Visitors to cultural organizations often have certain telltale behaviors. Here are five of them.
This week’s Fast Facts video is a fun one that shares a few data-informed findings about the kind of people who visit cultural organizations. Thanks to IMPACTS, I’ve got my hands on a whole bunch of trend data and sometimes little fun facts are just, well, fun!
Here are five, data-informed fun facts about high-propensity visitors to cultural organizations.
The introduction, conclusion, and one of the fun facts merit a deeper, written dive. There are a few important, extra takeaways worth noting from this video (that are not the five fun facts themselves):
1) Not everyone wakes up wanting to visit a cultural organization
Yes, I think that this is a bummer just like you do. If everyone wanted to visit cultural centers, we wouldn’t be having so much trouble engaging more diverse audiences or even attracting millennials at representative rates. Cultural organizations often have a hard time admitting to themselves that their likely audiences aren’t “everyone.” This certainly does not mean that we shouldn’t try to get unlikely visitors in the door. We really, really should – and in fact, we need to evolve our business models and better engage these audiences in order to survive. But the reality is that some people are more likely to visit cultural organizations than others.
As much as our industry may appreciate a scapegoat, data and economists alike have been proving to us for years that free admission is not the cure to engagement that many imagine it to be. The sooner that we move on from this, the sooner we can create affordable access programs that actually work (here – read this, too), and the sooner that we can create business models that are more sustainable. We are so busy fighting to maintain our belief in the myth of free admission curing engagement, attendance, and participation issues that we aren’t moving forward, or even thinking creatively or strategically about how to stay alive and relevant long-term. But I digress.
A high-propensity visitor is a person who demonstrates the demographic, psychographic, and behavioral attributes that indicate an increased likelihood of visiting a cultural organization (e.g. museum, aquarium, botanic garden, historic site, symphony, theater, etc). High-propensity visitors are the folks who keep our bread buttered – they are the folks who visit, donate, and reliably engage with our organizations. This video covers five random fun facts about these people.
2) Visitors are extremely connected to the Internet
High-propensity visitors are 2.5x more likely than the average person to qualify as being “super-connected.” This means that they have access to the web at home, at work, and on a mobile device. In fact, these folks acquire information regarding leisure activities almost exclusively via the web, social media, and peer review sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor. Visitors to cultural organizations have constant connection to the Internet – meaning that what cultural organizations do online is really, really important.
Interestingly (though unsurprisingly), millennial high-propensity visitors are crazy super-connected. That said, the folks that are going to attend a cultural organization are all looking things up online and using the web and social media, regardless of age.
3) Likely visitors are not necessarily rich
“No kidding,” you’re probably thinking if you’re reading this before watching the video. After seeing the five fun facts about high-propensity visitors, though, you may be thinking that high-propensity visitors must be very rich. Being a high-propensity visitor has nothing to do with being “rich.” Plenty of not-super-rich people have a cat or dog, like to hike or ski, enjoy a nice meal with a great glass of wine, and occasionally travel overseas for vacation. This person doesn’t have to be a multi-millionaire. (I mean, they could be, but they don’t have to be to possess these behaviors.)
Being a high-propensity visitor is indicated by how someone chooses to spend the money that they have – not that they have tons of it. How someone chooses to spend their money is a choice. So is how someone chooses to spend their time. Being a high-propensity visitor isn’t innately about being rich or poor. It’s about how someone chooses to invest his or her leisure time and money.
These three items may seem obvious to some, but they are worth extra attention because they tackle a few myths: 1) That likely visitors to museums include everyone (especially when admission is removed); 2) That the web and social media play supporting roles in reaching, attracting, and retaining audiences; and 3) That the most likely visitors to cultural organizations are rich. These popular beliefs are false. We know they are false. And yet they permeate too many critical conversations.
Once we better know our audiences, then we’ll be best able to serve them.
