Creatives Going Digital - Digital Marketing Check-up Workbook - 2021 Edition - Theatre Marketing Academy
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Creatives Going Digital
Digital Marketing Check-up
Workbook
– 2021 Edition
Set your organization up for online marketing success in 2021. Nothing changes
faster than digital marketing platforms, tactics and best practices.
How healthy is your organization’s digital practices?
• 68% of customers agree that COVID-19 has elevated their expectations of
brands’ digital capabilities. (Oracle Marketing Research)
In this Digital Marketing Check-up, you will assess your organization’s digital
foundations and practices. You’ll also get expert guidance on “how” to activate
those best practices.
Let’s keep organization moving forward!
Founder and Creative Executive Officer
Creatives Going Digital LLC
Page 2
Your Website and Digital Content Platforms
This is your organization’s digital lobby, video viewing platform and storefront!
□ Your organization’s website is designed for a mobile-first patron and is mobile
optimized.
Your website is viewed seamlessly across all devices and functions on mobile and tablet as a priority.
Rating: ____________
□ You have no FLASH on your website and limited carousels.
Flash is a type of old-style creative player that was popular a decade ago. It shouldn’t be on your site
any longer. Carousels can be effective, but you should have no more than three. 85% of viewers do
not see past the first one. Design differently for the modern website “scroller.”
Rating: ____________
□ Your website is GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) compliant.
Your visitors should know what data you are collecting. You have a notice and request that the visitor
approves of being cookied while experiencing your site. This is activated via a popup that appears on
your site requesting approval.
Rating: ____________Page 3
□ Your site load time is under 3 seconds.
The lighter your site, the faster it appears when called by your IP address or mobile phone. Files
should be light and video should be wireframed in (through You Tube or Vimeo for example) NOT
uploaded to the website’s platform. That can slow your load speed dramatically.
Rating: ____________
□ Your site’s focus is on serving your customers.
It’s important you don’t use your customer facing website to provide content for internal staff,
production teams, volunteers, cast members, etc. That should live on non-promoted pages.
Rating: ____________
□ Content and design follow the six golden rules of digital design (new for 2021)
□ 1. Show, don’t tell. Use photos and video to maximize engagement and retention. Humans
want human faces. Not text.
□ 2. Text should be brief. Short taglines, phrases, block paragraphs can appear lower in the
homepage design. Point size of text should be large on your site. (Mobile-first, remember!)
□ 3. Simplify your navigation (less is more!) and make it actionable (Learn, Watch, Donate,
Explore) then leverage dropdown menus if required.
□ 4. Do not encourage people to leave your website. Social content and links should not be front
and center in your design.
□ 5. Use clear call to actions to direct your visitors in actions you want them to take – Watch Now,
Click To Purchase
□ 6. Design with high contrasting colors. Grey, dark grey or forest green and mint green are not a
good palette for today’s design best practices. Humans want high contrast because it’s easier
for the brain to absorb, especially on a mobile device.
Rating: ____________ (You can rate each individually or as a whole. Your pick!)
□ Your website proudly states your organization’s concise mission, guiding principles
and tagline.
“If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything.” —Alexander Hamilton
Rating: ____________Page 4
□ Your website has Google Analytics activated and you are actively monitoring
behavior on the site.
Measuring your site’s traffic, time spent, pages viewed, what devices are used to access your site and
the demographics of visitors are all important to better understand what works on your site and what
doesn’t.
Rating: ____________
□ Our digital ticketing platform is integrated into our site, either by wireframe or with
links that click to personalized pages inside of the ticket platform.
Online seat selection and fast purchase path is required to maximize ticket sales. You need 3 clicks or
less to reach your checkout cart.
Rating: ____________
□ Your website houses all the creative content you broadcast on social media.
Broadcasting marketing content and creative content on social channels like Facebook and You Tube
makes strategic sense but the truth is, older audiences tend to not engage on them. Your content
should be accessible on your website and better yet, if you are live on a social platform, you have put a
live YouTube Player on your website so patrons can feel comfortable and view there.
Rating: ____________
□ Your digital ticketing platform allows for options in digital viewing – live-streams,
on-demand viewing, download viewing.
Whether you use a third party to connect your patrons to online content or you manage it in house,
your website needs to make it easy to purchase your tickets in the way they want to watch.
Rating: ____________Page 5
□ You have access to the database of online ticket purchasers and it segments those buyers into
“buckets” you can tag – children’s organization, subscribers, new purchasers, etc.
