Finding the right way to develop your arts practice and organisation successfully

What is the SWITCH System?

We wanted to ensure the system was as easy to remember as possible.  We wanted to make it memorable.  The SWITCH System discovers the Self that defines your way forward by getting your audience Involved.  By telling your story, you will Create a movement that makes change happen repeatedly.

S – defining your SELF, who, why and what you do

W – finding the WAY, sharing your uniqueness & your work

I – getting your crowd INVOLVED, find out who they are

T– TELL your story that engages people to what you do

C – CREATE a movement, move your crowd

H – Making change HAPPEN, and keep it happening

WAY – The way – share your journey

In the last post we looked at defining your SELF and why knowing your WHY is critical to most things that you do.  Not only does understanding your Why mean that you can stay authentic but it also means that we can bring our crowd on the journey with us.  Remember we talked about how your crowd will have similar goals, values and outcomes that align with your goals, values and outcomes, so knowing your Why is critical.

Now I want to start putting some meat on the bones so to speak.  I want you to take on board the idea that you know your Why and you have set your goals.  (Just as an aside we will cover goals in a bit more detail in another post at the end of this series, but for now the main thing to remember is to make your goals time bound and realistic – as in SMART).

So how are we going to do this, well we need to create a plan – not a detailed plan but to have something down on paper so we know where we are going, we know who our crowd are and we know what we are trying to achieve.  From personal experience it is very easy to fall into the trap of making a plan, starting it but then deviating away from the plan because what seems a better opportunity comes along.  Now there is nothing intrinsically wrong with taking the new opportunity so long as it fits into your Why but to action on this new opportunity we will probably need to make another plan.  Not that we forget the first one, but like any action there are usually a number of tasks associated with it – reaching our goals and outcomes is no different, we will probably need multiple plans working at the same time.

Anyhow, before I put you off even starting let get going with the Way. Remember the way, as we have defined it in the SWITCH System is “finding the WAY, sharing your uniqueness & your work” and as I have said before this has to come after you have defined yourself. You have to have defined what you do and why you do it to understand your uniqueness, so it would be impossible to know your goals and outcomes and therefore design a plan of how to get there if you did not already know them – make sense? – hope so.

The WAY 

How are we going to share the journey?

I guess the basis for wanting to work on your artistic business is to increase revenue, engagement and impact, so to do this we will have to find out who our crowd are and how we will share the journey with them.  Remember we are not telling people to come on the journey with us, although there are a number of examples where people have told people what to do.  No we are going to ask them and ask them nicely.

So who are our crowd? Well we will look at this in a bit more depth in another post but basically these are the people we want to or already have a relationship with.  We also know who these people are as, hopefully we already have some customers, audiences or supporters (people who comment on our posts, ring us to ask about our work, we meet at gigs / openings) so we can use this.  We have 3 types of data we can use – existing customers / audiences, personal interactions and email / social media connections. We need to use them as these will point us in the direction of people who are like our existing connections that we do not have a connection with, we need to build personas.  A persona is a make up of a person we already have a connection with based on certain demographics – age, gender, interests, values, goals (start to sound familiar?) but we also need to know what or who influences their decisions, where they get information and where they are when they get the information.  So you can build 3 or 4 personas around your existing data – and only 3 or 4 no more!!!!! (not at this stage).

Anyhow I am getting ahead of myself a bit by talking about personas so lets get back to the task in hand – building a plan. 

To do this we need to outline our GOALS, DEFINE exactly what the outcomes of these goals should look like, make a PLAN as to how we are going to reach these goals that we can EXECUTE but finally we need to be able to MEASURE the results to see if we have achieved our goals. But it doesn’t stop there, once we have measured the success or failure we need to REVIEW and maybe MODIFY our plan.  But more on this in the last in the series – H – HAPPENS, not just once but keeps happening. 

Marketing itself sounds very unartistic and to some extent it is – it doesn’t produce artistic works but it does produce creative work – as in work of you.  The accepted rule of thumb is that you should spend 80% of your time on marketing and 20% of your time on your creative work (I’ll duck whilst the tin cans, knives etc come my way).  I know this isn’t feasible but it should be something that we aim to get as close to as we can – the more time you spend on marketing the greater your impact will be. If you remember we mentioned last time the quote by Tim Knight “Everyone and every organisation is perfectly designed to get the results they are getting.” well how are you going to change the results if you are not prepared to change the actions to get them? – you can’t, so sorry guys you are going to have to do something about it – or get someone else to do something about it for you. Anyhow onto marketing plans.

Basic MARKETING PLAN

The easiest way to look at this is to design a 5 point marketing plan. You should consider the following as being the elements that make up the plan:

1. What are your marketing objectives?  

Define the outcome of your plan. Define the strategy you need to reach your objective. 

Define why you do it, what you do and how you do it – this is what makes you unique.

Remember, without knowing your goals how can you make a plan and without knowing your goals you can’t define your outcomes or how you will achieve them.

