Open Forum

Hello! I work at the Biggs Museum of American Art, a small museum in Dover, DE. We have just launched a new marketing committee and intend to begin conducting some market and audience research on both internal and external audiences. However, we have very limited resources. I wondered if any other small-mid sized museums have conducted audience research and had tips. 

Areas I would especially love to here about:

- Using universities/student groups to conduct the research? Has this works well? Is it practical?
- Paper vs. email surveys - response rates?
- Did you use a paid firm to conduct surveys/research or was it done in house?
- Where did you purchase customer info (IE: we are looking to poll people who live in the 5-10 miles surrounding our museum)

Any other info or resources in the area of market and audience research for small museums would be very helpful! Thank you!

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Stephanie Adams
Marketing Director
Biggs Museum of American Art
Dover, DE
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As a university, we have easy access to a business school. In the past we have coordinated with a professor who assigned her class a marketing project related to the museum. This summer I was contacted by an alumnus at a local marketing firm. He had an intern who needed a project, and as the museum had previously worked with the firm, he thought we might need some assistance--he was right!

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Allison Hutton
Director of Communications and Marketing
Michael C. Carlos Museum
Atlanta GA
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Hi, 
I'm from the Wisconsin Historical Society. We have worked with small focus groups conducted online through a small outside agency and I found that information incredibly useful. I'll post the link below to their website if you are interested in learning more.

We recently finished up working with some MBA students on surveys they created for a project they were working on. My suggestion would be to make sure the timeline is understood. We ended up having to move much faster on the surveys than we would have normally to consider the questions and how we wanted to align the project with our brand. 

We do paper and digital guest experience surveys that can be accessed through a link. We are currently seeing a lot more paper than digital surveys submitted.  We also do general surveys via email through our lists when we want more information on planning programs or other information. We seem to get a good response rate on those.

Besides the assistance with the outside agency, we do this all in house on a low budget! If you would like to talk more feel free to reach out.

Good luck!
MJ

Here's the link to the website. KMI Research Marketing Metrics - Kitson Marketing Inc.





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Mary Jane Connor
Director of Marketing
Wisconsin Historical Society
Madison WI
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