Cornwall Museums Partnership - Marketing Made Simple
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Marketing Made Simple

The goals of this module are to help you to:

  • Understand why marketing is important.
  • Recognise what marketing is and isn’t.
  • Understand the language of marketing.
  • Become familiar with branding and what it means.
  • Establish your marketing objectives.
  • Understand the four Ps of the marketing mix.

What marketing is and what it isn’t

The most important thing to remember is that marketing isn’t complicated. Put really simply, marketing is:

  • focusing on your audience and putting them first – understanding them.
  • being able to spot opportunities that will get them to visit your museum as opposed to competing leisure activities.
  • working out the best way to communicate what you do to them.
  • being able to measure what you’ve done and see if it is working.
  • having a strategy to do this.

Marketing is about being authentic and promoting your values. It isn’t about spin.

Marketing is the amazing things you do for and in your local communities. It’s not just a leaflet or an advert.

Marketing is about the benefits and positives your organisation has compared to the ‘competition’ and how you talk about this. It is not an afterthought or something to bolt on at the end.

Marketing is about the trust your customers have in you and your staff and volunteers and the relationships you build. It isn’t just a tweet or a website.

Keep it simple

Language demystified

Take a moment to review these terms. Click the title on each bar to reveal more detail:

Your competition doesn’t necessarily just mean the next nearest museum to you, it is anything that your target audience could choose to do instead of coming to visit your museum. This could be the beach if your museum is on the coast, or it could be the cinema on a rainy day, shops, a local tourist attraction or a local play-park.

This really does sound a lot like marketing speak, but in a nutshell, your core value proposition is a short summary of why someone should visit your museum as opposed to a competitor.

Your market position refers to your customers perception of you (your brand) and what you do (your product) when compared to your competitors. Looking at your market position can be helpful as, not only can it help you understand how your museum is seen by others, it can help you re-position your museum appropriately (for example as a tourist destination, a local community hub or as a research centre for specific fields of study).

Market research is about collating information on your existing and potential visitors’ needs and preferences. You might also include information about ‘competitors’ as part of your research – for example details or their visitor offer, admission price, the kinds of events they might run and their facilities.

Market segmentation is the process of dividing these customers into groups, based on their characteristics and certain behaviours. There are lots of ways to segment a ‘market’ (more commonly called an ‘audience’ in the museum sector), these can include age, income, where people live, lifestyle or education. Once you better understand your market and the segment you wish to appeal to, you can adjust your marketing and your offering to meet the needs of that audience.

A target market is one of the audience types (or ‘market segments’) you have identified within market segmentation.

Target marketing is focusing your efforts on one or a few target markets that will potentially be interested in what you do. If your organisation is new to this, the best place to start is with the biggest potential markets to get the best return on your time and money, it’s important to avoid focusing on small niche groups. For example, if your museum is in a town with high numbers of families but no university or college nearby, it would be more sensible to focus on a family ‘target market’ rather than a student ‘target market’.

Quick quiz

How are you getting on? Take a moment to answer these few questions…

Take a look at how you did below. Each question shows you the correct answer and your response is marked with either a tick, if you got it right, or a cross if you didn't.

Q1

What describes information your museum might collect relating to audiences or examples of possible ‘competitors’ in your area?

Answer:

The information your museum collects relating to your potential audience and possible competitors is known as market research. You should ensure you conduct adequate market research to properly understand your market.



Q2

Why is it a good idea to segment your market?

Answer:

It is a good idea to segment your market so that you can better understand the needs of the market and adjust your offering to meet those needs.



Q3

What does market position describe?

Answer:

Your market position describes your customers’ perception of your museum and how it compares with your competitors.



Q4

Which of the following is not a potential competitor?

Answer:

Anything that takes people away from your door is a competitor, so all of the above are competitors.


Branding

Although most of us would understand how branding relates to large, multi-national companies who have lots of money to spend on design and advertising, it can sometimes feel a little more unusual to talk about branding and museums. However, branding can be a really simple and effective way to ensure consistent communication about your museum for your audiences.

Your brand is who and what you are – a blend of your values, attributes and what you do often represented visually by a combination of logo, colours, images, and font. It is the feeling that people have when they walk away from you.

For a museum, the things that will contribute to your brand could include an iconic location, friendly and knowledgeable volunteers, a lovely cafe as well as consistently used colours, fonts, a logo and the style of imagery on your marketing leaflets, posters, banners and website.

