Increasingly funders are asking museums and attractions to produce an audience development plan. Rather than being another hoop to jump through, it can be a major boost – not just to an organisation’s ability to increase revenue but to address the problem of ‘super-serving’ the most advantaged people in society.
Most museums and attractions are expert in audience engagement as it’s an essential part of what they do. But an explicit audience development plan enables them to go further. Ideally, the plan is a route map for change, growing audiences, increasing reach, enriching experience – and doing those things to the best of our abilities and resources. Done well and with conviction, it is a forward-looking statement of intent, a commitment to an organisation’s public purpose, to staying relevant and resilient.
Where we only think about audiences in a short-term, transactional way – as targets of a single campaign, or as potential consumers of our latest offer – it is very difficult to get to know them, anticipate their varied interests and preferences and build the lasting relationships which are any museum’s lifeblood.
Even where visitor experiences are designed with the specific needs of new audiences in mind, we need to think about the legacy of that work over the years rather than months. Organisations are used to making three- or five-year financial plans for growth, because we understand that growth is incremental, and we appreciate that it takes time for investment to bring returns. The same is true of our investment in audience relationships.
Organised data
The increasingly easy availability of organised data is one driver for the smart move from short-term, supply-driven marketing to long-term, audience-focused development. It’s now possible to build a clear picture of how the needs of our many different audiences are changing over time. But for this new insight to have a durable effect, we need to be able to plan with those diverse and changing needs in mind.
All the evidence is that what we programme – when and where – has a far greater impact on the diversity and loyalty of audiences than how we promote it. Planning in this way often demands radical reorientation, putting public needs closer to the centre of our planning.
Positive effects
The Audience Agency team have seen the positive effect of doing just this through their work supporting organisations to create long-term audience development plans. One example is The National Archives, an organisation taking an inspirational, wholesale approach to engaging a range of new audiences. Working closely with the team, The Audience Agency and TNA have co-developed a creative “map” of their audiences based on analysis, primary research and an audience segmentation which helps to link their ambitions with different user-groups’ needs. It is helping them cater for a wider public, taking their users with them in realising new ideas, offers and more relevant communications as they develop over time
The team there say that while it can seem difficult to step away to the demands of day-to-day marketing, their investment in a long-term audience strategy is brings dividends, bringing significant changes in their visitor profiles.
Many different approaches
The Audience Agency are working with more and more organisations that are planning such long-term audience development strategies, and one of the lessons learned is that there is no single, right way to create one. Every organisation is trying to reach different audiences for different reasons and in different ways. A good plan should reflect the scale, resources, personality and purpose of each organisation.
The resource they have created reflects this. It offers some simple guidance on creating a plan, but the approach suggested is not prescriptive and they encourage organisations to find tools and techniques that are a good fit.
Core principles
Here are a number of principles that in The Audience Agency’s experience are common to all strong audience development plans:
- Start with a few top-level audience aims that clearly link to your organisational purpose and are in harmony with other priorities.
- Use data to find out about your current audiences and your wider community – who and where they are and what they need from you. Use this insight to make sure your aims are realistic and as inspiration for the strategies and activities you will use.
- Recognise that you will have different audiences with different needs. Group or segment them in a way that means you can plan to serve them differently. It helps to have a clear way of organising your data to enrich your understanding of each group over time.
- Involve as many people in your organisation as possible in interpreting data and creating the plan. It will make your plans more truthful and build commitment. Programming, marketing and visitor experience teams will all need to be ready for change.
- Ensure you have the resources, capacity and appetite to attract new audiences over an extended period.
Anne Torreggiani is the Chief Executive of The Audience Agency
