{"id":2365,"date":"2015-11-08T14:16:43","date_gmt":"2015-11-08T21:16:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/audience\/?p=2365"},"modified":"2015-11-08T14:16:43","modified_gmt":"2015-11-08T21:16:43","slug":"the-4-types-of-audiences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/audience\/2015\/11\/the-4-types-of-audiences\/","title":{"rendered":"The 4 Types of Audiences"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AudienceYou want to attract, grow, diversify and sustain your audience?<\/p>\n

Great! \u00a0But the biggest mistake you can make is to think of that audience as a single entity. \u00a0True, “your audience” converged at some point – whether for a particular night’s performance, during the run of a production or exhibition, into your venue, or some other way onto your mailing list. \u00a0But the happenstance of their intersection doesn’t mean they share the same motivations, preferences or priorities.<\/p>\n

Here is a more practical model by which to understand and serve your audience – a model we explore in-depth in my Audiences Everywhere<\/a><\/strong>\u2122 workshop…<\/p>\n

Consider a framework of 4 basic audience types on a grid where vertical represents the CAPACITY to participate (i.e. time, money, physical ability and opportunity) and horizontal represents their level of INTEREST:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Devoted<\/strong> \u2013 These the relatively small number of people with high interest and high capacity who already know that they love you, your art and\/or your organization and can\u2019t wait to be part of whatever you are doing next. You want to attract and grow this audience? \u00a0Then reward them with a \u201cdepth\u201d of relationship worthy of their passion and loyalty.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Oriented<\/strong> \u2013 With high interest but lower capacity, think of them as people who subscribe to the local newspaper (God bless them!) and open the arts section eagerly because they know that “their fun\u201d lies somewhere inside those pages. Conventional arts marketing focuses on attracting these audiences the first time \u2013 believing that once they\u2019ve had a taste, they\u2019ll return. \u00a0The numbers speak for themselves: research by TRG Arts<\/a><\/strong> reveals that an astounding 76% OF AUDIENCES WHO ATTEND IN ANY ONE YEAR<\/strong> DO NOT RETURN IN THE VERY NEXT YEAR<\/strong><\/span>. \u00a0So, you want to attract and grow this audience? \u00a0Better to start by recognizing that your organization – like every arts & cultural organization – is an incredibly leaky bucket and before investing time and resources in advertising for new audiences, we have a major job to plug those holes.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Asleep<\/strong> \u2013 A vast population possesses neither the capacity for nor interest in whatever an arts organization is offering. We call this “audience” \u201casleep\u201d but the name is not intended as a pejorative. It solely references our opportunity\/responsibility to awaken these folks. To be clear, whenever we proceed from a \u201cpick the low hanging fruit\u201d methodology, we are actually directing that organizations should abandon this population. \u00a0There’s nothing easy or immediate about the process of awakening this population – but the idea that arts & cultural organizations can survive solely by “picking the low hanging fruit” when demographics, technology, competition and everything else suggests otherwise makes that an outdated and dangerous philosophy. \u00a0It’s time to CHOP DOWN THAT TREE and replace it with a metaphor that recognizes the imperative to serve audiences beyond the ones who come to you most easily.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Uninspired<\/strong> \u2013 How exciting! \u00a0Here’s the quadrant whose people possess the time & money, but who routinely fill their leisure time with OTHER activities because \u201cthey were not raised in households that exposed them at an early age to the value of arts & cultural experiences.\u201d \u00a0Let’s note that these folks aren\u2019t \u201cuninformed\u201d \u2013 so, the solution here isn\u2019t to shout more marketing messages in their direction. Rather, this quadrant reminds us to pursue the mission of our organizations in \u201cExtraordinary\u201d ways \u2013 because the only way to inspire the uninspired is to actually inspire them.<\/p>\n

Lastly, let’s observe that audience members likely fall into multiple quadrants… \u00a0A Devoted fan of musical theatre may be Uninspired when viewed from the perspective of classical music or Asian art. \u00a0Someone who is oriented to jazz may be totally asleep when viewed from the perspective of contemporary dance.<\/p>\n

This model of audience engagement provides both a macro and micro perspective on who is your audience and practical ways to cultivate that relationship.<\/p>\n

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# # #<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You want to attract, grow, diversify and sustain your audience? Great! \u00a0But the biggest mistake you can make is to think of that audience as a single entity. \u00a0True, “your audience” converged at some point – whether for a particular night’s performance, during the run of a production or exhibition, into your venue, or some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,38,26,34,23,27,36,4,25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2365","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-best-practices","7":"category-engagement","8":"category-innovation","9":"category-marketing","10":"category-mission","11":"category-participation","12":"category-relevance","13":"category-strategy","14":"category-value","15":"entry","16":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/audience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/audience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/audience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/audience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/audience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2365"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/audience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2370,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/audience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2365\/revisions\/2370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/audience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/audience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/audience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}