Why Museums and Heritage Organizations Need a Long-Term Marketing Strategy to Thrive
- Heidi Schlag
- May 16
- 3 min read
As a busy heritage site manager, marketing is often the last thing on your priority list. It gets handed off to an intern, rolled out a few weeks before a major exhibit, or squeezed in between grant deadlines and board meetings.
I get it—you’re juggling a million priorities. Most museum and heritage professionals didn’t go into this work to become marketers. You’re here to preserve, interpret, and share the stories of your place.
But if you want to reach audiences, increase visitation, and thrive in a rapidly shifting cultural and economic landscape, marketing and promotion need to become an institutional priority.
Why One-Off Marketing Doesn’t Work
Many small museums and cultural nonprofits fall into the trap of marketing reactively. A special event is coming up, so you post on social media, write a press release, and maybe boost a Facebook ad. Then everything goes quiet again.
But audiences today are constantly bombarded with information. If you’re not communicating with them regularly, you risk being overlooked. And that means missing out on visitors, donors, collaborators, and broader community support.
Marketing Is More Than Promotion—It’s Strategy
Marketing isn’t just what you post or print. It’s about understanding your audiences, knowing what they care about, and making sure your message aligns with your mission and programs.
A well-thought-out strategy helps you:
Clarify your identity and value to the public
Strengthen your fundraising and grant applications
Build lasting relationships with tourism partners and local businesses
Ensure all departments—from interpretation to development—are telling a consistent story
In short, marketing connects the dots across your entire organization. When done right, it amplifies your impact without adding chaos.
Why Consistency Matters
You wouldn't put up your exhibits for one weekend a year and expect lasting results. Marketing works the same way. Building visibility and engagement takes time and consistency.
This doesn’t mean churning out daily content or having a huge staff. It means having a plan and sticking with it. It means aligning your communication with your programming calendar, leveraging partnerships, and showing up in the places where your audiences are already looking.
But here’s the thing—you don’t need a full-time marketing department to start making progress. If you’re ready to take a few simple steps, here’s where to begin:
Pick one audience to focus on.
Instead of trying to reach “everyone,” choose a key group — families, history lovers, day-trippers — and tailor your next few messages just to them.
Look at your calendar.
Map your next two or three programs or events. What stories can you start telling now that will build interest? What content already exists that you can reuse?
Choose one marketing activity to do consistently.
Whether it's a monthly newsletter, a weekly Facebook post, or a quarterly blog, pick something sustainable and stick with it.
These small steps may not seem like much, but they build the foundation for something bigger: a marketing system that works for you, not against you.
And the good news? You don’t have to do it alone—or all at once.
You Have Help
This fall, I’m launching a series of training sessions specifically designed for museums, heritage sites, and cultural nonprofits that are ready to stop scrambling and start building sustainable marketing systems.
We’ll cover:
How to align your marketing with your mission, interpretation, and fundraising goals
How to collaborate with partners like DMOs, Main Streets, and Heritage Areas for greater reach
Simple, effective tactics to boost visibility, even with a small team
How to build a marketing approach that grows over time, without burning out your staff
Want to Get Started?
If you’re ready to reframe marketing as a tool for collaboration, connection, and long-term success, I’d love to work with you.
Make sure you're on my email list to get notified when the trainings launch this fall.
Get on the waiting list. Be the first to learn when the Marketing for Museums web training is available!
Practicing What I Preach: This blog was written with the assistance of a custom GPT I’ve trained specifically on museum management, heritage tourism, and marketing communications strategy. I use this tool to support idea development and content drafting, but the final draft, including all insights and recommendations, reflect my professional experience working with museums and heritage organizations.