PROPOSAL
PREPARED FOR
FIRST & FOREMOST...
Thank you for the opportunity to tell the Museum District's story in a new way.
Who We Are
Padrón & Co. was founded in 2017 as Padrón Design Studio by a couple very much in love with Houston and each other.
Our team now helps businesses reach new heights and new audiences using:
- Visual storytelling driven by real user experience data
- Competitor research to ensure best placement and positioning
- Every technology available to make your efforts go further
OUR MOTTO:
"Design is Empathy; Empathy by Design"
To create the best work possible, we believe it is our duty to consider everyone who would be interacting with the final product, from the client to their employees to the end user or viewer.
Truly great design, great marketing, and great service are always continual exercises in empathy.
We have spent seven years perfecting our company structure. We have hired the best local talent for the needs of our clients. We don’t offer any specialized services we couldn’t complete with our in-house staff, ensuring quality and cost-effectiveness, and giving us the freedom to work with the clients we love.
Proudly based out of the Lyric Tower in Downtown Houston, TX.
Clients, Past & Present
We are so very proud to be defined by the company we keep. With over 20 active clients at any time, we found our niche in ongoing marketing support services for nonprofits. You’ll recognize many members of your district as well as other cultural districts in Houston.
AAMA (The Association for the Advancement of Mexican Americans)
Alley Theatre
Alliance for Aging
Arts District Houston
Asia Society of Texas
Avenue CDC
Buffalo Soldiers National Museum
Care for Elders
East End Improvement Corp.
Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center
Exchange Club of Conroe
Families in Nature
First Christian School
First Service Credit Union
Fort Bend County Links
Gilbert and Sullivan Society of Houston
Glenwood Cemetery
Good Reason Houston
Houston Center for Contemporary Craft
Houston Contemporary Dance Company
HDMA (Houston Digital Marketing Association)
Houston Exponential
Houston Grand Opera
Houston Jewish Community Foundation
Houston Loves Teachers Initiative
Houston Recovery Homes
iNDIEFLIX Foundation
Japan America Society DFW
LifeGift Organ Donation
Midtown Houston
Midtown Cultural Arts District
Medical Benevolence Foundation
Opera in the Heights
Plan A Health Clinics
Planned Parenthood
Society for the Performing Arts
Space Center Houston
SpringSpirit
Station Houston
The Powell Foundation
Quality of Place Conservancy
Women’s Resource of Greater Houston
Undies for Everyone
Workshop Houston
Baker Training Institute
Café Poetes
Codistas IT Services
Dini Spheris
Donna Mark Designs
EAC Consulting
Everest Foot and Ankle
Goose Creek Creamery
HMT Tank
Institute of Contemporary Dance in Houston
Kayva Rose Event Management
Kindred Cares
Link Crude Resources
Link Data Services
Milstead Glass
Mindful Refocus Coaching
New Canaan Farms
Reading Lounge Café
Revel Technology
Sesh Coworking
Shining Star Stichery
Southern Yankee Beer Co.
Southern Yankee Crafthouse
Sweat Heaven
TBS Fitness Events
The CFO Element
The Great Connections
Towerwood Farms
Ultraflote
Vaughn Construction
VineSleuth
William Harris Lee & Co. Fine Instruments
Wells Abbott Showrooms
Wells Textiles
Wells Warehouse
Wilkenfeld Speech Pathologists
Board Wizards
Core Simulations
DermaVision
EDM Facilities
Forestage XR
Generosity Culture
Houston VR
iNDIEFLIX
infoFluency
Koda Healthcare
Luminare Med
Major Decision
March Biosciences
Phase Scheduling App
P97 Networks
SAF-T Vest Solutions
Scoop Health
Simple Flood Control
TrackIt App
Treehouse App
TrueGrid Pavers
Unleashed Generosity
Z3VR
Your Leadership Team
Organizational Chart
Our team is broken up into content and creative departments with daily overlap and collaboration.
Daryl oversees all content creation, such as social media writing, blog and website content, press releases, and general copyediting. She would also oversee much of the marketing plan research.
While Gracie oversees all creative and strategic planning, Minhthy ensures all projects are entered into our system, completed on time, and run smoothly overall.
Ian would be your dedicated video editor and main web editor. Catherine and Cori would help with graphic and web support as it relates to implementing your marketing plan.
Marketing Plan
Creating a marketing plan for Houston Museum District involves several strategic steps to attract visitors, enhance community engagement, and increase visibility. Here’s a breakdown of our marketing plans tailored to the needs of the District.
