Marketing Strategy for Museums: A Practical Guide

Marketing Strategy for Museums is a practical guide to developing and delivering marketing that supports museums’ missions and goals. Explaining how museums can be strategic and proactive in their approach, it also shows how to make effective decisions with limited resources.

Presenting examples from a range of museums around the world, the author positions marketing as a vital function that aims to build mutually beneficial relationships between museums and their audiences - both existing and new - and ensure museums are relevant and viable. Breaking down key marketing models, Lister shows how they can be applied to museums in a meaningful way. Setting out a step-by-step framework for developing a museum’s marketing strategy and for creating marketing campaigns, which can be scaled up or down. Readers will also be encouraged to reflect on topics such as sustainable marketing; ethical marketing; and accessible and inclusive marketing.

Marketing Strategy for Museums provides an accessible guide that seeks to demystify marketing and boost the confidence of those responsible for planning and delivering marketing in museums. It is aimed at people working in museums of all types and sizes and will also be relevant to students of museum and heritage studies.

Christina Lister is a marketing consultant with over twenty years of experience working in marketing, audience development, and PR in a range of agency, in-house, and consultancy roles. Her experience has included international marketing for a global skincare brand as well as PR and communications for a range of leisure, public sector, tourism, and not-for-profit organisations. Over the past 15 years Christina has specialised in developing marketing strategies, facilitating workshops, running training, and providing mentoring for cultural and heritage organisations including museums, libraries, archives, festivals, arts centres, and theatres. She has worked extensively with larger museums and sector support organisations such as the Museum of London, the Arts Marketing Association, and the Association of Independent Museums, as well as many smaller and independent museums including Jane Austen’s House and the Museum of Cambridge. She is a strategic thinker with an insight-driven approach and her work has won a range of marketing and PR awards. She is passionate about championing audiences, and passionate about the impact that effective and meaningful marketing and audience development can have.