The Fundamentals of an Audience Development Plan

The goal of arts & cultural marketing is “butts in seats.”

So it generally follows that the goal of audience development is to put “more butts in seats” and/or “different butts in seats.”

Marketers are necessarily focused on “picking the low hanging fruit.”  The best marketing plans present finely tuned and adaptable strategies for optimizing sales while conserving resources.

So, it generally follows that the function of audience development is about making strategic investments that enable marketers to reach higher and higher into the tree where they can gather larger quantities of fruit from places that were previously out of reach.

The metaphor isn’t wrong.  It is just far too limited.

The cause of audience development has the opportunity to consider not just the increased harvest of audience “fruit” – but the responsibility to invest in the health and sustainability of the entire “tree.”  Marketing plans address immediate priorities.  An audience development plan addresses the long-term implications of today’s decisions and practices.

Here are some of the questions an Audience Development plan can & should address:

• What are the critical community issues with which your organization wishes to align?  Of course you care about protecting your state’s or city’s arts budget, but how are you connecting your mission & offerings to such profound issues as:  jobs, education, economic vitality, justice, public safety, racism, poverty and others?  What is your organization’s substantive contribution to those issues?  How can you claim to be a vital community service without establishing a direct and impactful connection to such priorities?
• How much is enough?   Given your organization’s history and your audience’s patterns of participation – what are the $ and attendance thresholds for “unreasonable optimism?”  In addition, does your strategic plan allow for periods of consolidation & re-organization?  (If not, what makes you believe that progress is always upwards?)
• How do our audiences perceive the world?  Every year, Beloit College’s Mindset List advises faculty and administration of the perspectives of the incoming Freshman class.  What does a “cultural mindset” reveal about the knowledge and attitudes of your audiences?
• What does a courageous conversation about “diversity” reveal?  Do you really just want more/different type of people to buy tickets to what you are already – and have always been – doing?  Or are you truly open to considering a dramatic evolution of what you do, how you do it and who would/could/should participate?
• What is your “Pay It Forward” plan?  That there exist audiences for arts & culture today has a lot to do with efforts and investments made by parents, administrators, artists, performers, educators and leaders of decades ago.  Where are you making investments today that you’ll be thanked for 20 years or more from now?
• Are you really “There”?  What does it take to be “present” in your community?  Are you attending the parades?  Speaking at Rotary?  Are you volunteering?  Do you vote?  Have you adopted a school?  Do you subscribe to (and read) your local newspaper?  Have you organized a block party?  Who have you helped achieve their goals?  Have you invited your legislator to a show or museum exhibit?  And most importantly, have you set a good example so that you’re developing and encouraging these behaviors of ALL your organization’s staff?
• What constitutes  “deep engagement” by your audience?  If audiences were once content to sit in a darkened hall and listen passively, those days are (nearly) over.  What is your commitment to experimentation and innovation in the production or presentation of the experiences you offer?
• When (and how) does a transaction become a relationship?  How purposeful and effective is the process by which you engage audience members to volunteer, become a member or make a contribution?  (Hint:  Your answer is wholly inadequate if your first thought was that your theater program contains an advertisement about those opportunities.) 
• How do you achieve “Return on Attendance”?  The analysts at TRG Arts share the alarming news that, by far, RETENTION rather than acquisition, represents the greatest “fail” of the arts & cultural sector.  They ask the profoundly disturbing question why any organization (or funder) would invest sizable sums to attract new audiences when nearly 80% of those that do respond will NEVER RETURN.

The development of an Audience Development plan (of which these are just a few key questions) deserves an organization’s full administrative & artistic attention.

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