To better understand branding and the meaning of a brand, consider each of the following big brands and then drag and drop their logos into the spaces which most closely represents their brand in your mind. There is no right or wrong answer here, just your perception of the brand. You may find that a brand sits in many spaces, select the one you first thought of:

 

When you have completed these company brands, click here:

WaitroseLidlSalvation ArmyBritish Red CrossRSPCARyanAirBritish AirwaysCoca ColaFentimansChanelPrimarkJohn Lewis

 

When you have completed these museum brands, click here:

V&AThe Science MuseumNatural History MuseumThe British MuseumTate St IvesRoyal Albert Memorial Museum

 

Place your museum into up to three of the brand values. When you have finished placing your museum, consider whether your museum’s brand reflects your view of the museum. Does it reflect the view of your friends, family, neighbours and the wider community or would they define your museum’s brand differently?

Is your museum’s brand properly representing your museum’s core value proposition?

Are there things you can do to better align your marketing to the brand you wish to communicate?

My MuseumMy MuseumMy Museum

Marketing Objectives

Your marketing objectives are simply what you’re hoping to achieve by developing a marketing plan. A marketing objective might be one of the following:

  • We want to increase general visitor numbers.
  • We want to generate more income from our temporary exhibitions.
  • We want to attract more seasonal tourists.
  • We’d like to attract more diverse volunteers.

Your objectives should always be SMART and consistent. SMART is a useful acronym to sense check what you are hoping to achieve.

Point to each card with your mouse to learn more about SMART objectives:

Specific

Be precise about what you want to achieve, for example, we want to increase visitor numbers from 3000 to 3800.

Measurable

Can you quantify your objectives, for example, you are able to count all visitors accurately and you are clear about what you include and don't include i.e. do you count the number of people who you see when you do outreach as visitors?

Achievable

Make sure you’re not biting off more than you can chew, is an increase of 800 visitors when you currently get 3000 achievable?

 

Realistic

Have you got the resources and capacity? The 800 new visitors might be achievable if you have a dedicated marketing professional and a marketing budget but what if you don’t? Tailor your objectives to your resources.

Timed

Tie the objective to a timeline, give it a beginning and end date, “we want to increase visitor numbers from 3000 in 2018 to 3800 in 2019”.

Quick quiz

How are you getting on? Take a moment to review an example of an objective:

The Museum wants to increase the number of visitors to its summer exhibitions. Our front of house is well resourced, and an accurate record of tickets sold is maintained. We have just appointed a new promotions volunteer to help with our exhibition marketing campaign. We know that other attractions in the region attract large numbers of tourists during the summer, so we know that increasing numbers is possible, and that the audience is there.

Is this objective SMART?

No, this is not a SMART objective. It’s neither Specific nor Timed. It is Measurable, front of house will see to this and the appointment of a new promotions volunteer makes it Realistic and the visitor numbers to the area make it Achievable. But to make it SMART, the museum should be Specific about the increase in visitor numbers that they are seeking and the dates between which the objective will be Timed.

To make this SMART, the objective would need to read something like this:

The Museum wants to increase the number of visitors to its summer exhibitions from 2000 to 2600 over the next 3 years. Our front of house is well resourced, and an accurate record of tickets sold is maintained. We have just appointed a new promotions volunteer to help with our exhibition marketing campaign. We know that other attractions in the region attract large numbers of tourists during the summer, so we know that increasing numbers is possible, and that the audience is there.

Setting SMART objectives helps direct effort effectively and measure performance against that objective.

Marketing mix, or ‘The Four Ps’

The marketing mix describes the things that you can do to help achieve your marketing objectives, whether those objectives are about increasing visitor numbers or attracting new audiences or recruiting more volunteers.

There are more than four P’s to the marketing mix, however, we are going to focus on the four key P’s.

Click each picture to discover more:

Module review

The goals of this module have been to help you to:

  • Understand why marketing is important.
  • Recognise what marketing is and isn’t.
  • Understand the language of marketing.
  • Become familiar with branding and what it means.
  • Establish your marketing objectives.
  • Understand the four Ps of the marketing mix.

If you feel you have achieved these goals and you now feel better able to assist with the marketing of your museum, download your certificate, add your name and print it:

Download Certificate

Congratulations

Well done, you have reached the end of this marketing module.

When you are ready, you may want to develop your knowledge further and take the second module, Creating your own marketing strategy.

Created in Cornwall with Harlequin Training Solutions Ltd