You walk into a museum, and you find yourself surrounded with relics from the world around you. Sure, you can experience each item by looking at it, and you can even go on a tour. But what if you could experience the entire process using interactive features that embrace technology, by using your iPad or your smartphone?
Museum marketers are catching on to the fast-paced changes in digital technology, and are finding creative ways to leverage innovation to create an enhanced museum experience. Whereas once museum artifacts were stuck between the confines of a building dedicated solely to housing the items, today’s museums can reach people on their computers, smartphones and tablets. Such museum marketing efforts are blurring the lines between marketing and curating.
Here’s a quick run down of our Orlando marketing agency’s favorite ways museum marketers are embracing digital technology.
Content Creation: Keeping and maintaining a regular blog helps not only inform potential visitors of museum happenings, but also helps bolster SEO rankings and search engine visibility. A blog need not be limited to museum events; marketers can also use it to provide historical information about current exhibits and other materials of interest to the local community.
Social Media: While these days, most museum marketers are savvy enough to keep active Facebook and Twitter pages, marketers at some of the nation’s leading museums are taking social media to a new level. For instance, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has a massive Pinterest presence, using the social media platform to share beautiful images from its various collections. The Brooklyn Museum website uses the Foursquare API to highlight its guests’ activities, and to display images of each of the museum’s visitors. It also highlights the museum’s Foursquare mayors, both past and present.
Press Releases: Even small museums can benefit big time by using press release wire services to help distribute news and information about upcoming museum events. Press release wire services reach thousands of people in an instant, and most of these people are journalists who are hungry for stories. Additionally, press release wire services increase search engine visibility and help expose museum news to audiences that would not have seen it otherwise. While press release services are not fail-safe, they are a great tool for museum marketers.
Interactivity: Even with limited budgets, most museums can afford to design simple apps to help visitors tour the museum, either in-person or virtually, from the comfort of their homes. However, with bigger budgets, there are endless possibilities to create games and interactive exhibits. For instance, the Smithsonian museum offers virtual tours and mobile scavenger hunts.
As digital technology allows more and more opportunities for growth, museums will undoubtedly be on the forefront of embracing the changes that affect the world around us. This means that we can expect to see complex and advanced marketing strategies for development within the museum marketing. The team at our Florida advertising agency believes that as the world becomes more tech-friendly, the possibilities for museum marketers will be greater than ever before.
While many have historically been open to the public for years, finding new and innovative means to capitalize on effective museum marketing strategies requires the expertise of a trusted agency partner. Looking to uncover opportunities to reach today’s savvy visitor? Contact us today to learn more!