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By James Kelly, July 29, 2010

We were very happy when Google Ireland agreed to take part in the New Media Mentoring scheme. From the outset, it was clear that the lessons learnt by mentees would be of great value to their organisations, as well as to the wider arts community on the publication of the resulting reports.

Four arts organisations received mentoring from Google Ireland over the past number of months. Here, Tara Connaghan, Artistic Director of Éigse Carlow Arts Festival outlines the lessons learnt from her mentoring from Marie Davis, Michelle Byrne, Natalia Niznik and Tom Morrison-Bell in Google.

If you are interested in discussing this work with those involved please visit the Arts Ireland group on LinkedIn – if you’re not already a member, it’s free to join (what’s this? find out more here).

to download a pdf of this report, click on this link: Eigse – Google mentoring report

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Report of Tara Connaghan

Google mentoring to Éigse Carlow Arts Festival 2010

Our ambition in the mentoring project was to increase SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), customer participation and general web traffic of our website as a tool for increasing box office sales and developing potential audiences. Having benefited a sales increase in 2009 from an expansion in our online media presence we wanted to optimise these and build / develop them further and smarter. Due to financial pressures the in-house part-time administration staff and CE scheme staff were being trained to fill the gaps to lighten the load of the seasonal Marketing Manager position so the mentoring was timely and necessary.

Our ambition was quite wide so we worked with a fantastic team from Google on the following:

• Google AdWords maximisation
• Website optimisation
• YouTube channels

In this report, I’ll concentrate on the Google AdWords experience we gained as we focused quite heavily on this during the mentoring process. Some of this is quite detailed as we were fortunate to have Google employees guide us through the process but because of the large nature of the Google organisation, you may not be as fortunate and may stumble on a few of the setup steps, so my aim is to guide you as quickly and painlessly through the more awkward steps.

AdWords are the text advertisements along the right hand side of a Google search page, they appear in gmail (linking words in your received emails to relevant words in the AdWord text). Websites can also use AdWords as an income generator by placing a Google AdWords banner on their page allowing AdWords to be displayed. AdWords generally look like this:

Carlow Arts Festival
Fun For All the Family
June 2010, Visit Our Site Now!
www.EigseCarlow.ie

Of significant importance to the arts community is the fact that Google provide grants for non-profit organisations (which many arts organisations are) to spend up to $10,000 per month on Google AdWords with no need to reapply annually and no fixed end date (providing you stick within the policies set down by Google Grants). To learn more on Google grants for AdWords visit http://www.google.ie/grants/details.html

The help section of Google Grants is quite useful also, see http://www.google.com/support/grants/
Read the guidelines, fill in the application form and you will be later asked to set up your AdWord account and submit your Customer ID for the Google team to approve the application. This can take some time so it’s best to use this time to familiarise your team with the AdWords facility and FAQ so you will be ready to go.

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Tips on completing the Google Grant form:

To apply for a Google Grant, you must set up a new AdWord account specifically for the grant AdWord account, even if you already have one, because of a few grant restrictions in place. (see link to Google AdWords Online Classroom below to see how to set up an account) Google Grants provide grants in American dollars only, so you must change the currency to $ for the AdWords account that you will be applying for grants (and since this can only be done in the setup stages, any account you already have will most likely be set up in euros). During this time if you start creating draft campaigns, AdWords will continuously ask you to submit your billing information. Ignore this request and once your account has been activated by Google, these messages will disappear.

Once you have gone through the necessary email address verification process you can start building your first campaign (which will remain inactive until your grant application has been approved).

The grants are only provided for AdWords that appear in a Google search engine only, they do not cover AdWords on other content network sites / websites that host Google AdWords so in the Campaign settings stage, in the ‘Networks and devices’ section, tick ‘Let me choose…’ and select the ‘Google Search’ box only (untick Search Partners and Display Network). So you will have to bear this in mind every time you create a new campaign in your grant AdWords account prior to activation (once the grant has been activated these will become the default settings)

*Note*: If these settings are not completed at the time of setup, a lengthy and complicated process of unlinking primary email addresses and setting up new email addresses follows, so take my advice and set it up correct from the start!
Should you not be eligible for Google Grants then it would make more sense to continue using your own account (if you have one) or set up a new account in euros and also make use of the other network options to maximise the exposure of your AdWords and your organisation. It is also useful to have another non-grants AdWords account for this purpose and to set aside a specific budget to maximise your online presence.

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Google AdWords:

Google AdWords Online Classroom is exceptionally helpful for the ‘getting started’ section (before you start) and ‘Improving your adwords performance’ (once you have an account). You may have to register or log in for some of these but it’s free.

