internet users between the ages of 18 and 64 read
and send e-mail. As always, e-mail needs to be targeted, relevant and
interesting, but done correctly, e-mails can still do the job.
Personalization services. We all send show information to people who have
attended before, but can we follow the Amazon and Netflix models and have
our customers give us even more information so we can customize what we send
them? For example, our marketing is based on what people have bought tickets
for be - fore. But what if somebody who indicated an interest in Rosanne
Cash could automatically get a pop-up for an upcoming musical called “Ring
of Fire”?
Podcasts. We have the ability to provide our own unique content on the Web
through podcasts, which can be just sound or sound and an image. The
technology is pretty simple and you can handle it in house. We try and
capture various entertainers and creative teams in a way that gives our
patrons some unique access.
Blogs. A blog is a Web diary and can be about anything. There are 1.6
million blog posts created daily, according to Newsweek. At the Tampa Bay
Performing Arts Center, we try to hold back the curtain and offer insights,
interviews and other information that might not make it into the mainstream
media. We also offer bits and links to Web sites and blogs of upcoming
artists. Remember to keep it fresh, interesting and a bit of a treat.
The key to your decision on what to employ should be based on the cost —
time and money—versus your results. Don’t be afraid to fall, but make sure
you constantly evaluate what you’re doing.
fm
Michael Kilgore is the vice president of marketing at the Tampa Bay
Performing Arts Center. He’s chair of the Performing Arts Center Consortium
marketing committee and co-chair of The Broadway League’s
road marketing
committee. |
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