November 13th, 2024
Marketing Insight for Cultural and Heritage Visitor Attractions
A new YouTube video, to help those charged with heritage visitor attraction marketing, whether that is a historic home and gardens, museum, heritage railway or former home of a famous author or poet, has been created at the Catapult PR channel.
Managing director, Jane Hunt, who was promoting museums even before founding Catapult PR nearly 27 years ago, presents the video, drawing on rich experience in cultural and heritage PR, as well as tourism PR.
The video, entitled ‘How to Market Your Heritage Visitor Attraction’ also draws on something unique to Catapult PR – the findings of consumer research, independently commissioned by the agency, which highlight what visitors expect of a visitor attraction in the cultural and heritage space.
The need to question cultural and heritage marketing tactics
The video asks historic houses, museums and other types of visitor attraction of this kind, to question whether their marketing tactics are really working for them. Jane then highlights why the hard factual evidence – the statistics from the research survey – probably suggest that those deployed by many such visitor attractions simply are not, with one of the big sins being over-reliance on tourism leaflets.
This is not the only example. Many attractions are still using tactics that worked 20, 10 or even 5 years ago but which no longer satisfy the needs of today’s visiting public. Jane also highlights why the answer is not social media and details what it is that visitors actually want to see historic visitor attractions doing. This means exploring the world of PR and content writing and, to a great extent, enriching the assets on an attraction’s own website, as Jane explains in more depth.
Research survey findings relating to museum and heritage attraction visitors
Knowing how visitors are searching and deciding on where to visit is crucial for anyone marketing a visitor attraction and Jane highlights exactly what people say they are doing, in this regard.
The problem for many visitor attractions in the heritage space is that most are not using the tactics that will fulfil this need.
Jane discusses the tactics that heritage attractions should be deploying in their marketing, recognising, however, that many simply would not be able to carry out this type of marketing. She recognises, that busy estate offices or museum operations teams are often trying to do everything from sorting out ticketing to organising toilet inspections. All of this knowledge resulted in Jane creating the heritage-specific initiative of Heritage Buzz.
She highlights how the answer is to seek external help, as simply not aligning the marketing with the sources that visitors are actually using will inevitably lead to stagnation in visitor numbers and declining footfall.
Increasing visitor attraction spend and visitor satisfaction
She also discusses how a clever use of marketing, through better techniques, can potentially increase dwell time and spend within a visitor attraction.
A discussion about visitor expectations with regard to value for money is central to all of this and Jane explains how the right marketing can also tick the value for money box. This is absolutely vital, not just because times are still very hard for many people and we are not entirely out of the cost of living crisis, but because it also impacts on reviews, referrals and general satisfaction levels.
Visitor attraction value for money
Jane also discusses value for money in the context of the type of marketing that visitors want to see and highlights how the art of repurposing can allow a heritage or cultural visitor attraction to gain many assets from the marketing spend they are committing. She also highlights how this can also be of huge benefit to an attraction’s visibility in the search engines and just how vital this is.
To reinforce everything, Jane points video viewers to a case study on the Catapult PR website, although she has plenty of other examples besides.
The video should offer food for thought to any visitor attraction – heritage and cultural or otherwise – planning its strategies and marketing spend for the 2025 season. Head off to – https://youtu.be/B39A8i4FHj0?si=dVC5BGUo25UCOLB_- and watch it today and then really question whether your current marketing tactics are working.
