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Experience · Engage · Explore: Visit the Museum of the Albemarle Campaign
By Don Pendergraft, Director of Regional Museums
This year the museum embarks on a new EXPERIENCE . We are actively marketing the museum to increase awareness of our mission, unique history, and educational and entertainment aspects. This promotional plan involves three forms of advertising: radio, media, and print. Our main goal is to get visitors near and far to come and visit us!
We will EXPLORE the best ways to reach people who like traveling to new, “old” places a beautiful rural, ecological trip in time. We’re promoting northeastern North Carolina as the earliest settled region of the state featuring the chronological exhibit, Our Story: Life in the Albemarle
The marketing team is using different methods to ENGAGE with prospective visitors. The first is radio-based with a state wide radio source. The best, with the farthest reception, is UNC Public Radio with transmission towers located in all parts of North Carolina and going into the fringes of South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia.
The broadcasts are simple and elegantly done by announcers on-air. The plan is to do radio spots throughout drive times, news, and related cultural broadcasts and during times when studies say most listeners are tuned in.
The second is digital media with Vista Graphics, a company based in tidewater Virginia. They have designed promotional spots with similar action messages of “ experience, explore and engage ”. These messages will be geared to various algorithms and will appear when searches are made online for history- and heritage-related places and cultural activities. These ads are directed to people researching trips to destinations in and around the region. They will go out to World Wide Web distributions.
The last is traditional print media with one of the most dynamic popular magazine’s dealing with all that is happening in North Carolina, Our State Magazine . The ads run during months when people are planning trips in the state and region.
Throughout this new campaign, we will record visitors’ information as they enter the museum by requesting their hometowns and asking how they heard about the museum, so we can gather the results of our efforts for future campaigns.
I’d like to thank the Friends of the Museum of the Albemarle and the marketing committee that consisted of Josh Bass, Corrina Ruffieux, Barbara Putnam, and myself for their work and support in providing the funding for the effort.
