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By Una Carmody, January 27, 2012

Today we publish a “How To” Guide to assessing and maximising the potential of your arts organisation in the area of Cultural Tourism. This guide has been prepared by Annette Nugent, marketing consultant, who has worked extensively in this area, and mentored the participants in our Build Your Audience scheme.  The guide is here..AA_CulturalTourismHowtoGuide_final

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By Una Carmody, January 19, 2012

Arts Audiences is seeking a Projects Manager, for one year initially, to manage programmes and events for its activities. If you know a good arts event manager and administrator, please let them know about it. This is an exciting opportunity for a person to develop their skills on a broad canvas, as well as contributing to the building of significant capacity across the arts.

View Job Spec in your browser -> [Project Manager PDF]

Download the job spec as a word file [download word doc]

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By Una Carmody, December 20, 2011

In its second year of operation, the Build Your Audience scheme focussed on cultural tourism. Two organisations, the Model in Sligo and the Linenhall in Castlebar, were guided in a cultural tourism initiative and marketing plan by consultant Annette Nugent in summer 2011. Find out here what they did, what worked and what didn’t and how they got on.1.  LunasaAtTheModel_Report  2. The Full Irish Project Report_toUna and 3. The Full Irish Report_Appendix1.

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By Una Carmody,

Galway Arts Festival was selected as one of the organisations to be mentored by Google in 2011. The festival created and implemented a comprehensive Google Adwords campaign targetted at tickets sales, both from Ireland and abroad. Find out what they did and how it worked here, and a great series of top tips has also been incluced. GAF Google Adwords Mentoring Report 2011.

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By Una Carmody, October 27, 2011

Mary Dowling of the Chester Beatty Library outlines below how her project worked and what was learnt through the mentoring programme.

Chester Beatty Library

Our aim:

Our aim was to raise awareness about the Chester Beatty Library’s membership programme and to take a ‘back to basics’ look at the museum’s website to see what potential was available. We hoped to put together an online strategy that would allow us to communicate more effectively and to use tools like Google Analytics, Google AdWords, Facebook, Twitter etc. to generate sales.

Why:

The Chester Beatty Library does not charge an entrance fee, so the membership programme allows people to learn more about the Chester Beatty Library’s diverse and internationally renowned collection while at the same time providing valuable financial support for the museum. We had been working on new initiatives for the programme including the setting up of a Member’s Book Club and a Member’s Film Club, but with no marketing budget we were looking for ways to get the word out and tap into a large audience.

Timing:

The Chester Beatty Library’s blockbuster summer exhibition The Art Books of Henri Matisse was due to open on May 26th until 25^th September 2011. We saw this as the perfect opportunity to feed off the publicity being generated for the exhibition in order to maximise our online profile. As Henri Matisse is a very well know artist we hoped that the exhibition would attract many new visitors to the museum and that the website would be an important communications tool with huge potential for the membership programme.

Mentoring process:

After speaking with and meeting our Mentor, John Tierney, it soon became evident that the Chester Beatty Library itself needed a coherent online plan, and we decided that the membership programme should be looked at as part of that overall plan. Our first move was to work with John to apply for a Google Grant. His help and guidance meant that our application was approved in no time. With the Grant in place we now had access to very generous funding for our Google AdWords campaigns.

In mid June, just after the exhibition had opened, we began to develop a number of targeted Google AdWords campaigns, each selecting relevant keywords linked to the Matisse exhibition in order to draw visitors to the Chester Beatty Library website. We regularly selected and updated new keywords, and by doing this on a regular basis we were able to ensure that the ads were performing well and getting the maximum return. We ran generic campaigns at the same time to keep up the profile of the Chester Beatty Library.

With the help of Google Analytics we regularly reviewed and monitored the data and the allowed us to ‘tweak’ our campaigns and calculate the value of our campaigns.

The results:

Our Google AdWords campaigns for the membership programme were run in tandem with other promotional tools including a dedicated “Membership” desk and a number of specially designed posters and flyers displayed at the entrance to the Chester Beatty Library. We made use of additional signage in the museum’s gift shop and updated the content of the Chester Beatty Library newsletter to include text advertising the membership programme.

Statistics:

53,933 visits to the website from May 1^st until 30^th Sept 2011 (compared with 41,055 the previous year). 37,189 were unique visitors. A number of peaks were recorded which were associated with media coverage received for the Matisse exhibition.

65.58% were new visitors to the website

4.56 pages viewed per visit with and average of 2.50 minutes spent

Geographic analysis – Irish visitors were our main group but we also had large number of visitors from the United States and the United Kingdom. This information allowed us to set up specific ad campaigns to target these groups. We had a number of visitors from continental Europe so our Google Mentor helped us to set up ads in French, German, Dutch and Italian. The Analytics data will allow us to monitor these figures and we can consider translating aspects of the website in the future.

