As many of you know, there is a feeling of relief and “what’s next?” after a concert cycle is over. I finished a full season with one of my clients, and at the end, I made sure to take a moment to evaluate what had happened.

In fact, I took time out to process a ticket history dating back to 2011. This was a client that I was with from 2009-2013, then back with them from the end of the 2016-2017 season until now.

What I found very interesting after this assessment was the first season results. The first season of this assessment, I recall, was a strong audience development season. The board was on board, we had a team of people working to spread the word, outreach events were in place, and the concerts were publicized very well. In looking at the history, this is still the best season out of all the seasons!

After this time though, I did feel that the audience development team dwindled, and it came down to relying on a marketing person again. They had a few good years due to epic programming and some good collaborations, but for the most part, no season from 2012-2019 equaled or surpassed the audience development season.

One of the seasons had almost doubled the marketing dollars. Did this season come close? Nope!

So even throwing more money out there did not result in a better season. It put the organization in a tighter spot too. This year, there was a slight upslope, but it could have been so much more if the organization was fully back on board with audience development. It will take a little time for them to rebuild the team mentality. As I have seen, the effort is well worth it.

Over the years, I keep raving about audience development. It has been 11 years since I have started this blog, and my personal use of audience development still works better for audience building than marketing alone (or without much typical marketing at all). All of my major successes over the years are due to audience development methods. I have seen colleagues who use audience development also share in this success.

I hope the industry starts believing soon. Lazy marketing, even smart marketing, is costly, and the results do not equal what audience development can do.

For the people that have voted for my next book to be about case studies, I think it is time. Will the numbers and the stories of audience development sway you? Let’s find out.

Cheers to happy and loyal audiences,
Shoshana

Shoshana Fanizza
Chief Audience Builder, Audience Development Specialists

PS If you have an audience development case study story to share, please get in touch with me! ads(at)buildmyaudience(dot)com.