Audience Development for Choruses

whatever that experience is and what the story of the concert is rather than just, ‘Here’s the composer, here’s the repertoire.’” In its storytelling efforts, CCS plans to begin “expanding the timeframe of the concert experience,” Eanes says. For its March concert featuring settings of poems by Edgar Allan Poe, the chorus will partner with the Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, to engage concertgoers with the museum’s resources both before and after the performance.

Response to TCP’s marketing efforts has Hughes juggling two different approaches. Older patrons “prefer media that they can actually hold in their hands,” but he knows younger generations gravitate toward digital media, so the chorus maintains a consistent social media presence through Instagram, Facebook, and more recently TikTok, sharing interviews with singers and composers or rehearsal clips highlighting new pieces. Last spring, to promote a Choir League concert in a large airplane hangar, Barnett bought advertising on a podcast called City Cast, “and it was huge,” she says. “I think that’s probably where a ton of our audience came from.” Because audience success for LACC begins with singer enrollment, Bradford says he’s invested in search engine optimization to identify the keywords most likely to lead families to its website. A survey of parents revealed a significant number “heard about us through a Google search or through a social media campaign,” which leads Bradford to believe one reason LACC experienced record enrollment this year is that “we really focused heavily on what our digital footprint was looking like.”

There can be no doubt that the digital footprint is deepening in the marketing budgets of many choruses, but not everyone is ready to make heavy investments. Although Fyala feels GMCW’s presence on digital platforms is “really good at getting the word out about what we’re up to,” he’s learned it does not always translate directly into ticket sales. “We still find that good old-fashioned word-of-mouth is really one of our strongest selling points,” he says. Because word-of-mouth works so well for Choir League, Barnett rarely buys advertising for its concerts. “People have a good time when they’re there,” she says. “They’re having so much fun they want their friends to come.” Committed though he is to LACC’s digital strategy, Bradford would wholeheartedly agree with Barnett. “We’re very conscious about the work that we do to provide an exceptional experience to the families,” he says. “One of the benefits to that is that they then help us by going out and spreading the word.”

“It’s just a continual goal to keep expanding the net,” Hughes observes. “How can we get more people interested in us?” Rethinking customer relationships is a “big burning issue” in the performing arts today, notes Alan Brown, and he believes serious research is a good way to address it. Classical Uprising and LACC both plan surveys that will deepen their understanding of the factors that drive audience attendance. GMCW is already working on a strategic marketing project with Compass, a firm that provides pro bono consulting services to nonprofits in several metro areas. They’ll study what motivates current patrons, but because “our audiences tend to be very niche,” Fyala says they will also identify ways to broaden the organization’s reach. “We want to let everybody know that

GMCW is a chorus that everybody can enjoy, whether you are part of the LGBTQplus-and-ally community or not.”

Learning how to forge connections with more diverse audiences begins with conversation and collaboration, as far as Eanes is concerned. For its March concert of music by African American composers, he says CCS is partnering with DC-area HBCUs, churches, and affinity groups and listening to their stories about the music’s meaning. It’s too soon for him to say how well that particular effort will work. But emerging from the pandemic, he’s noticed “much more diversity” among CCS’s new ticket buyers, and he attributes that to “trying to tell the story differently, expanding our programming, speaking to a broader audience, speaking about things that are relevant to people today, and engaging people in art in a way that moves them.” n

Don Lee is a media producer, editor, writer, and amateur choral singer who lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. At NPR in Washington DC, he was the executive producer of Performance Today