Make sure your goals are SMART – Specific | Measurable | Agreed upon / Achievable | Realistic | Timed

Think and write down the Strengths | Weaknesses | Opportunities | Threats – (SWOT if you want to look it up).  Now a note on this, strengths and weaknesses are internal factors, things that we can control and opportunities and threats are external factors, those that we have no control over but could affect what we do.

2. Who are you trying to reach?

Define your target audience

•         What do they look like?

•         Where do they get information?

•         Who are the influencers / champions you need to reach?

Look at

•         Who is the AUDIENCE – my definition of this is audiences are people who attend your events but will not buy

•         Who are your CUSTOMERS – customers are people who will buy or have bought

•         What do they look like? – PERSONAS – remember 3 or 4 maximum – Personas are FOCUSED on the ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES of particular PEOPLE that YOU are GOING to try & ESTABLISH a RELATIONSHIP with.

•         Why does it matter? – You will be LOOKING TO ENGAGE a wide range of PEOPLE.

•         UNDERSTANDING their DIFFERENT NEEDS will IDENTIFY what THEY NEED to guide them to MAKE A DECISION

Personas should include:

•         What are their demographics?

•         What is their lifestyle?

•         What are their interests?

•         What influences their decisions?

•         What are their personal goals?

•         What are their past behaviors? – buyer / audience?

•         Why do they interact with you?

•         Where are they looking for information?

•         Where are they when they look for information?

Use data you already have:

Existing Data
Social Media Interactions
Real Life Interactions 

3. What’s your message to them?

Explain what you want them to do and why they should do it, or why they should care?

Your message and your content should be:

•         Findable

•         Readable

•         Understandable

•         Actionable

•         Shareable

What makes YOU or your WORK / SERVICE UNIQUE? – YOUR STORY

Understanding who you are, and what audiences you’re trying to reach, will mean nothing unless you can clearly identify and communicate your story.

Your story identifies what your passions are and serves as the foundation for all your future content developments.

The purpose is simply to help view your content through a storytelling lens, with passion, purpose, and—yes—heart.

Create a MAGIC Story – Motivating your Audience to your Goal Interactivity with great Content

But your story should BE AUTHENTIC, BE REAL, BE YOU

4. What’s the best way to deliver that message?

Pick the right channel to deliver your message to your target audience.

You will need to think about:

•         How to get the message out

•         What Channels to use

•         Who to talk to 

There is no point in using a channel – online or offline – that your crowd doesn’t use. Your message needs to be seen by your crowd otherwise it’s lost. You are not dictating which platform your audience needs to be on to interact with you, you are only looking to change their awareness, perception or behaviour.

Create an Editorial calendar – this defines the VELOCITY, TONE, desired ACTION, and STRUCTURE for the CONTENT for your CHANNELS. Having an Editorial Calendar means you can look at all of your key dates and planned topics. This can give you ideas for topics and help you think about how you can repurpose content in multiple sources.

Consider the CONTEXT in which your audience will view the content, and alter the content accordingly.  HOW and WHERE your audience is consuming your content is just as important as the messaging. 

Distribution channels should take into account:

•         Analysis – your current “situation” to determine where you can have the most impact with your story.

•         Channel objectives – which ones might be most effective

•         Content/conversation Plan (how you’re telling your story)

•         Metrics – what are will you measure and how

•         Personas addressed – don’t create too many

•         Editorial calendar – when you will post and new ideas

•         Budget – do you have one?

5. How will you measure and re-evaluate success and failure?

What metrics are you going to use and what criteria will you base your decisions on?

Make sure you set goals for each of the key metrics you choose to track.

Your goals will put your performance into context, and help you to see if your results are on par with what’s expected – or better, or worse.

What’s the purpose of my marketing program? – What Specific behavior are you looking to change or gain?

Marketing programmes, can produce three types of results:

•         Awareness – The target audience knows something about your company, product or service.

•         Perception – The target audience thinks about your company, product or service in a certain way.

•         Behaviour – The target audience does something, or refrains from doing something

Because you can doesn’t mean you should

Think about where you want to end up before you begin, and strategize from there.

Ask yourself, “What question am I trying to answer, and what would I do if the answer were X or Y?”

At the core, your measurement activities should strive to answer some pretty basic questions:

•         What’s working?

•         What isn’t?

•         What do we need to do to make it work next time?

Track Your ACTUAL results and determining whether your programme achieved them.

After you have defined the kinds of results your program intends to promote, assess the Euro value of each type of potential result. If the average value of a sale is €3,000, and the average customer buys four times per year for five years, then the lifetime value of a customer is

€3,000 x 4 x 5 = €60,000

Ultimately, measurement helps you adjust and optimise your programme

BUT even the best tactics applied across the wrong strategies won’t produce your desired results.

Focus beyond “what is” and start measuring

“what if”

Help with business development in the arts sector.

Letcombe Production is dedicated to the arts, creative and social enterprise sectors. Our website has dedicated reels on running your creative or artistic practice as a business, articles and opportunities for artists. In addition, we can organise digital media, marketing, project management, grant writing, application assessment, and tools to help you run your creative and artistic practice.

Working predominantly with arts and social enterprises, Letcombe Production can assist in all getting projects from idea to distribution. We can look after any size of project.