You need to have the ability to segment your purchase database to better target them in the future.
Rating: ____________
□ Your website’s digital ticketing platform integrates seamlessly with your email marketing
and CRM (customer relationship management) system.
Perhaps you have an All In One option like Tessitura or your platform integrates with your email
vendor like Ovation Tix and Constant Contact. These two critical digital platforms (email marketing
and digital ticketing) need to speak to one another in real time. No one’s got time to download and
upload data anymore.
Rating: ____________
□ You’re using alternate digital platforms for collecting revenue for your organization.
Digital tickets aren’t the only way to generate revenue. Text To Give, Facebook payments, Vimeo
paywalls all give you opportunities to monetize your online content.
Rating: ____________
□ You have a plan in process to offer digital/online viewing of your organization’s content as
reopening strategies commence.
Regardless of your state’s mandates and guidelines for safe reopening, you are seeing the opportunity
to address inclusivity and accessibility to your organization’s work to those who cannot or will not feel
comfortable returning to your organization this year.
That will include seamless solutions promoted on your website.
Rating: ____________Page 6
□ You have mapped the CX (customer experience) and customer journey content viewing path
and purchase path across your website and associated platforms.
Customer experience is the impression your customers have of your brand throughout all aspects of
the patron’s journey. It results in their view of your brand and impacts factors related to your revenue
growth and positive experience when engaging with your organization and its productions.
Rating: ____________
□ Your website has an active blog.
Blogs have the benefit of driving SEO (search engine optimization). If your organization wants a
leadership position in the industry, it’s important that relevant expert content is findable in Google
search.
Does your costume designer want a higher profile in his/her/their industry? Does your Executive
Director want to speak on national panels? Providing written content will grow traffic to your website
and grow that person’s authority in their chosen field as it relates to your organization.
And spread the work out! Actors, musicians, staff, volunteers can all provide content for you.
Ensure you know what keywords you want the copy to include and put alt text in all photos you post
in your blog platform.
Rating: ____________
NOTES:Page 7
Email Marketing
Your organization’s best storytelling and information platform. It’s easy, effective and
inexpensive. Email marketing allows organizations to reach many patrons – past, present and
future.
85% of retail establishments agree that email marketing is the most efficient and cost-effective
marketing platform. (Forrester research)
“Digital entertainment providers, tech providers, and other companies that have done well will
focus on better personalization, segmentation, and automation as they inch closer to achieving
the 1-to-1 marketing paradigm.” (Oracle Marketing Consulting)
□ You have an email service provider (ESP) for customer marketing.
91% of US consumers check their email every single day, 56% from a mobile device. Organization
Marketing Academy recommends Constant Contact or ConvertKit as our preferred ESPs.
Rating: ____________Page 8
□ Your ESP gives you the capability to tag, segment and group list subscribers.
Segmenting your email subscribers offers you the opportunity to offer incentives based on their
interests and engagement behavior.
Rating: ____________
□ Your emails are designed for mobile first viewing.
Your font and letter point size need to be readable on a device – especially for our older patrons! 28
size is not unreasonable if you know your patron’s average age. Trends in 2021 will be minimalism in
your design. White space. Bright and bold colors (remember the 6 Golden Rules of Digital Design?
They hold true for email too!
Rating: ____________
□ You send weekly email communication to your subscribers.
Weekly emails should follow the 70/30 rule: 70% engaging storytelling content and 30% sales or
take-action content (i.e. purchase tickets, click here. Take our survey! click here, etc.)
Rating: ____________
□ You have a welcome sequence of emails that drip to new email subscribers.
The first email a person receives from your organization is the single most important email they
receive. From there a series of 3-6 emails should drip to them that are 70-100% engagement and
storytelling about the benefits and joys of becoming a part of your organization’s theatrical
experiences – online and in the organization.
Rating: ____________
□ You batch your emails. You use automation to drip them at appropriate days and times.
For example, In the 3 weeks preceding opening weekend, you bulk design and write copy for your
upcoming production. It’s a much more efficient use of your time.
Or, the last week of the month, you create the content plan and design your weekly emails for the
entire upcoming month.
Rating: ____________Page 9
□ You know the keywords and types of content that trip spam filters – especially with gmail.
You stay away from heavy weight photos (always compress photos!) never import video (image should
click to a video on another platform like Vimeo or You Tube or Facebook). You know what keywords
trigger spam: free! Limited time offer! Click here, open now. Here’s a great list to know.
