Measuring your success

A key element of any marketing plan is the means by which you should measure the success of activities.

This stems directly from the objective setting elements of the plan, and often as not, helps marketers to test and refine their objectives.

The ability to measure success relies on marketers already having defined and agreed what success actually means.  All too often the lack of an articulated definition of success leads to a notable lack of appreciation of the role that marketing and audience development plays in the longer-term success of the organisation.   The more specific marketers can be in defining what success means, the easier it will be to establish the monitoring and evaluation mechanisms needed to measure it. 

Indeed to arts marketers, whose budgets are often the first to succumb to funding cuts and whose future activities benefit heavily from the knowledge of past performance, the need to establish sound and appropriate monitoring and evaluation mechanisms is increasingly important.

Amongst the range of mechanisms, frameworks and techniques available to arts marketers to evaluate their activities are:

• analysis of box office or visitor survey data
• community or economic impact studies 
• other feedback channels such as customer comments cards or complaints handling
• observational research methods
• using in-house or audience panels. 

AAM has significant experience in conducting audience development and evaluation activities and provides a range of services and guidance to assist arts marketers measure the success of their activities.