Market Overview: Understand the current cultural landscape, including the number of museums, types of exhibits, and annual visitors. Analyze the competition, which may include other cultural districts or entertainment venues.
SWOT Analysis:
- Strengths: Rich cultural heritage, variety of museums, educational value, established reputation.
- Weaknesses: Limited budget, seasonal visitation, potential accessibility issues.
- Opportunities: Partnerships with local businesses, tourism growth, community engagement.
- Threats: Economic downturns, competition from digital entertainment, changing cultural trends.
- Local Residents: Families, students, art enthusiasts, senior citizens.
- Tourists: Domestic and international visitors, cultural tourists, educational groups.
- Schools and Universities: Partnerships for educational programs and field trips.
- Corporate Sponsors: Businesses interested in supporting arts and culture for brand visibility.
- Increase Visitor Numbers: Aim for a specific percentage increase in foot traffic and ticket sales year over year.
- Enhance Community Engagement: Build relationships with local schools, businesses, and community groups.
- Boost Online Presence: Grow social media followers and website traffic by a defined percentage.
- Generate Revenue: Through memberships, donations, sponsorships, and special events.
- Core Message: Emphasize the museum district as a cultural hub that offers something for everyone, blending education, art, and history. We may want to explore taglines for different campaigns.
- Visual Identity: We know that this step is currently being worked on with another agency. It would be our goal to use this identity in the entire implementation process. Campaigns would not be treated like subbrands.
- Digital Marketing:
- Website Optimization: Ensure the museum district’s website is user-friendly, mobile-responsive, and optimized for SEO.
- Social Media: Review the current content calendar being developed for platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Adjust the strategy as needed to share stories, behind-the-scenes content, and especially user-generated content.
- Email Marketing: Build and segment an email list to send newsletters, event announcements, and special offers.
- Content Marketing:
- Blogging: Regularly publish blog posts highlighting exhibits, artists, and historical insights.
- Video Content: Create short videos or virtual tours that showcase the museums and exhibits.
- Public Relations:
- Media Partnerships: Collaborate with local media for feature stories, interviews, and event coverage.
- Event Marketing:
- Special Events: Host cultural festivals, exhibit openings, workshops, and lectures.
- Community Days: Help drive visitors to free or discounted admission on days to attract but also retarget local residents.
- Partnerships and Collaborations:
- Local Businesses: Partner with restaurants, hotels, and retailers for cross-promotions.
- Educational Institutions: Collaborate with schools for field trips and educational programs.
- Corporate Sponsors: Develop sponsorship packages for businesses interested in supporting the arts.
Allocate Funds: Assign specific budgets for digital marketing, events, advertising, and PR efforts. Padrón would help manage resources over the 12-month period.
- Short-Term (0-3 months): Launch a refreshed website and logo, kick off social media campaigns or strategy shifts, and begin partnership scoping.
- Medium-Term (3-6 months): Organize the first major campaign, roll out email marketing, and track the progress of digital campaigns.
- Long-Term (6-12 months): Evaluate the success of the marketing plan, adjust strategies as needed, and plan for the next year.
- Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):
- Visitor Growth: Track the increase in foot traffic and online engagement.
- Revenue: Monitor ticket sales, membership sign-ups, and donations.
- Engagement: Measure social media interactions, website analytics, and email open rates.
- Feedback: Collect visitor feedback through surveys and social media to gauge satisfaction and areas for improvement.
- Regular Reporting: Set up monthly or quarterly reviews to assess the effectiveness of the marketing strategies and make adjustments as needed.
Ongoing Marketing Support
Though research is necessary to outline all goals and possibilities, we can offer some standard industry suggestions and expectations.
Overall reach, brand awareness, and engagement are the true goals for your brand.
Video Storytelling
Shift Audiences
Focus on Reach
Adopting an Integrated Digital Marketing Strategy
There is currently no active use of integrated digital marketing strategies at the Museum District. There is no way of tracking where followers and site visitors are coming from or where they’re going.
1) There was no employee in-house capable of holistic oversight of digital marketing, and no previous agency actively monitoring and pivoting.
2) The goals of each museum are so different that you may have been reactively reporting their activities rather than proactively finding ways to track and retarget engagement for increased reach across all channels.
We must raise the visibility of Museum District without sacrificing the integrity of the member museums and their own internal marketing efforts.