Rating: ____________
□ You incorporate user generated content into your email copy strategy.
Humans react more favorably when reading the comments and feedback of other people versus what
you write about yourself and your organization’s productions.
Rating: ____________
□ Text is always best. Shy away from loading your emails with many links and images.
Know the capabilities of your ESP! It seems boring but basic text emails fly past spam filters more
easily. When you have heavy emails with 10 links and images that aren’t compressed, don’t help your
delivery or open rate.
Rating: ____________
□ Text is always best. Shy away from loading your emails with many links and images.
Know the capabilities of your ESP! It seems boring but basic text emails fly past spam filters more
easily. When you have heavy emails with 10 links and images that aren’t compressed, don’t help your
delivery or open rate.
Rating: ____________
NOTES:Page 10
Social Media Marketing
Interacting with consumers on social media is a crucial marketing strategy for arts organizations.
Using social media helps you build brand awareness, increase your patron customer base, grow your
donor base and connect with current audiences whether they consume your productions online or in
real life.
Yes, social media remains controversial in 2021 in some respects. But it also offers an affordable digital
platform to “be where the people are!” Being smart about how you use the platform as a marketer of a
performing arts organization is crucial to your success.
Facebook and Instagram remain priority platforms for organizations in 2021. It’s simply not realistically
possible to maximize the power of all social media platforms at once. If you are short staffed, focusing
on FB and IG will give you ROTI (return on time investment) and ROAS (return on ad spend).
□ You use Canva or Adobe or other software to easily create visual content for social media.
Using a self-serve platform like Canva makes sense for the D-I-Y nature of social media content
creation. If you have a graphic designer or agency who does all this work for you, lucky you! But it’s
not common for organizations (especially in 2020 and 2021) to have these resources.
If you do have access to a graphic designer, have them create a template that you can use as a
background in your social media content to level up the professional look and feel of your posts.
Rating: ____________Page 11
□ You have an active Facebook business page.
Love it or hate it, Facebook is where most of your organization audiences on when looking at social
media platform use. If you want loyalist patrons, your corps of volunteers and a place to affordably
cultivate new patrons, you need to do more than create a page --- you have to be active on it.
Facebook rewards activity, video content, engagement and consistency in that order, by showing your
content to more people organically. How active are you?
Rating: ____________
□ You are approaching 5,000 (or more) followers on Facebook.
That is the number goal you should have in order to have Facebook work harder to show your content
to people. The reality is that only between 3-8% of your followers actually see your page posts in
their feed. That means if you have 1,000 followers, maybe 50 people see your post.
But. If your post gets shared often and quicky, that number will increase exponentially. The reason it is
critical to increase your page followers is that you can pay to reach them and those just like them with
your precious advertising dollars!
Importantly, you need at least 1,000 in order to effectively target them inside of your advertising
business suite on Facebook and Instagram.
Rating: ____________
□ Location ‘check ins” at your organization were over 2,000 - before the COVID-19 pandemic.
This check and rating is hard to earn right now for many organizations who continue to be restricted in
the use of their organization spaces. That Facebook algorithm rewards any action taken locally so it’s
a huge benefit to encourage people to check in when they arrive at your door. Keep that in mind as a
priority when you return to your beloved spaces. Encourage check ins!
Rating: ____________Page 12
□ You have over 200 ratings and reviews on both Facebook and Google.
The more ratings and reviews your organization has, the better you rank in the algorithm. Create a
campaign to encourage your most loyal patrons to rate and review you well!
Rating: ____________
□ You have the chat bot enabled and answer questions promptly.
When a patron visits your Facebook page, there is a pop up box that prompts engagement, offering to
answer questions. Facebook rewards you when you answer promptly so be sure your Facebook
management settings alert you immediately when someone asks a question.
Rating: ____________
□ You have a Facebook Business Manager account.
This is where you become “the person behind the curtain” and manage access to your Facebook
analytics, ad manager, events, reporting and pixels.
Rating: ____________
□ You use Facebook Creator Studio to post and schedule content on Facebook and Instagram
The truth is, Facebook doesn’t love third party apps like later.com, Hootsuite, etc to manage the
content you post on social media. They may even suppress distribution which is not good. That’s why
they built Creator Studio. Use it. Do you?
Rating: ____________
□ You have a Facebook/Instagram Advertising Account.
Because Facebook owns Instagram, advertising across both platforms as once is easy within one ad
account. If you have a media advertising agency who manages your advertising, you’ll want to be sure
all permissions are enabled for them to run ads on your behalf.
