
Ask HN: Best way to grow an arts startup? - sheepybloke
I&#x27;m working with a team who are working on a professional ballet company, focusing mainly on performances. They are a couple years in and are looking to step up to the next level. What are some of the best ways to grow the company? More generally, what are some growth hacks from the startup world that work for art organizations?<p>Thanks!
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ogou
You don't need growth hacks, you need an actual marketing plan. To come up
with that you need to figure out your target audience. In the tech world it is
common for companies to market to people who don't actually provide them with
revenue. For instance, a typical SaaS company might target developers.
Developers rarely have direct say in expenditure. The goal might be to get
enough developers interested in a technology that they just get some street
cred. The SaaS company then tries to land some big clients with salespeople
who say "our adoption rates are huge". The money happens at a much different
level than direct from consumer, which is what a ballet company would want.

A lot of tech companies spend a huge amount of marketing effort getting people
to use something that is FREE. Seems weird, doesn't it?

But, what you are probably asking for are some guerilla marketing/free
PR/social media tricks. Lots of blogs cover that.

Try video. Words about ballet might not be effective getting people in the
door. Short looping gifs or <60 sec videos would probably get better
engagement on Facebook and Instagram. Skip Twitter and Google AdWords.

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subpixel
1\. subscriptions

2\. subscriptions

3\. tiered pricing

You need people paying you regularly, not just a-la-carte. And to attract the
best patrons (aka customers) you need to sell them experiences (aka features)
that people on lower plans don't have access too. Think artist events, special
performances, travel, etc.

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lubujackson
Focus on engagement. Your "product" might be performances, but there are a ton
of ways to create a more intimate connection (and gain fans or find revenue
streams) beyond those few performances. Simple things like have an
Instagram/Twitter/newsletter with pics from practice, new members, challenges,
etc. Create a narrative out of the ballet company so that the performances are
the payoff for fans. Look at how bigger, more established arts communities
handle this, like symphonies.

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hypnotist
Find and talk to people who have(done) what you want.

HN is not the best place to find that sort of thing.

I would research other entertainment companies/individuals similar to the team
you working with.

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carrozo
Building your own newsletter should sit at the heart of any digital comms.
Social media as the layer above with copious video and photography, but always
having the call to action to sign up for the newsletter. You should “own” your
audience contact details, rather than optimise for followers on proprietary
networks that you need to continually pay to reach.

You should also own your own payment gateway, be that for patronage or content
subscriptions or ticket selling. Luckily with a little bit of upfront effort
this is easy to do with something like Stripe and will set you up for long
term financial independence and viability.

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carrozo
A lot of old-media organisations have found some success in selling "access",
you might also be able to find subscription-paying patrons who get special
privileges beyond the casual audience member: attending rehearsals, going
backstage after shows, or even attending classes themselves to get closer to
the action.

There's also good old-fashioned sponsorship — local brands or wealthy
individuals who are happy to contribute to your mission in exchange for
billing in your promotional materials and physical spaces.

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nnn1234
HN probably not the right crowd for your organic growth. But +Post snippets of
video on YouTube/Facebook +Do tutorials of difficult steps +Do teardowns
/reviews of ballet in movies and other shows +Sell subscriptions( building
something that can help here ) \+ Talk to the best in your niche of the arts
and release as podcast \+ Engage ballet twitter

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TIE53
Almost all arts organizations are going to rely heavily on grants and
development as their main funding sources. Trying to run a ballet company on
ticket sales alone is going to be almost impossible. You need to develop a
marketing plan to attract small donors and work with your leadership team to
secure corporate donations and/or other large gifts.

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kangnkodos
Startup world - venture capital

Arts world - generous patron

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uxhack
Start Ups are about the new new thing. How will your ballet company be new?
Even contemporary dance is not that new.

Why this is important is that the audience for the arts is quite stable, where
startups are geared towards discovering new markets.

One idea could be looking at eXtended Reality and thinking if that can
transform your ballet company into a new product.

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adultSwim
Build community.

Make a business plan. Figure out who specifically your audience is and how you
will reach them.

Consider making it non-profit. Then you can solicit donations.

Establish relationships with colleges. Set up pipelines of energized young
people. Harness their useful but individually ephemeral participation.

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dyeje
Personally probably wouldn't follow HN'd advice on running a ballet company,
I'd ask people who have run ballet companies.

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jbob2000
Ballet is mired in tradition. Startups are all about changing the things that
people never questioned. It's almost an oxymoron to try to run a professional
ballet company as a startup - at some point you may have to pivot to _not_
being a ballet company, and then you're no longer a professional ballet
company.

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_bxg1
Yeah... I'm bracing myself for a flood of really bad takes on this post.

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verdverm
cirque du soleil might be a good case study

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wheels
Which is in fact one of the case studies in the classic business strategy
book, "Blue Ocean Strategy".

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trpc
you're not just an arts startup, you're in the classical music business so
that's 10000x harder, most tech based startups that enter that business fail
because they cannot grow as a usual startup should. There is a company called
IDAGIO that was founded probably around 2013, it relaunched multiple times,
they played with the pricing from free to 5$/month to 10$/month to free again,
they raised around 20 million dollars and employed 100 people, they bribed and
paid journalists under and over the table to get every possible positive
coverage possible for more than 2 years now, they bought facebook, twitter
followers, they did everything including the dirtiest growth tactics any
marketing pro would think of, and they are still struggling with growth.

It's a very tough business and needs extreme patience and shamelessness alike.
My recommendation is to do partnerships with other arts companies or
institutions related to your market, most of such partnerships are fake
anyway, but can somehow give you some boost. That's at least what IDAGIO, the
longest surviving classical music company has been doing so far, beside
bribing journalists of course :D.

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Digg_mov
yes