Past Client Strategies
It has been our pleasure to work on a variety of marketing campaigns for our clients as part of their full-service retainers. Some businesses have come to us exclusively for social media support or marketing plans and grown their retainer from there. The following case studies are meant to illustrate skills similar to your brand’s needs.
CASE STUDY
Buffalo Soldiers National Museum Ongoing Marketing Support
It is our sincere pleasure to continually manage the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum social media, email, capital campaigns, and exhibitions for four years now. We are helping them coordinate their interior in the next year. As part of our ongoing retainer, we have helped them secure TV broadcasts in over 80+ markets, helped bring social media influencers to their site or gotten them featured on podcasts, facilitated collaborations with other major partners in the Houston area, such as Space Center, etc. We have also supported them on capital campaigns as part of our retainer and helped secure over $6 million in two years. We are currently helping make their facility and marketing efforts friendlier to the Hispanic markets, which are currently the fastest-growing market in Houston.
CASE STUDY
Medical Benevolence Foundation #BeBenevolent Campaign
MBF helps build hospitals around the world by building entire medical systems and educating the local populations in the latest nursing techniques. For example, we have run a fundraising campaign to get “first breath” training to nurses handling newborns or to get “Mother’s Day” cards to moms in their Malawi maternity wards.
Their main concern was that they didn’t have a brand, so we first helped with developing a brand, from fonts and colors and custom iconography, to how they discuss the life-saving work they do. They have limited photography and no way to take new photography on the regular, so the work was very graphic-based and boosted with ads, depending on data to drive action.
CASE STUDY
East End Houston Mural Short-Term Tourism Campaign
East End Houston’s Cultural District reached out to us for a full marketing plan and campaign surrounding their 2-mile mural project. We helped them create and distribute a series of bilingual social media videos. We created custom landing pages on their website with interactive maps leading to each mural and a page per artist, translated in English and Spanish.
The social media posts reached an engagement record for them, spiked their website visits, and drove email signups and visits to the murals. No ads were used for this campaign. It was completely organic, utilizing video content and consistency for reach.
The plan extended beyond social media. We helped outline possible scavenger hunts, partnerships, interactive elements, walking tours of their artwork, corporate funding opportunities, and more. The plan is still in execution and limited only by funding. East End is not currently on an ongoing retainer so it stalls progress.
Reporting & Key Metrics
We are able to provide full monthly reports of all channels and marketing efforts as part of our retainer. In our monthly or quarterly meetings, we go over what’s working and how we can shift strategy to continue growth.
We recommend boosting some posts so it continues to reach the right people. We understand that tourism is a major focus. We also help with Google Grant strategic support as part of our retainers.
Experience with Rebrand Launches
We know that a new logo and website are soon to be released for the Museum District. We have experience helping expanding marketing efforts after a rebrand like Space Center Houston, Houston Saengerbund, The Women’s Resource, and the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft.
Founded as a graphic design studio, we know we can drive you through the execution of a brand launch as part of our monthly retainer.
Pricing Model
We offer a variety of pricing options: fixed retainers, hourly as-needed, and project rates.
For this RFP, we recommend continuing a project rate for the marketing plan and a fixed monthly retainer for execution of the plan. This would cover all campaign writing, graphics, website edits necessary or 24 hours per month with rollover for unused hours. Though unlikely that there would be additional out of scope items, they would be charged at our nonprofit hourly rate of $125.
Marketing Plan
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65% Research & Meetings
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25% Plan Preparation
Implementation
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$36,000/year for execution
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$14,000 for paid advertising
Hourly Support
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Any & All Out of Scope Items
Ad spend is not included in the cost of our retainers, nor are the costs of printing or photography.
References
Desmond Bertrand-Pitts
Executive Director
Buffalo Soldiers National Museum
desmond@buffalosoldiersmuseum.org
832-287-5717
Marci Dallas
Cultural District Director
East End Cultural Arts District
culture@eastendhouston.com
713-928-9916
Cynthia Alvarado
Cultural District Director
Midtown Cultural Arts District
calvarado@midtownhouston.com
713-526-7577 ext 106
Let's Work Together!
It would be our sincere pleasure to work with the Museum District to advocate, promote, and help enhance Houston’s museums and cultural life. You’ve gotten to know how we work. Now, let’s continue the journey.
Padrón & Co. is a leading creative, marketing, and digital communications agency that helps nonprofits and small businesses make meaningful connections and further their missions.
