"I know half my advertising isn't working, I just don't know which half." Lord Leverhulme

Marketers in the cultural sector are hungry for advice and data that guides them in how to set relevant targets and evaluate their marketing success, or otherwise.

Responses to scoping research conducted last year for Optimise – Creative New Zealand’s online marketing capability building programme showed that:

• almost half of respondents were not yet tracking online marketing activity;

• fewer than 20% of organisations were using the available data to make marketing decisions that might improve RoI or effectiveness.

To improve online marketing practice, Creative New Zealand is inviting you to be part of a groundbreaking project, Optimiser, that will give you tangible information about your current online marketing activity’s success. Optimiser will provide you with the data and evidence to make smart decisions about your marketing investments.

Optimiser is a pilot project that will collect online marketing data for the arts sector and develop benchmarks to allow you to compare your results against other New Zealand arts organisations for the first time. Optimiser will be led by respected arts marketing consultants Vicki Allpress Hill of The Audience Connection  and Tim Roberts of ARTS Australia  and will use real data from organisations to answer six burning questions heard regularly from New Zealand arts managers:

• ARE WE OPTIMISED? Are we doing as well online as we should or could be?

• WHAT SELLS TICKETS? Which online activity results in the most ticket sales?

• COMMENCING A RELATIONSHIP: What should my acquisition activity look like?

• GOING MOBILE: How should we adapt to mobile trends?

• WHAT’S MY EMAIL RoI? Is my email marketing hitting the spot?

• BEYOND SALES: How valuable is our social media activity?

Project Leader, Vicki Allpress Hill of the Audience Connection, says that “We consistently see a desire for comparative benchmarks expressed at workshops and seminars within the sector in New Zealand. Online marketing benchmarks, and the lack of them, remain a key issue for the cultural sector in New Zealand.”

Issues include:

• limited knowledge within arts organisations of how to use analytics tools to extract meaningful data upon which to base decisions;

• confusion around how to evaluate success

• a lack of standardisation of online analytics tools being used across the sector.

Optimiser is a pilot online marketing benchmarking study – the first of its kind in the arts sector in New Zealand. An extension of the ongoing Optimise programme, the study offers an opportunity for fine-tuning of online marketing in the arts to enhance drivers and reduce barriers to attendance.

New Zealand arts organisations and venues are invited to be an Optimiser. Project participants will receive a number of benefits that will help them to be a better online marketer:

• We’ll check that your online analytics are set up correctly to measure your activity.

• You’ll receive a tailored report about your online marketing results and how they compare to the sector. Your data will remain confidential. It will go into an aggregated pool and be segmented to be included in comparisons relevant to your business.

• We’ll run a free Facebook advertising campaign for you

• You’ll learn how to read, interpret and act on your online marketing analytics.