Google AdWords apply a quality rating system to AdWord accounts. The higher your quality of account, the cheaper the cost and the higher rank it receives when viewed. It’s a bit like a search engine; the more relevant you make your website, the higher up the search it will appear.

The quality scoring of Google AdWords are based on the following factors:

Keyword / AdWord relevancy
Click through rate (CTR)
Relevance of ad text and your landing page
Historical account performance
Various relevancy factors

So they recommended keeping a tight link between your keywords, ad text and your landing page / destination URL (the page you direct the AdWord clicks to). Relevancy is the key factor.

Google AdWords is based on clicks (CTR – Click Through Rate) rather than on impressions so it helps to focus on the goals for your conversion as these will also be relevant factors. Our goals were 1. to increase traffic to our website and 2. to increase ticket sales. Recognise what is your unique selling point and focus on that.

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Creating our AdWord campaigns:

Under the guidance of the google mentoring team, we set up AdWord campaigns and structured them into the various categories we felt would work best. It was hard at the start to get our head around the AdWords structure. What was more suitable as a Campaign? Or an AdGroup? It’s a bit like a filing system, the ‘Campaign’ is the overall folder e.g. Artists / Brand / Region specific. The options that are selected at this level are regions and finance, so it may help to have different Campaigns for these if you want to target these in a different manner e.g. Branding National / Branding Local / Branding International. For us, the online classroom section of ‘Improving your AdWords Performance’ helped the penny drop into place.

Sample:

We titled one of our Campaigns ‘Artists’. Within this campaign heading we created AdGroups for various high profile artists appearing at the festival. Jerry Fish & The Mudbug Club were one of the performers appearing at the festival so we created an AdGroup titled ‘Jerry Fish’. We then created a number of Ads (text) relevant to this event.

The Ad (text) should contain a keyword, date and a call to action (buy tickets now). We were advised to create approximately three different ads for each AdGroup, focusing on different aspects. Google AdWords will show the different ads for different searches and compare which ad is receiving more clicks and it will favour this ad. A cute trick – place the following text in the first line of the ad {keyword: Jerry Fish Concert} (use your own text in the brackets), this ad will then be used as a default ad should the search text be longer than your keywords. You can also use capital letters to start each word (including in your web address) so that it can be easier to read www.EigseCarlow.ie. Note: while you write the website as a short web address, it will increase your quality scoring if you direct each ad to the relevant page on your website. The option for this is in the ‘Destination URL’ box below the web address when creating your ad.

We then created keywords we thought might be relevant to the Jerry Fish performance
e.g.
Jerry Fish
Gerry Fish
Jerry Fish Mudbug club
Jerry fish tickets
Jerry fish Carlow
Jerry fish tour
Etc…
(Capital letters are not taken into consideration in search engines)

The key to increasing your AdWords quality rating is to keep the keywords as relevant as possible. Your ads will be penalised by being placed further down the page (or on consecutive pages) if the keyword isn’t relevant to the text in your ad (which in turn must be relevant to the text on your website). To further increase your rating (receive better placement and cheaper ads), you can create negative keywords so that people searching for non-related searches won’t be shown your ad e.g. Jerry Fish CD or Jerry Fish American tour. This will help keep your click through rate higher.

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Tools to help optimise and analyse your Google AdWords performance:

In your AdWord Account under the opportunities tab, some of the most useful tools are:

• Keyword Tool
• Search Based Keyword Tool
• Keyword Insertion Tool
• Bids Tool
• Ad Preview Tool
• Insights for Search Tool (compare search volume across regions / categories / timeframe etc.
• Various other tools in the opportunities tab of your AdWords account – click ‘more tools’
• Google Trends (data on media / news items that lead to search peaks and could provide you with ideas and timelines to tie in with searches)
• Google Analytics (from your website) – utilise the search words or traffic source from which they arrived at your website and link / track the conversion goals to see how far along the process did each click generate
• Have a look at Google Labs for new tools that are under experimentation at Google.

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AdWord timelines for a festival:

• Campaign on the festival brand: small presence all year round.
• Build on the branding AdWords campaign in the two months prior to the programme being released.
• To ensure you don’t waste any sales opportunities, make sure box office is ready to go at the time of activating the artists / programme AdWords campaigns. January is recognised as the month where holidays are booked (Google Trends and other analytics tools will support this statement). Ideally part of a summer festival’s programme (Éigse is in June), would be in place by then to tap into these holiday planners.
• Highlight special offer campaigns when necessary
• Include campaigns on holidays / regional etc. but try to keep them as specific as possible as vague ads will get a poor click through rate and this will end up costing you more money and preventing your ads from being displayed above the fold / on the first page. It can be more beneficial to use the vague terms eg. Music / theatre for region specific and specify counties in your catchment area.
  Throughout the rest of the year create AdWords campaigns for fundraising events, recruitment, search for volunteers etc.

