Time for the Performing Arts to Get Mobile

Nearly three-quarters of performing arts patrons use their mobile
devices to search for arts events and 21% use their devices to purchase tickets, according to the recent Groups of Minds survey.

However, performing arts presenters, marketers and administrators don’t seem to know this. In fact, according to Musical America’s April 2013 survey* of performing arts presenters and businesspeople, 93% of arts marketers do not have a mobile marketing strategy and more than 60% of the 266 respondents plan on spending…absolutely nothing on mobile marketing in the next 12 months.

Musical America’s survey reveals a deeper disconnect between the rapidly growing use of mobile devices by audiences and the lack of widespread mobile marketing by presenters and managers:

• Nearly half of the performing arts professionals contacted by Musical America did not know what percentage of their customers use a mobile device to make purchases or get information from their businesses;
• Roughly 50% of the performing arts presenters and managers said their business’s mobile efforts are exclusively dedicated to internal routine office tasks, such as email, calls, etc.
• 63% of the respondents do not plan to invest in or purchase mobile marketing products and/or services in the next12 months.

The Musical America audience is composed of performing arts professionals: presenters, managers, administrators, artists, vendors, and businesspeople. Many members of the Musical America community wear more than one hat and split their time in being a combination of artists, presenters, managers, etc.

*The Musical America survey was conducted via email notification with a link to a web site where the survey resided. The email was opened by 4,750 people and 266 completed the survey. The respondents were: presenters (40 percent), artist managers (31 percent) and artists (29 precent). The full survey can be found on MusicalAmerica.com.