About Smart Marketing

Founded in 2005, Smart Marketing is dedicated to providing small and mid-sized arts organizations with the highest quality marketing and telemarketing services.

An arts marketer with more than 25 years’ experience at some of the country’s most respected organizations, Smart’s Principal Patricia Nicholson realized that small and mid-sized arts organizations were often at a disadvantage when searching for a telemarketing provider.  Under the traditional telemarketing business model, their lead pools were simply too small to be viable, and so a large cohort of arts organizations was left without a cost-effective source of telemarketing support.  A new business model was needed.  And the idea for Smart was born.

Patricia founded Smart to accomplish two goals:  to provide a service-oriented, cost effective telemarketing option to small and mid-sized arts organizations; and to address all of the things about out-of-house telemarketing that made her cranky when she was on the client-side of the relationship.

In addition to our unique business model, Smart offers an unsurpassed level of service. Our senior managers and most of our core calling staff have a background in the arts and can represent your company with passion and rigor.  Because we’re in daily contact with your patrons, we’re your “ear to the ground” on how your audience feels about your company; when we sense a trend, we’ll immediately report back to you and offer suggestions on how to react.

Perhaps most important of all, we understand that marketing for an arts organization requires a careful balance of real-world marketing skills and a deep understanding of art and artists.  Whether you engage Smart for teleservices or marketing support, our mission is to assist you in building a viable financial platform on which your artists can create their best work.

In addition to overseeing Smart’s telemarketing services, Patricia also puts her 25 years of arts marketing experience to work as marketing consultant for a variety of non-profit organizations in Chicago.