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Costs:

Google grants caps keyword CPC (cost per click) at $1 so if you want to bid on keywords above this you can include that keyword in your own paid account. Luckily (but also unluckily) for the arts, searches for arts related words aren’t huge and most are well under the $1 mark. Vague keywords such as ‘music’ / ‘music gigs’ / ‘theatre’ should be avoided as you will be competing against large-scale music / theatre events worldwide meaning your click rate and placement will be poor.

Our 2009 AdWords weren’t optimised to the maximum and the small budget put aside seemed to dwindle relatively quickly. The mentoring from the Google team and receiving Google Grants has really increased our online presence in a smarter way. Our AdWords did have a short lead-in time to this year’s festival due to the timing of the project but none-the-less increased our web traffic and click through rate from last year. We’ll be exploring its possibilities further throughout the year!

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Our Top tips:

1. Google AdWords is an exceptionally powerful tool but do beware of the linking and unlinking glitches that occur which could have you on an unpleasant merry-go-round for long periods of time. Double check analytics codes and account IDs to make sure they are linked up correctly to ensure you get things right from the start.
2. Make use of the optimisation and analytical tools that are available to get the most from your AdWords.
3. Link your AdWords account with your other Google services such as Gmail, Google Analytics etc. or start using these services by clicking on the My Account tab at the top of your AdWords account. Click on Preferences and beside your email address, click ‘Edit in Google Accounts’, this will open up an overview of your Google services where you can link or start using new Google facilities.

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By James Kelly, July 27, 2010

Louise Walsh,  Music Network’s PR & Marketing Manager was faced with the not insubstantial task of marketing Love: Live Music, a brand new nationwide event, at a time when across the arts, marketing budgets are rapidly disappearing. How could such a new event connect with audiences across the country when time was of the essence, and budgets were very limited? Clearly, the online communication strategy could play a big part. In the run in to the inaugural event, Louise received mentoring in this area from Lucy Campbell and Murne Laffan in RTÉ Publishing.

As the timeframe of the mentoring coincided with the run-in to the festival, Louise’s report on the lessons she learnt in the mentoring process is a good indicator of what can be achieved by those looking to build an online campaign around an event for the first time (to download a PDF, click on this link: Music Network – RTE Publishing mentoring report).

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Louise Walsh Report

Our Mentoring Requirement

RTE Publishing mentored us on the development of an online communications plan for Ireland’s first national music day, love:live music, that took place on Friday 16th April. We planned to use social networking and online platforms for the first time to generate viral marketing between the events participants and to a wider audience. As resources for the event were limited, online communications were central to the promotional strategy, working in tandem with in kind advertising and a PR Strategy.

With guidance from Lucy and Múirne, we started out by developing an online communications plan that aimed to generate general awareness of the event, to encourage people to find out what’s on in their area (thereby increasing the number of people attending the events) and to encourage people to get involved by registering their own event (thereby increasing the number of events taking place)

The elements of the online communications plan included:

Website Development

An event specific website (www.lovelivemusic.ie ) was developed by Pixel Design to which all offline and online activity directed people. Search engine optimisation functions were built into the event site so that it was easily found when searched for. The website included features such as RSS feeds, a blog, share buttons, google maps for events, enewsletter subscription, a featured event as well as links to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace.

Email Broadcasting

An email broadcasting account was set up in order to issue e newsletters to our contacts, again directing people to the event site.

Social Media Optimisation

The aim of using social media sites was to direct visitors to lovelivemusic.ie to either find out about an event in their area or to register an event of their own. Music Network set up accounts on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. In order to generate friends/fans/followers to these platforms, Music Network invited all previous touring artists, all current artists on the Music Network roster, and all recipients of Music Network awards (and went from having no social media activity to having 194 followers on Twitter, 491 fans on Facebook and 344 friends on MySpace).

Finally, we targeted bloggers with event information via digital press releases.

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image courtesy Music Network

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What worked, what didn’t

RTE Publishing’s advice on our online communications, establishing and maintaining social networking and online platforms was of great value to the project, as we had no experience in this area. For me, the main benefit of the mentoring was being able to run the plans by people who have the expertise, and be assured by them that we were on the right track. Once we had set up accounts on the various platforms, they assured us that our numbers of fans/followers/friends were healthy.

The mentoring was also of great value in terms of troubleshooting, as and when problems emerged.  One issue that arose for me early on was how to effectively brand the event without loosing the association with Music Network. The mentors suggested using a solution based on how RTE uses the corporate brand over a number of activity areas. They also stressed the importance from the outset of getting all the participants using the branding too by sending them branding guidelines.

