Social media marketing sells 80,000 museum tickets in 3 months!

Can a museum, with a limited budget, promote an exhibit aimed at children and sell 80,000 or more tickets over 3 months? 

Well, according to the Kansas City News .  Union Station in Kansas City is trying to do just that for it’s latest exhibition, “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Exhibition”.  To help achieve this ambitious goal the museum has turned to social media marketing, using Facebook, uTube and Twittering, to reach its target demographic of women ages 25-54 with children ages 6-17 (since the conventional wisdom is that women have more control over a family’s entertainment dollars).
Union Station is able to reach these women by using social media marketing because they are the fastest growing age group using sites such as Facebook and Twitter.  In fact Facebook is experiencing explosive growth in the 25-34, 35-54 and 55+ age groups. The 35-54 year old segment grew 172.9% in 10 months in 2008 and the other two mentioned grew at a rate of 97%+.  As for Twitter, the 25-44 year old segments are starting find more value in Twitter and are ramping up usage.
Union Station’s Facebook page features a number of postings about the Narnia exhibition, including a very engaging video showing children from the local Ronald McDonald house having a “sneak preview” of the interactive show.  The spontaneous wonder and awe these children show while looking at and touching the pieces is the some of the best advertising I’ve seen in a long time.  The links to the many videos on uTube allows children, who might normally balk at the idea of going to a museum, to see what is waiting for them and makes them eager to go and experience what the children in the video did.
All of this is FREE for Union Station and the museum also gains the added bonus of having people comment on the show on Facebook and uTube, adding the valuable word-of-mouth advertising.  Internet marketing is proving to be an invaluable tool for Union Station and proof that social media marketing is nothing to be afraid of.