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Strategic Planning in the Arts: A Practical Guide
Focused Marketing
A focused marketing effort can add significantly to an arts organization’s fund-raising capability in a short period of time with limited resources. Any successful focused marketing effort is centered on a realistic list of targets—people of means, corporate and foundation executives, opinion leaders and politicians—who can positively impact the organization’s ability to achieve its mission.
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Arts administrators frequently allude to the relationship between marketing and development. Indeed, the impact of increased visibility on fund-raising is so great that some organizations have one senior executive managing both activities. Yet the cost of building visibility can be high and the likely contributions generated by a classic visibility strategy are low. Advertising agencies have learned in the for-profit sector that targeted marketing strategies are essential for building profitable visibility at a reasonable cost.
The same concept applies in the arts. Targeting donors of major potential is a far more effective way of using visibility to build fund-raising than simply mounting a major public relations and advertising campaign.
This does not mean that broad-based, traditional public relations efforts are not important. Coverage by major newspapers, national magazines, and television and radio stations endorses an arts organization; it is a meaningful method for building credibility with both donors and ticket buyers. This coverage can also help achieve the mission of an arts institution that aims to reach a broad spectrum of the population.
Yet to add significantly to a fund-raising base in a short period of time with limited resources, a "focused marketing" effort is advisable. In focused marketing, the specific targets for the campaign are pre-selected. A list of potentially helpful individuals is compiled and a systematic approach to engaging these individuals is pursued.
Development professionals will call this approach "cultivation" and claim they have been doing this for years. But focused marketing is organized, on-going cultivation in a way that few arts organizations have pursued their donor prospects. Most organizations will cultivate major donors by inviting them to an event or two. If they do not respond in a limited period of time, the cultivation is typically abandoned and the next prospect is approached.
Focused marketing assumes that there are individuals whose financial means, access to resources or influence are so great that they should not be written off. For some organizations there are fifty such people, for others there are five hundred who should ultimately support the organization. This is a particularly important technique in smaller markets where there are only a relatively few, identifiable people with the resources and the interest to support the arts in a meaningful way.
The first step in creating a focused marketing effort is to develop a list of targets. These should be people of means, corporate and foundation executives, opinion leaders and politicians. Creating a list is a simple matter of collecting names from one's Board members, staff and peer organizations' donor lists. Each organization must decide how many prospects it can properly service. There is no point to initiating a focused marketing effort that lapses in three months owing to an over-loaded staff. The initial list of prospects should be long enough to have an impact while short enough to be manageable. Clearly, preference should be given to those individuals known personally to the Board and staff. As the focused marketing campaign is successful, additional prospects can always be added.
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