David Parrish’s Three Main Rules for Marketing Cultural Projects
Listen to your client
From David Parrish’s experience, the term “market research” often scares off small businesses. They believe that it is a huge expense in terms of time and money. The lecturer says that what matters for your initiative is to listen to your client and understand his values and needs. The main obstacle on your path to market research is not lack of time or money, but rather confidence. You may think that you know everything about your business and clients. But they see the product and assess its value differently. Use your creativity to find simple, inexpensive and effective methods of communicating with your clients. Talk to them, use online forums to communicate with, focus groups, surveys.
The rule of 3 Ms
You should apply this rule for your marketing strategy. M1 is Market. It is responsible for how well you have studied your market. M2 is Message. At this stage, you should form your message for consumers. M3 is Medium. The third M is responsible for the choice of media that will broadcast your message. These rules may seem simple, but the most common mistake is inconsistency in carrying out these three stages. Initiative organisers often get fixated on media, for example, choosing social media for promotion just because it’s trendy, or create a website just because that is what everyone else is doing. In actual fact the choice of medium depends on the type of message.
Create a strategy
This is a unique formula for every enterprise, which depends on your organisation’s mission, position on the market and clients. Defining the strategy should be the first thing you do. While working on it, try to determine what you do best. But you should also understand what you do better than your competition. Planning your work while emphasising your competitive edge is the key to success.
You will find more recommendations and useful links for you work in the Marketing for Cultural Organisations course on our website.
If you want to learn more about David Parrish’s innovative methods, take the Strategic Planning course.
You can also find out how to write a project proposal to obtain funding or take part in Creative Europe.
