Arts Marketing Myths: Search Grants, Retargeting, and Influencers

“Why do I need to pay for Search if I have a Grant?”

Grant accounts have significant structural restrictions that prevent ads from ranking as well or being as competitive. Relying only on a Grant account will not give you the kind of volume you’d get with paid search (and especially for higher-profile performances or exhibitions, this means giving away your hard-earned acquisition work to resellers).

Paid search is the way to go if you want to appear more frequently and prominently on the SERP (search engine results page), ease the purchase path for users who have seen your ads on other platforms and are ready to take action, or increase visibility for people looking for more general activities or arts events in your area.

We only recommend skipping paid search if you are seeing little to no competition for your search terms, which is unlikely unless you’re in an extremely niche genre. Note: we stand by this advice even in a shifting landscape of AI search.

“We should pause spending on [Lookalikes] [Interests] [Social Page Engagers]. They aren’t buying. All of the purchases are in Retargeting.”

That means the strategy is working! Many of the folks in the Retargeting segment started out in members of more middle- or upper-funnel segments. It makes sense that Retargeting is going to take the bulk of the attribution for purchase–most people are purchasing tickets on a second visit to your website (or third, or fourth), not the first visit. 

For upper-funnel segments, we should be looking at whether audiences are clicking to your website or generating key page views. If so, they’re doing their job: feeding the retargeting pool and expressing initial interest. If not, they might need optimization (or, sure, they might need to be paused).

Note: this principle will often also apply in the context of different Google campaign types within an account ecosystem. Paid Search has a 2,000% ROI and Demand Gen is only driving clicks? Excellent. It’s all working (together).

“I can’t afford to pay or convince major influencers to post about my organization.”

That may be true. But, quite frankly,  why would you want to? Most “major” influencers have a national or international audience, and that means that, unless you are based in one of the top few tourist hubs, they wouldn’t be a great fit for driving ticket sales. 

When it comes to partnering with influencers, follower count matters far less than alignment. You’ll want to look for creators who speak to the audience you want to reach, already care about arts, culture, or shared values, and feel like a natural fit (not a forced promotion).

Micro-influencers often outperform larger accounts because their audiences are more engaged and trusting. Also consider:

• Platform strength (do you want to focus on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube?)
• Past collaborators you enjoyed working with
• Creators who’ve already tagged or visited your organization organically

This blog post will walk you through other considerations for arts & culture organizations considering influencer marketing.

“My board/my team/my dog says they’re not seeing any of our ads. Are we sure they’re serving?”

Digital campaigns are smart, and you’re likely not the right audience. Do members of your team typically buy tickets to your organization’s shows, or are they attending via comps? Ad platforms know a lot about us, so it would make sense for them to correctly identify an employee of an organization as an unlikely buyer. 

This all depends on how your targeting is set up—sometimes, we hear the opposite: “I keep seeing this ad a bunch of times, why I am being served it so much?!” In those cases, we’d gently remind you: you probably spend significantly more time on your own organization’s website than the average resident of your city and that’s an easy digital indicator of interest.