Marketing of museum: the rules of success

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Historically, fine arts organizations have been unaware of or unwilling to acknowledge any similarities between their operations and those of their profit-making counterparts. This is especially true in the case of museums, which traditionally have an elitist attitude toward their publics. As a result they could fail to utilize the appropriate business techniques and be accused of lacking a high degree of professionalism, particularly in the area of marketing, and of course have a lot of problems in their activity. It is exactly the main reason why marketing is actually substantial to the organisations of non-profit sector, and especially museums.

For the museums it is essential to count the diverse segments of the market when creating and realising both - marketing and strategic plan.

Marketing is usually connected with the notions of efficiency and providing competitiveness, nevertheless with the non-profitable organisations marketing ought to focus on the service of clients. To reach the best client's service, organisations need to know what the clients want, and what is in priority for them.

Therefore this paper shows the importance of usage marketing strategy for each museum, and clarifies how to organize a high-quality marketing of museum.

It is a well-known fact that big part of the museum's success depends on how good is marketing, but also an important factor is how the state deals with support and development of museums.

In order to make museums more popular and support them in Ukraine it is first necessary to develop a concept of museum sphere development. This concept should be aimed at increasing the importance of museums, recognition of them as important resource of society development, culture and economy.

We determined that within the concept, the priority directions of development of museum sphere in Ukraine should be:

1. Active self-financing: the use of their own income and attraction of sponsorship and donor funds;

2. Integration in education: the use of unique exhibitions, active integration in the educational process;

3. Development of cultural tourism: Ukrainian and international;

4. Providing a preservation of exhibits: new technologies and mechanisms of storage and transportation;

5. Improving of accessibility for people: establishment of new information and communication technologies in activity;

6. Creation of a comfortable environment: infrastructure, increasing of convenience for visitors, creating a museum centers;

7. Refining of staffing: training of qualified staff, improving of personnel's social level;

8. Development of leisure component: interactive forms of communication with the public, recreational and entertainment services.

Fig. 1. Concept of Museum Sphere Development

Of course, not every museum can rely only on the state's support and expect changes that should happen because of the policy of the state. In this case museum should take the situation under own control and succeed through their own methods. One of which is marketing.

Successfully built marketing should have certain components, algorithm, etc.. Therefore we tried to figure out how should be the marketing system in order to be most effective. Below we describe the rules of success of museum's marketing.

The museum should use an integrated marketing approach. It should have the following structure:

1. Marketing Mix. It should consist of such components as:

1.1. Product Strategy (the concept of the exhibition activity (expositions, exhibitions, focus, key artists); educational services (seminars, courses, library); entertainment (cinema, games, interactivity); the concept of service (shops, cafes, restaurants, catering); publishing; tourism).

1.2. Fundraising (membership (loyalty program); donors; corporations; state; crowd funding).

1.3. Communication Strategy (creative strategy; media strategy; social media; digital marketing).

1.4. Pricing Strategy (admission; field trips; special exhibitions and events; membership, patronage; shops; cafes and restaurants; catering; rental rates; other services).

2. Branding and Unique selling propositions. They include:

2.1. Target geographic markets (branches; field trips; internet commerce).

2.2. Target customer segments (strategic segmentation; loyalty segmentation).

2.3. Others (positioning, unique selling proposition (USP); points of parity; architecture; personality (values, character and emotional benefits, rational benefits, consumption situation, attributes, reasons to believe); identity (logo, naming, brand book, architectural constants)).

Fig. 2. Integrated marketing structure

marketing museum financing environment

One more additional important conclusion in this topic is possible to explain with next statement: museum that operates on the principles of marketing should put the consumer in the center.

In such museums marketing is based on a deep understanding of the needs, perceptions and preferences of consumers; broad view of the competition, including other leisure activities; uses the whole range of instruments of strategic and tactical marketing, not just advertising and PR; divides consumers into segments and makes to them specialized offer.

Using of marketing in museum's activity can help to the museum to be on the top of modern trends - to expand audience, to go beyond the usual museum, and turn to the museum-entertainment center.

All process of transformation with help of marketing can be described in such way:

Past:

- Permanent exhibition;

- Rare exhibition;

- Immature marketing function;

- The lack of work and primitive work in the Internet;

- Low level of service (store and meal);

- Underdeveloped technology of membership and fundraising;

- For narrow masses and only "to show".

Present:

- Big extension of audiences, including at the expense of Internet;

- Super modern stores - not only books, souvenirs, art goods;

- Modern website, micro sites, blogs, RSS, social networks, open content;

- Interactive technologies, mobile applications;

- Museum not getting up from armchair: virtual tours, possibility to see the collection;

- New level in education;

- Individual interaction with artists;

- Active advertising support;

- Developed system of membership and fundraising;

- Go out on the streets;

- Beginning of development of branches.

Future:

- Cloning of museum - branches;

- Diversification of services (tourism, etc.);

- Super modern architecture;

- Augmented reality, near field communication (NFC), gesture control;

- Creation of recreational areas;

- Growth entertainment services (cinemas, games and others);

- Museum - a modern leisure center.

Conclusions and further researches directions. The main finding of the paper is that the managing of museums needs to consider marketing aspects if they want to keep their business running or to say it in other words - if they want to survive as organisations. Managers of museums must realise that they need to understand the needs, perceptions and preferences of consumers.

This main finding and ways of possible implementation of concepts is demonstrated step by step in this paper. Firstly it's shown that it is essential to be aware how the setting of your marketing activities is - the so called marketing mix.

Based on the essential factors of the marketing mix: product, price, promotion, place, people (staff), partnership it's developed a concept how Ukrainian museums should act to ensure their continuity. In this conjunction it is shown in the developed “Concept of Museum Sphere Development” that different parameters influence on the success of activities which museums should conduct or needed to be considered to succeed in the market of leisure industry.

For example there are to mention exemplarily: the development of leisure
component (interactive forms of communication with the public, recreational and entertainment services) or the improving of staffing (training of qualified personnel, improving of staff's social level).

In the conclusion the paper elucidates ways for museums how they can face the challenges of the leisure industry market especially when they are using the appropriate marketing strategies. Furthermore the paper outlines how important it is for non-profit-organisations to realise that they are competing with other leisure facilities and that it is only legitimate to use different tool like several means of marketing to succeed.

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