This article was published in Museum News, July/August 1999.
By Thomas H. Aageson
During the late 1980s, Mystic Seaport, Mystic, Conn., found itself in the midst of a squall as the Northeast went into a deep recession. Changing demographics, such as increases in the number of families with two working parents and families divided by divorce, as well as higher costs of travel caused people to schedule shorter vacations. The shift in market winds was sighted at the museum's gate. More visitors were taking day trips, and they began arriving at Mystic Seaport later in the day. Market research conducted in 1989 revealed that more than half of the people approaching the gate after 1 p.m., turned away. By 4 p.m., four out of five had turned away. With little time to visit the museurn's 17 acres of exhibits, potential visitors found the $14 ticket price too steep, and they went off to other attractions.
In winter 1990, I (then Mystic Seaport's vice president for marketing and merchandising) led a museum-wide group, which included members of the local community, in a brainstorming workshop to address the museum's marketing problem. How could we get those afternoon visitors inside the gate and still advance our mission-to create a broad, public understanding of the relationship between America and the sea?
Out of that daylong gathering came the initiative to extend summer hours from 5 to 8 p.m. We decided to offer an experience to visitors who came during the summer evening hours that was different from the experience offered to visitors who came during the day. Our evening activities included a 19th-century magic show, Punch and Judy, hoop rolling, and children's games. The education department created the "product" and the "place" on the museum grounds where each experience was offered. Then the marketing department worked on the pricing and promotion, developing a creative advertising strategy and a media plan that targeted where the ads would run.
Mystic Seaport Summer Evening Hours was launched with a promotional program carried out on three levels. First, the marketing staff went to all local hotels, attractions, chambers of commerce, and visitors centers to introduce Mystic Seaport Summer Evening Hours. Then we directed a publicity campaign at the local and regional media, to inform them about the new program. Finally, we created an ad campaign for regional newspapers and media. Market research conducted during the summer of 1990 indicated that we were reducing turnaways by one-third in the early afternoon hours. Sales in the museum shop during evening hours covered additional costs and reached profitable levels immediately. Our marketing campaign was an immediate success because it came out of museum-wide planning.
Museum marketing is unique because museums have a mission to educate the public as well as build audience and revenue. Reconciling mission and market is at the heart of effective planning. With a good marketing plan, a museum can build an audience for museum programs as well as sustain the necessary revenues for delivering the mission in its fullest form.
Planning is as important to museum marketing as the execution of the campaign. As in any endeavor, marketing a museum without a plan scatters resources and confuses the visitor. An institution's annual marketing plan should target key audience segments, prioritize resources, layout a chronological action plan, create monitoring points, and set up an evaluation process.
An Effective Museum Marketing Plan
A marketing plan is built in five steps:
1. Situation Analysis
2. Determining Market Opportunity
3. Setting Marketing Objectives
4. Strategy and Program Development
5. Implementation, Monitoring, Evaluation
Do not begin to plan before you answer this basic question: What kind of experience does your museum offer to visitors? The answer is not an inventory of the museum's holdings, but a description of the activities the visitor can enjoy at the institution. For example, a museum might have 10,527 paintings, sculptures, and prints in its collection. Perhaps there are five galleries and two new exhibitions are scheduled in the coming year. Unfortunately, such a shopping list of assets will mean little to your potential customer. Instead, describe the collection in terms of the experience: "The visitor will view seven previously unseen artworks by Andrew Wyeth, which explain how he created his most famous painting,Christina's World." Or, "This new exhibit will put visitors behind a printmaking press, where they can experience the world of the artist at work."
1 Situation Analysis
Situation analysis is the first step in developing a strategic marketing plan. Surveying the museum's current context in terms of its marketplace lays the groundwork for the future.
First, find out about the museum's current customers. This is best answered by market research. Asking visitors for their zip codes, for example, can reveal a great deal about who goes to the museum during different periods of the year. Conduct an analysis that attempts to answer the following questions: Why do visitors come to the museum? Who makes the decision to come to the museum? When do visitors make the decision to come to the museum?1 The answers to these questions are very important because they can tell management where and when to advertise. For example, we collected zip codes at the ticket counter. Comparing zip codes over several years allowed us to quantify changes in attendance from areas where advertising had been concentrated each season.
Review how various societal values influence visitor attendance. For example, is attending a children's or science museum a family-driven decision? If, in a focus group, it is discovered that mothers influence the decision to attend your museum, the promotion strategy should be focused on reaching those decision-makers.
