Jenny Williams leads attend media, an advertising agency working primarily with cultural and non-profit attractions.  As a Media Strategist, Jenny works with zoos, gardens, museums, and aquariums to align their efforts across media strategy and investing in advertising.  Jenny began working in media in November of 2007, which is the same time that Facebook launched its advertising platform.  Throughout her career, she gravitated toward working with attractions and developed an even deeper niche within non-profit and cultural attractions to help align their advertising around the mission.  In this interview, Jenny shares practical advice about putting together an effective media mix, non-profit marketing, and tracking the right metrics.

“You can’t post the same ad across all channels and expect it to serve the same purpose.”

There are so many channels that need to be considered when placing advertisements based on the audience attractions are looking to target and the message they are seeking to convey.  While digital marketing, including social media and online advertising, has accelerated in growth, marketers should continue to leverage traditional channels such as television, radio, and billboards.

Through extensive testing and looking at past performance, marketers should evaluate the success of various campaigns, using the data to drive future campaigns into what works best.  In particular, influencer marketing has evolved from finding an influencer with a sizeable following to post content about the brand to seeking larger pools of smaller creators and using their content in the attraction’s ads.

"People are seeking more organic content. They may not trust when it's perfect and polished."

Jenny describes the difference between nonprofit and for-profit attractions as mission-driven or ticket-driven.  While both types of attractions need to focus their advertising on driving attendance and ticket sales, non-profit attractions should focus their message around their mission.

Non-profit attractions typically have a wide channel mix and often can spread themselves too thin.  Jenny suggests that non-profit attractions should not spend less than 5% of their budget on any channel.  This puts constraints on creative teams for developing assets, limits the ability to do proper testing and find insights, and it dilutes the messaging.  Additionally, non-profit attractions should spend at least 10% of their budget on paid social.

“Visitation is the end goal; not a click to the website.”

When you’re building your media strategy and looking at your objectives, it begins with understanding what you’re looking for.  It may not be about how many unique households you are reaching, driving traffic to a web page, or even driving online ticket sales.

Depending on ticketing software and advertising channels, attractions may be able to track the performance of their campaigns directly through to ticket sales.  However, for channels such as television, radio, and billboard, attractions should align these campaigns to see if website visitation increases or if attendance grows which can be attributed to the campaigns.

To learn more about attend.media, visit their website.  Jenny is also co-host of the Marketing Attraction Podcast, which can be found here and on all major podcast platforms.  

This podcast wouldn't be possible without the incredible work of our faaaaaantastic team:

• Scheduling and correspondence by Kristen Karaliunas

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