Thinking Outside the Box

Recently consulted with a museum (a non-profit) up in Connecticut.

They were trying to figure out how to bring customers (doesn’t matter what you do, someone who wants to interact with your “goods” is a customer) into a room that they had — which was only being booked on the weekends.

Why the weekends?

They were a children’s museum, specializing in educating grade school aged kids in science. The weekends where when the young kids weren’t in school, and the museum is so interactive, parents wanted to hold every kind of kid party they could think of at the museum.

Unfortunately, since kids are in school during the week, the room goes unused.

Important fact: the room is rented and brings in over 10% of the revenue for the museum on a yearly basis. If they could get the room booked the rest of the week, a significant increase in revenue could be realized, but they were so close to the tree, they needed someone from the outside to look at what they had to offer as well as give them some idea’s.

Initially, they wanted to discuss how to get the room rented. Which is great, but, I asked “Why haven’t you?” and we learned that the room wasn’t set up for “everyone”.

First problem they had was that room was built for and catered to young kids. There were very few chairs and tables for adults to sit in or use. So before they could rent out to adults (or teenagers), they had to make it adult friendly (think kindergarten classroom).

As a non-profit, every dollar needed to be hoarded and if spent, had to really justify why it was being spent and what the ROI would be.

So before we spent money, we came up with them asking the local businesses to “donate” the funding for chairs and tables. Of course, with putting a sticker or stamp on the chairs/tables thanking the business that made it possible.

Which then led to the problem that they had no where to store the tables and chairs. They couldn’t put a storage unit outside, as their parking was limited, and they didn’t want to lose the space. So we came up with the opportunity to ask a local business to donate the space for their storage needs — such as putting a POD in the lot across the street that a business would donate (just the space — if they also wanted to pick up the cost of a monthly rental for a storage unit, bonus!). Or if they had available storage in their building for 50 chairs and 10 tables, that would also work.

Second, how were they going to attract people into the room during the week? Marketing right? And again, budget (with a volunteer and part-time staff) came into play.

I offered up the following:

1. Have a grandparents night where they can bring their grandkids to experience the museum. The grandparents can have drink and snacks in the room while the grandkids are out playing with all the exhibits. When the grandparents have other grandchildren around, they can send them to the museum, as well as prepare for #3 and #5 below.
2. Have high school STEM meetings in the room. Bring in local STEM leaders, from university teachers to local leaders who can speak of STEM and have them run a course/class. Focus if desired on “Women in STEM” or “Prepare for a STEM career” or whatever.
3. Allow the room to be rented out to local business meetings, from Kiwanis to Chamber of Commerce.
4. Use the room and invite everyone that has donated in the past year for an annual (or monthly) “Thank you” brunch. Show appreciation for what they have done — even if they only donated $50 or $5,000.
5. Have a parents day with free drinks and snacks to experience the museum, as well as experience the room (that they were trying to get used). Show the parents, who many have the need for a room during the year that isn’t their house, that they are available.

What I’m not mentioned in the above is the underlying theme that I pressed on them when we discussed this.

Get people (not just yourself — i.e. museum director and staff) to think “outside the box” of what they could and would use the room for. From a company meeting to a staff meeting to a holiday party. Anything to make the community “aware” that there was a room available in an incredible museum.

You don’t have to do all the work in marketing. Word of mouth, trending, and sharing are all easy ways to get noticed and gain the traction needed to become more successful. Of course, if your product sucks, it won’t happen. But with the museum, who have such a unique offering that no one in the area offers, they can only try try and try again until enough people are aware that they become top of mind.

Lastly — they had the audience at a young age, but then “forgot” about them when the children entered middle and high school. Instead of focusing on kids for 8 years, they could focus on kids for 18 years. Don’t ever, if you can help it, let your customer grow out of your market — as those kids will be parents one day and they will remember how the museum opened up their eyes to something that they never knew they were interested in before.

This post, along with others discussing Leadership and Marketing, can be found here, under the Leadership blog.