Review the political environment. How is local, state, or national legislation affecting the museum? For example, NEA funding issues may change exhibit schedules. An effort to tax admissions might affect pricing. New - arts legislation might free up marketing dollars. Or funds for marketing a future exhibit might be available from a new state tourism grants program.
Assess the economic environment. Economic upturns and downturns will influence visitorship, as will changes in the interest rate or regional changes in employment. Gasoline shortages can change travel patterns. Families with two working parents may not have a lot of time to spend in a museum. Rising marketing costs may seriously affect your museum budget.
Identify your competition, which can be very broad for museums.2 Competition for people's time-rather than for their money-is often the most serious obstacle to success. What other attractions are targeting your potential visitors? Knowing the answer to this question will lead to important marketing decisions. Mystic Seaport and Mystic Aquarium both compete with each other and encourage more people to visit the area, thus helping each other. Recognizing that fact encouraged staff to develop cross promotions that helped boost attendance at both institutions.
The physical environment also determines how you structure a marketing plan. Museums should pay attention to seasonal influences. Are there changing weather patterns in your area? For example, in 1998 El Nino affected outdoor events at some institutions. Factors like location, terrain of the site, accessibility, parking, and public transportation will affect the plan.
Technology is playing an increasing role in museum marketing plans. How will it impact your museum today and in the future? How can 1,000 hits at your Web site translate into more visitors on site? Evaluate your advertising promotions by tracking the time of arrival and origin of on-line visits. Capturing the user's name and address allows efficient follow-up "e-mailings," which help develop a relationship with the visitor.
Continue to analyze your institution's situation while you carry out the plan. Audit your marketing campaigns on an annual basis.3 The marketing audit will point to the strengths and weaknesses of your plan. Examine policies, structure, staff, resources, and objectives. Evaluate current marketing objectives, and determine whether goals have been met and the reasons for the results. Has the museum reached its target audience?
2 Market Opportunity
After examining your museum's current situation and the external influences on attendance, determine your potential audience. Look beyond the traditional market. For example, if the zip code data shows that residents in a major metropolitan area do not visit the museum, concentrate marketing efforts in that metro area during the coming year. Focus groups with non-visitor participants will tell you whether your exhibit and program concepts will motivate them to visit.
Decide if there are new markets the museum wants to attract. Then narrow the list by targeting key markets because resources will be limited. It is better to concentrate your budget than to spread it over several markets, which dilutes the effort. Separate markets by various categories, such as interests, age, season, geography, psychographic, or demographic descriptors. This information can be derived in part from zip-code analysis, using programs such as PRIZM.4 Each audience segment or niche is unique, whether families, school groups, senior citizens, ethnic groups, or tourists. Visitor surveys will help to identify your customer segments in terms of where they live, when they visit, and why they visit. The goal is to clearly define your target audience for next year's plan.
3 Setting Market Objectives
Begin with basic, broad objectives. State the overall attendance and revenue goal, and then break each into market segments. Spell out marketing initiatives that are critical and unique to the plan, such as promotions in a new market, marketing collaborations with local businesses, or a special exhibit. Mention new initiatives such as building alliances with other museums or testing combination ticketing.
Then get specific: What's the deadline for achieving various goals? Establish monthly and quarterly action plans. State the figures for the attendance and revenue goals you plan to achieve by the deadline. Determine how you plan to reach your target audience. If you've decided to buy weekend radio time to attract a particular market segment, for example, state that in the plan.
4 Strategy and Program Development
To develop the means for carrying out the plan, return to the "museum experience" mentioned above.Based on the experience offered by the museum and the profile of its customers, determine how you will present the institution to the public. First, develop a positioning statement. This is where the institution's mission and its marketing come together, and everyone in senior management should agree on the statement. Whether the museum is where "the tall ships are," or "the family learning experience," or "where science is fun," this is the key message that will create a lasting impression on people.
Once the marketing position is established, address the essential elements of the marketing mix: product, price, promotion, and place. Product is the description of what the museum will offer to the visitor during the coming year. The best way to describe the programs and the exhibits is through the experience that the museum creates for the visitor. For example, a program featuring rural basketmakers at a natural history museum should be described in terms of the experience the visitor will have interacting with the objects and meeting the artisans. Stress the benefits to the visitor.
Next comes the pricing strategy. Visitors have an inner calculator that tells them if their visit will be worth the price. The would-be customer balances the perceived benefits against the price and the time available for a visit. Setting prices is very important, and the pricing strategy must be clear. At Mystic Seaport, we tested pricing using strategies that included "second day free," offering free admission with membership, and rebates. Museums can err by basing prices on budgetary need or even on a percentage of last year's revenues.
