April 14, 2006

Word of Mouth Marketing Builds Audiences

(Update 4/17/06: Julie Peel of Americans for the Arts, the producer of the National Arts Marketing Project Conference, pointed out to me that I missed an entire series of pre-conference educational programming that focuses on Internet marketing and the arts. You can read the agenda for the "Technology Boot Camp.")

I was just browsing the website for the Americans for the Arts National Arts Marketing Project Conference, which will take place at the end of April in Los Angeles, California. I was curious to learn if there were any presentations that dealt with online marketing strategies for arts organizations.

Unfortunately, there's no much. But I did come across two interesting sessions moderated by arts marketing and management consultant Alan Brown.

These workshops focus on "peer-to-peer" (P2P) marketing strategies that are based upon the idea of empowering influential and motivated customers to spread the word about upcoming arts programs. I happen to come across a slideshow presentation (PDF) from last November given by Alan Brown and Eric Haeker (Arts in Motion) that lays out the foundations for P2P marketing in the context of the arts.

Here's my summary of this slide presentation:

In a marketplace where customers want personalized offerings and the media is fragmented, word-of-mouth marketing is critical in determining how people spend their leisure time and money.

Given the importance of word-or-mouth (viral) marketing, it is important to identify your customer evangelists - the people who love your offerings - and provide these opinion makers, thought leaders and "activators" with the tools that will help them spread the word about your upcoming programs. Essentially, you want to build a free sales force that will get their friends, family members and colleagues to attend your programs.

Credit: Francois Portman

One of the peer-to-peer marketing examples in this presentation is for the October 2, 2005 performance of the Red Bull Artsehcro ("orchestra" spelled backwards) at Carnegie Hall that featured a fusion of classical and turntable music. "Influencers" were identified as the "resellers" who would promote this event on college campuses, printed materials were distributed to drive traffic to the website that featured a music mashup application, and other viral strategies targeted clubs, hip hop fans and extreme sports enthusiasts. That's my very brief summary. I encourage you to take a look at the presentation.

If you want to learn more about tapping into customer evangelists, you can read about "Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force" on Amazon.com and then link to books on buzz marketing.

The beauty of word-of-mouth marketing is that it's inexpensive and there are many online tools that can help you to empower your most enthusiastic customers. Essentially all of the social media and networking tools that I've been writing about lately are examples of viral marketing. If a customer creates a video mashup of a dance performance, they are going to send it to their friends without your involvement. All you have to do is provide the raw materials - video clips, audio tracks and a lot of encouragement.

Technorati Tags: arts, customer, marketing, mashups, viral, web2.0

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