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Driving Attendance Post Pandemic: Marketing Practices that Accelerate Audience Growth

Driving Attendance Post Pandemic: Marketing Practices that Accelerate Audience Growth

In our post-pandemic arts world, many arts organizations are discovering that most of the patrons that are going to come back have come back already. Even organizations with healthy audiences right now are facing challenging budgeting environments, so the need to build a new base of customers and to increase attendance by casual audiences and visitors is acute.

ABA is deploying a survey of marketing resource deployment, activities and other behaviors in order to assess quantitatively the marketing drivers behind healthy attendance.

Marketing Pulse Survey

As many organizations finalize their upcoming fiscal year budgets, we wanted to learn about how organizations are planning their marketing budgets - looking across overall budgetary spends, and specific areas of investment such as digital marketing efforts. Our latest ABA Executive Benchmark asked arts leaders about marketing budgets and changes due to the increased importance of digital.

Marketing and Sales

Since reopening from the closures of the pandemic, arts and cultural organizations have stayed vigilant in assessing the state of their recovery and sales. Our latest Arts Leader Survey asked arts leaders to benchmark themselves about the current state of single ticket sales, filled hall capacities, subscriptions, and no-show rates across the performing arts sector today compared to 2019 (pre-pandemic).

2023 Marketing and Subscriptions

As we enter spring months, arts organizations want to take stock of how their marketing efforts and subscriptions are performing this year. Our latest Arts Leader Survey asked arts leaders to benchmark themselves on new to file audiences, subscription packages and renewal rates, marketing budgets and staff trends, as well as any recent innovations and changes to enhance the audience experience.

Ticket Discount Programs

As we finalize plans for a new year of arts and programming, many organizations are reviewing their ticket promotions and packages to see what opportunities there may be in engaging returning and new target audiences. Our latest Arts Leader Survey asked arts leaders to benchmark themselves on the kinds of tickets schemes and discounts they currently have, as well as those which are under consideration or even discontinuing. We are also interested in particular efforts to engage with young adults across the sector.

Ticket Sales/Revenues & Marketing Tactics

As we return after the New Year, we want to take a quick moment to look back on the previous season in order to set a baseline for overall organizational performance and ticket sales, as well as the industry’s strategic outlook for the coming year. Our latest Arts Leader Survey asked arts leaders to benchmark themselves on the past year's attendance, ticket and subscription sales, and how performance on these factors has impacted future strategies. We also wanted to learn about priorities, and the greatest concerns and opportunities in the months to come.