Rating: ____________Page 13
□ You budget for paid advertising on FB/IG and you buy ads based on online purchase
conversions (or CPC – cost per conversions.)
Reach and awareness and traffic aren’t your priority when spending your valuable advertising budget.
Managing your ad buys on a conversion strategy means Facebook is working hard to find your right-fit
patron who is most likely to convert to a sale.
Rating: ____________
□ You have a Facebook Group.
Whether it’s a private group with select patrons, staff and volunteers invited or a public group, every
organization needs a Facebook group in 2021. Facebook prioritizes posts made in groups – more
than your business page. Same rules apply: activity, video, consistency but add engagement to the
mix. Encouraging your group members to post themselves and form connections to other group
members benefits not just the algorithm, it benefits the affinity and loyalty they feel about your
organization.
Rating: ____________
□ You have an Instagram account.
I love Instagram for organizations – it’s a fantastic platform for imagery, video and live content. The
secret to success on Instagram is 1) the amount of time you engage with others you follow and, 2) how
quickly you respond to others who comment on your posts.
Same FB rules apply: between 3-8% of people who follow you on IG actually see your posts.
Scheduling time to engage on the platform is important to increase your organic reach.
Rating: ____________
□ Your Instagram strategy includes a mix of using stories, IGTV, Live, Reels and encouraging
DMs.
While stories disappear 24 hours after they’re posted, reels are permanent. Also Instagram wants you
to use new tech so when you do, the algorithm rewards you.
Have fun on this platform! Stories, IG Live and Reels allow you to show the fun side of your
organization. If you have a organization academy or children/teen programs, a strong IG content
strategy is a must.
Rating: ____________Page 14
□ You use Linktr.ee or Linkinbio.
I get so frustrated when I see organizations not using their Instagram bio area to the best optimization.
Nothing is more annoying than seeing a organization post a url in the body copy of a post with no way
to click there or find a way to act on your CTAs. Linktr.ee solve for this.
Rating: ____________
□ Your organization has a YouTube Channel.
Did you know YouTube is the third largest search platform on the internet -after Google and Amazon?
You need at least 100 subscribers to be able to customize your URL so work to get to that tier of
subscribers.
Rating: ____________
□ You go live on social media – often!
All platforms LOVE livestreaming so get your content strategy in place for 2021 to include regular live
content.
Use software technology like eCamm (for Apple products only) or StreamYard (for all) to make your
lives on Facebook and YouTube look more professional.
Instagram still rewards casual, informal live video content so stay the course there. But … any and all
content you make that lasts up to 59 minutes should always be uploaded to IGTV.
The secret to live content is to make it once and post it everywhere!
Rating: ____________
□ You make creating marketing videos a priority for your organization.
Whether it’s long form (30-60 minutes), short form (5-15 minutes), bite size (3-5 minutes) or ads (:15
seconds, :30 seconds) video content is powerful on all social platforms and is a preferred by your
audiences too.
Video “slows the scroll” as people are perusing their social media feeds. You want to make “thumb
stopping” content and video can do that.
Rating: ____________Page 15
□ You have a Google My Business account. https://www.google.com/business/
Google wants you to represent your organization as best you can by completing their Business
Account setup. It’s important to drive your audiences to rate and review, don’t forget that. It also
improves your search rankings and how audiences can find you.
Rating: ____________
□ You have a Google Advertising Account. https://ads.google.com/home
Google has a DIY ad buying platform that is available to all businesses. Get in front of customers
when they’re searching for businesses like yours on Google Search and Maps.. Only pay for
results, like clicks to your website or calls to your business.Because Google owns YouTube, you
also have access to purchasing pre-roll video inventory on that platform. YouTube ad buys should
only be done for awareness as clicking off a video is rarely done. You can even consult with a
Google Ad Expert to get you started.
Rating: ____________
□ You have a system for road-mapping and tracking your social media content and schedule.
Whatever it is, you organize your content and scheduling efficiently. You bulk create content so you’re
not going back to the drawing board every day with the question, “What will I post today?”.
Rating: ____________
NOTES:Page 16
⭐⭐⭐
How did you do? This worksheet should give you a good sense of where you
have an opportunity to improve your digital marketing strategy and practices in
2021.
Want support as you grow? Join Creatives Going Digital’s Marketing Academy.
There’s still time to join our member’s group, The Marketeers, as well! Learn
more at this link.You can also read