4.71% of visits were from a mobile device including smart phones. This compares with 2.20% in 2010. We have a limited mobile website at the moment but as this traffic is increasing we will consider adding more content.

57.44% of traffic arrives via search engines so this highlights the importance of Google AdWords as a tool to increase visitors to the website, and thereby increase sales of memberships.

24.03% traffic is coming from referrals from websites including Wikipedia – we will monitor this and keep these sites informed of activities taking place in the Chester Beatty Library.

572 page views of the membership home page and of these 74.83% were unique page views. We have amended the content and added a ‘join now’ button. The content is being looked at on a continual basis and as we now have access to our own content management system we have more flexibility. We are currently updating links on the most popular landing pages so that visitors are encouraged to visit the membership pages.

AdWords stats:

Advertising led to 3346 additional visits. This activity would have cost the Chester Beatty Library almost €1,000.

Number of new memberships received:

63 during the run of the Matisse exhibition (value €3,000)

The challenges:

-       staffing – with the large volume of memberships to be processed and the with the initial set up of the ad campaigns and updating content on the website it has been hard to keep on top of things.

-       we found that membership was not being searched for on the search engines so we have decided that it would be better to use other promotional methods including Media Relations to generate interest in the programme. We would then need to make sure that the membership programme had better positioning on the Chester Beatty Library website and on popular landing pages. We hope to work with the media to get publicity for the Book Club and Film Club.

Our plans for the future:

Our next temporary exhibition China through the Lens of John Thomson 1868-1872 will open on 17^th November 2011 until February 2012. We will implement Chinese and photographic themed AdWords campaigns as well as keeping general Chester Beatty Library brand campaigns working for Irish and overseas visitors. We will aim to be more proactive with Analytics so that we can amend keywords and add negative keywords in order to fine tune the ads.

Book club and Film club promotion – we will update our dedicated website pages with interesting content and links to engage with visitors and to encourage them to sign up as members.

Website landing pages – we will add content that will encourage our visitors to keep coming back to the website and to reduce the bounce rate. We will monitor the links to the membership pages and analyse if the hits are converting to sales. We will set up Goals in Analytics to track information about how visitors are getting to the membership pages.

Google places – we will take ownership of our site and make sure the content is up to date with links to current exhibitions, events, membership, gift shop etc.

Site links – we will monitor these and expand them to include the Book Club and Film Club.

Social media – we have a Facebook page and a small presence on Twitter. We would like to be more proactive on both and to use them to build relationships and in time generate sales.

Note about Google Mentors:

John has always made himself available by phone, email or in person to answer questions and to offer advice and suggestions. He broke down the systems for me in a manageable way so that I could understand and take advantage of the opportunities each tool offered.

The regular ‘meet ups’ with other Mentors and Mentees gave the opportunity to discuss issues and progress, and to give feedback and ask for advice. We also had great support and encouragement from Una and the meeting with Derek Hill was very useful as Derek could explain his use of the Google products and how they fit into his daily work routine.  

Conclusion:

The Mentoring programme has been a resounding success for the Chester Beatty Library. The Google products are allowing us to spread the word about the museum and about the membership programme. We have had a chance to test the products and through trial and error we have been able to maximise our online presence. The challenge for us in the coming months will be to use the limited amount of time that we have in the best and most productive way possible. We have a long way to go yet, but the signs are looking very positive.

For the future, we plan to:

1. increase the membership profile on the most popular CBL landing pages to drive people to the membership pages and the ‘join now’ button
2. older people (our main audience so far) seem less inclined to sign up online and prefer to make contact by phone or email. New features like the Members’ Film Club should attract younger audiences so we will load interesting content on the Film Club web pages and have the ‘join now’ button prominently displayed
3. online membership is only available for credit card currently – we will consider adding payment by Laser card too
4. update the ‘Perfect Gift’ page on website to promote Christmas gift memberships. These memberships cannot be purchased online currently. We will advertise Christmas gift memberships through Facebook, Twitter, via email to the CBL mailing list, by email to current members and on posters on display in the CBL
5. we are giving away a free pack of fashion plate postcards (from the CBL collection) with each new membership – we will advertise this on our web pages, via email to the CBL mailing list, via Facebook and Twitter and on posters in the CBL
6. Media relations campaign to raise the profile of the new aspects of the membership programme. We hope to be featured as the November ‘Book Club of the Month’ on the Bord Gais Energy Book Club website. We have asked Bord Gais to include a link to our website pages so we will monitor traffic from this source.
7. We hope to invite our Book Club authors to events at the CBL so we will keep our contacts in the print media informed.
8. We hope to plan themed Film Club days in 2012 featuring talks, films screenings and food tastings. We will build up some contacts in the print and broadcast media and keep them informed. We will also use the CBL newsletter, specially designed posters, Facebook and Twitter to advertise these events and to push people to the membership pages on the website (and the ‘join now’ button!)