How can you achieve ongoing engagement with your patrons and supporters?

Connect with your fans, patrons, board and advisory members, major donors and core sponsors on an ongoing basis, beyond your main events of the year.

First, offer them more ways to interact with your organization and enjoy your work all year round. The second component of a successful engagement strategy is for you to create more intense and immersive experiences for your patrons.

In the following video, Mark Turrell, CEO of strategy and marketing firm Orcasci, describes the key elements of an ongoing engagement strategy for artists.

Summary: Engagement

Develop a diverse portfolio of engaging offerings
Share a look behind the scenes
Provide information around your art for the curious
Engagement works in both directions – learn how your patrons react to your work
Embrace opportunities for co-creation
Engage with all types of supporters

1. Elements of a Stakeholder Engagement Strategy for Artists

Your goal should be to create constant connection points with your key stakeholders that provide enriching experiences for them, allowing you to make more art and support your work in a more sustainable way. This kind of engagement strategy requires a diverse portfolio of offerings, as well as ongoing communication with your patrons and supporters.

Extend your offerings beyond your main events, and add new types of scheduled events, as well as bookable artistic experiences for which you arrange the details with the individual buyer. Make these offerings particularly engaging by providing immersive experiences for your patrons. You can then leverage these more intense experiences in your communication with your fans and supporters by covering them in your online media channels through videos, interviews, interesting background information, and impactful photos.

Allowing your fans and patrons to get very close to the artists, possibly becoming an active part of the event, and teaching them about the intricacies of your art and your personal approach are all great ways of engaging them and increasing their appreciation for your work. For instance, offering unique behind-the-scenes experiences to your patrons, like a show-hearsal (a sneak-peak of a performing arts company’s work-in-progress), and making this kind of immersive – and at the same time educational – material available online to your followers is a very powerful approach.

click to download our ongoing activities template

click to download the template

Don’t just think about engaging your fans and patrons – remember your other supporters like your board members, your major donors and core sponsors. Show people that they are valued throughout the year. Give them a quarterly update that includes links to interesting materials. Invite them to events where they receive special treatment. Say thank you if a gallery hosts your work, etc.

Our template schedule for ongoing marketing, sales & engagement activities helps you plan your engagement activities and includes ideas for how to go about it successfully.

2. Engagement Creates New Opportunities and Challenges for Your Art

Engagement represents a way of staying in touch with your fans and supporters between your major events, offering them more of your art, and increasing your income from sales and donations in a sustainable way. You also grow through it because you find out more about your patrons’ interests in and reactions to your work and your organization. You will benefit from enriching two-way learning and inspiration that arises from your interaction with your fans, and from performing or exhibiting in new settings and venues.