The mentors had lots of suggestions and ideas, (not all of which we used this time around) which were really helpful in mapping out how far we could take the online communications.  For us, all of their suggestions that we implemented worked, and the only downside was that we couldn’t implement them all this time around, or we underestimated the time that it would take realise those ideas.

For example, they stressed at an early stage to secure broadcasting and streaming rights from all participants so that we can use the content on online platforms, which we did. They also suggested engaging stringers to ensure that we could have content post events for the social media platforms. We managed to engage some stringers, but not enough, and missed the boat on getting the content, which is now lost to us. But, that was a huge learning for us.
We didn’t maximise the potential of You Tube to harness content from partner organisations. As mentioned above, next year we will engage much more stingers and use this content post event.

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Overall conclusions

Overall, the event was a success, due in no small part to the online communications plan and the mentoring received. As resources for the event were limited, we could not have achieved the reach that we did, without it.

Many of the ideas that were suggested by the mentors but not activated were ones that we simply didn’t have the people power to put in place. A huge learning from this project has been that while social media is free to use, it needs to be resourced with people and time in order to make the best use of it. Facebook and Twitter are constantly hungry and need to be fed content!

The mentoring was at a strategic level, but closer to the event, I realised that we would have benefited from some of the very basic skills in using the social media platforms. However, at that point, the event was gaining momentum and there was not the time to seek this resource, even though it could have been made available to us.

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By Una Carmody, July 13, 2010

Have you always wondered how many people in Ireland attend plays, or opera or classical music? What age they are? Or what newspapers they read?

For the first time this information is being made available through Arts Audiences with the support of the Arts Council and Temple Bar Cultural Trust.

Click here to access the report Arts Attendance In Ireland

TGI contains a wealth of information about audiences for the arts. Section 2 of the report will be of particular interest to those involved in marketing, as it gives some demographic information about regional audiences for the arts, and their media consumption and behaviour.  We will be making a further release of information in August 2010 and are looking for your input about what you would find most useful. Marketing information by artform? More information about websites? Let us know by posting a comment below. 

Appendix 1 gives more information about TGI and how it it carried out in Ireland Appendix 1 TGI repor

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By James Kelly, July 8, 2010

Dance Ireland has published a new report “Dance Counts” ; a survey of Dance Ireland membership, activity and audiences. Click here to link DANCE COUNTS 2008

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By James Kelly, June 29, 2010

Are you looking to find ways to measure a gallery audience?

Under Arts Audiences’ Build Your Audiences Scheme, The Butler Gallery received free marketing consultancy to undertake a extensive study in this area, and the findings have been of great benefit to the organisation. Under the guidance of Heather Maitland, Jean Tormey, Education Curator in the Butler Gallery, has compiled a report on the findings, to download this, as well as the following;

• The Galley’s action plan
• the research plan
• 3 questionnaires
• audience observation sheet

click on this link: Measuring a Gallery Audience – Butler Art Gallery report

All combined, this information provides a significant resource for similar organisations considering a similar study.

Some notes from Jean on the body of work;

“We wanted to get involved in the Build your Audience Project to devote some dedicated time and energy to finding out more about our audience, and to thinking about how we communicate with both our existing and potential audience. One of the major reasons for this is the Gallery’s long-term aim to relocate to a new facility within the next three years to better accommodate our collection, exhibition and education programme.

In our current location [Kilkenny Castle] we attract a significant, transient, international audience who visit us as part of their tour of the castle. Our move to the new venue means we cannot rely on this particular tourist audience to automatically attend the Gallery as is often the case at present.

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image courtesy of the Butler Gallery

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This project was an ambitious one that could not have been undertaken without our committed group of volunteers. In retrospect, we were somewhat over ambitious in the questions we asked at the outset. More time spent honing the ‘real issues’ would have been beneficial. However, a study of this kind has never before been undertaken by the Butler Gallery or any gallery in Ireland for that matter, and was an eye opener for the Gallery in many ways.

Through the street and castle surveys, we discovered that many more people than we realised knew where we were, and a lot of people had complementary and positive things to say about the Gallery. The Project confirmed our prediction that much of our audience are attending as a result of a visit to the Castle – half of our audience comes directly to see the Gallery.

Furthermore, there are not as many young people or family groups as we would expect visiting the Gallery – reflecting a trend that visitors with children (particularly under 5) are apprehensive about attending galleries and museums. Equally, the fact that people above 60 do not appear to be visiting as much as we thought. The results encourage us to develop pointed programmes for people within these age groups.

In terms of how people use the space and our mediation of exhibitions (types of interpretation etc.), we have come to the conclusion that each exhibition needs a range of messages and channels of communication and interpretation – so that we are viewing each exhibition as having a diverse potential audience, with each segment having different needs.