The Art of Winning Over Museum Visitors

The attributes and benefits of your brand can vary in how tangible they are to museum visitors. And that can affect buying decisions.

Whether the product you’re marketing is a new exhibit or a seasonal event for your museum, it has intangible attributes, which are abstract and can't be experienced directly, such as quality, prestige and sentiment. For example, an invitation to attend art classes at your museum can speak of finding one’s creativity; its design can evoke a feeling of exploration and playful discovery. Whereas the art classes’ tangible attributes are concrete, those that can be seen, touched and experienced first hand. Perhaps the art classes are smaller in size for more personal instruction, offering students a wide range of artistic disciplines and specially discounted for museum members.

Research shows that each attribute plays a different role in the museum visitors' evaluations (what they like) and decisions (what they choose.) Specifically: visitors tend to place more weight on a product’s intangible attributes when deciding what they like, but they place more weight on its tangible attributes when they're choosing what to buy.

So, what are you to do? Well, it seems the right formula might come down to this: Woo your visitors, and then win them over. Set the mood and entice them with your museum’s intangible attributes; then, when it comes down to making the sale, clearly state its tangible benefits, specifying how it will fulfill their needs and get them where they want to go.