Developing your brand is the first essential step to mastering marketing for your chorus. 

What is a Brand?

Choirs are run much like a business. They have leadership roles, someone to handle finances, a promotions and marketing team, and people who bring in revenue for the organization. And like a business, choirs should strive to develop a brand which is, in simple terms, what someone thinks of when they hear your name. Your brand consists of facts as well as the emotional connection someone feels about your organization.

Why is a Brand Important for Choirs?

Recognition, Relationships, and Trust. By identifying and promoting your brand, people will start to become familiar with your organization. It keeps your organization top of mind and helps build a relationship with your potential audience members. It establishes a sense of trust and recognition before they even attend your performances! With a strong brand awareness strategy, your community can get to know you on a deeper level, making them more connected and committed to supporting your organization.

Competition. If you’re living in a city like Nashville, Los Angeles, New York, or Boston, there’s a lot of competition between choirs for audience members. There are live musical performances weekly, if not nightly(!), and your chorus needs to stand out from the crowd. On the flip side, choirs in smaller cities  often struggle to get community support for arts programs. Your brand can help speak to your community and encourage your target audience to attend your performances above all other activities they could be doing on a Saturday night!

Increased Ticket Sales. It’s no surprise that if you are 1) recognized, and 2) stand out from your competition, that your ticket sales will increase through your efforts.

Psychology Through Design. It might seem insignificant to some, but the colors and typography of your brand play a crucial role in branding your organization. Do a quick google search of the psychological properties of colors/typography and you’ll see that both can have positive or negative psychological effects on the person viewing them. Depending on your target audience, you’ll want to carefully choose the colors and fonts that represent your choir’s personality but also are pleasing to your targeted viewers. In one quick glance of your marketing materials, a viewer should be able to immediately sense whether they are interested in building a relationship with your chorus even before they read any words!

A Sense of Purpose. Your brand is a starting point to build or further develop your organization’s mission statement and vision, all of which help define a sense of purpose for your organization, its members, and your audience. This helps provide strategic direction for your organization.

Overall, companies and organizations with a strong and streamlined brand will build relationships, establish trust, and connect with their target audiences more easily than organizations who do not.

Stay tuned (see what I did there?) for our next blog on the "how-tos" of developing your brand!