Promotion is what people often think of as marketing, yet it is only part of the mix. It includes advertising, public relations, events, and sales of such activities as group tours. Marketing staff define the creative strategy that is built on the positioning statement. The creative strategy includes developing artwork for print and T.V., headlines and copy for print ads, and identifying the "voice" for radio and T.V. ads. Promotion staff also develop the rough layouts of the ads, considering such elements as the copy and type. Public relations is best developed with the marketing plan and supports the strategic direction, audience-segmentation decision, market position, and creative plan. Also known as publicity, public relations will reinforce all of the marketing work and is part of the promotion effort.
After you develop the creative strategy, establish a monthly schedule for ads, brochures, and special promotions. Allocate funds for brochures, print ads, radio, T.V., billboards, and electronic media at this stage. Your choice of medium should be based on the demographies of your potential customers, and when and where they make their leisure decisions. For example, if the museum wants to reach out-of-town visitors, place ads in regional and state publications that travelers read. If the museum is a destination chosen by local families a week or less before they arrive, promote the institution in the local media. Choosing the appropriate medium for your message requires a great deal of preparation. Some special events require tickets and therefore take a longer time to promote. Other events may benefit from heavy promotion closer to opening day.
The fourth part of the marketing mix is "place," or where distribution of the product occurs. Marketing planning must address issues of signage, arrival points, access to the museum, the impact of the museum's entrance, and potential events at other locations.
Next, develop the budget, which should include staff salaries, costs of advertising, ad preparations, brochures and their distribution, mailing costs, processing of brochure requests, special event expenses, participation in trade shows, and market research. No museum will have enough money to do all the marketing it feels is required to build audiences. But, as hard as it is to allocate limited resources, museum managers will be more confident if they base decisions on good research and solid planning.
Market research is essential for understanding the museum's audience and how it changes and for measuring the effectiveness of the promotional campaign. In your annual budget, allocate funds for the gathering of data that will be used to fine-tune the next year's plan. Many institutions dedicate 5 percent of the marketing budget to research.
5 Implementation, Monitoring, and Evaluation
The entire institution must buy into the marketing plan, from the board to the director to the staff. Well informed staff members can be enthusiastic supporters of the plan.
Place objectives in the marketing plan to monitor performance. Objectives can include attendance, revenues, dates in the media and research schedules, special events, and market tests. These objectives should be reported at least on a quarterly basis. Most institutions track attendance and revenue daily.
How do the museum shop and food service fit into the marketing plan? Both museum store and food service management should be brought into the planning very early. They in turn will be asked to develop their own annual business plans, taking the main marketing plan into consideration. Other profit centers-photo rights, publications, and licensing, for example-also need their own plans. These, too, must dovetail with the overall museum marketing plan.
At the end of the year, conduct a formal evaluation by comparing the marketing plan objectives with the results achieved. Assess in depth how your strategies worked. Report on the market research and the test conclusions. The evaluation is the end of this year's plan and the beginning of next year's plan. Thus the planning cycle gains a rhythm. The next plan will be more refined, the process more trusted.
Conclusion
This article describes a traditional framework for building a museum marketing campaign. Of course, each museum will evolve its own marketing style. Developing a marketing plan helps museum management focus on what is needed to build an audience. The plan details what is to be accomplished and who is responsible at each step of the process. The planning process is a discipline that requires management to focus on its annual marketing strategies. The plan is a working document that is used weekly, if not daily, by museum management to monitor marketing progress and indicate when course corrections are required. Without it, a museum will not know if its money has been wisely spent. Even if results are not on target, a plan will help a museum understand why and where its strategy worked. That will lead to better, more effective planning in the future.
REFERENCES
1. For a helpful discussion on market research, see chapter 6 (pages 147-173) of Neil G. Koder and Philip Koder's Museum Strategy and Marketing: Designing Mission, Building Audiences, Generating Revenue and Resources (San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, Inc., 1998).
2. An excellent discussion on competition analysis can be found on pages 69-73 of Museum Strategy and Marketing.
3. For a detailed discussion on marketing audits, see pages 341-346 of Museum Strategy and Marketing.
4. In 1992, Mystic Seaport conducted a PRIZM analysis that informed media selection decisions. See also pages 130-132 of Museum Strategy and Marketing.
During his 19 years at Mystic Seaport, Thomas H. Aageson managed the retail operations, food service, and marketing departments and served as vice president for marketing and merchandising. He is currently a marketing consultant to museums in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Romania, and is the author of Financial Analysis for Museum Stores.
