Four strategies to thrive in a down economy

Things are tough all over, and though my wife and I haven't felt much effect yet I'm hearing it everywhere. And finally it's more than just the usual media/political FUD, as I was listening to Morning Edition on my way to the Baud this week and heard the recession is official. Frugal is chic again and we need to learn to get by with less. With less discretionary income, remember that it's a really special thing when a patron decides to pass on other items and come your shows, exhibits and special events. Here is some advice for ways to thrive, because just surviving isn't enough.

Know thy audience

The best way to keep and grow your audience is to give them a memorable experience. To do so, you need to always be listening and capturing what they want, and then acting on it. Make sure that you've got a strong feedback loop in place so that patrons have an opportunity to tell you how they've heard about you and what they're interested in, and your internal folks have the ability to report on that feedback and use it to influence decisions about your programming. Great places to capture feedback are:

• At the time of sale for walk-up and phone.
• Email and snail mail.
• On your website.
• At the exit, in the gift shop, or other locations. This can be comment cards and a box, or a standalone kiosk linked to some kind of document or feedback capture system. Using a Google Docs form is an easy, free way to achieve this.

Know thyself

You have a lot of smart people at your organization, and folks with a passion for what you're doing. You have people who give money and volunteer time to further your mission. Make sure these people have a chance to share their thoughts and ideas with you. The feedback of your front-line people is just as valuable as that of your board. They see patterns, shifts, bottlenecks and pain points in a way that doesn't show up on reports. They also see firsthand what gets your patrons excited. Capture this feedback and use their ideas.

Move quickly

If you're in a situation where you have a meeting before the meeting to form a committee to oversee the task force that organizes even more meetings, it's the perfect time to break that cycle. What is the real goal of all these committees? If you're not sure, kill the committee and let those people work on things where they bring more value. If every decision needs to be vetted by five committees and two managers, you can't move quickly to take advantage of new opportunities or to streamline things that may improve customer service and audience size. Sometimes this can point to a leadership vaccuum, so make sure there is a strong, confident leader (confident does not equal stubborn) to guide you.

Respect the web

Your website is not an online version of your brochure. It is the starting point for people to get to know you better and to interact with you, on their time. You need to constantly keep the website up-to-date, not just with your programming schedule but with special events, news, pictures, maybe even a little bit of video. Put up interactive quizzes, downloadable theatre notes, mp3 samples, links to your social media pages. Give the kids a scavenger hunt to print and bring to the museum, and if they email it back with all the right answers give them a special award to put on their imbee pages. I'm not saying to clutter your site with useless tchotchkes, but give your audience a reason to stay on the site for more than a few seconds and to keep coming back on a regular basis. What you provide is an experience, and the web is the best way to give people a taste of it.

There are tons of great ideas to increase interaction and better respond to audience tastes. What is your organization doing to thrive in the current economic climate?