The moment before the curtain goes up is a magical one: the lights dim and the crowd goes quiet. But the key word in that sentence is crowd. Success depends upon a crowd. The theater is a lot less magical when there are rows of empty seats.
However, following a few good marketing strategies can yield you terrific ROI and fill your theater with happy patrons. The strategies take some time and tactical work to implement, but they can have a huge impact on ticket sales.
Theater Marketing Strategies Start with a Great Website
Of course, you have a website, but is it doing all it can for your theater? Does its design express your brand and the flavor of your theater season? Does it go beyond your ticketing platform to connect well with your ticket buyers? In addition to being well-designed, it should serve many functions:
- List all shows, classes, fundraising events and other activities
- Enable easy ticket purchasing
- Leverage an optimized mobile experience
- Present video and photography in an interesting way
- Be easily updated to reflect show changes, new cast members, impromptu closings or events
- Capture emails from individuals who visit your site
All of these things are important to attract ticket buyers and make it easy for them to learn about the shows and buy tickets. Your website should also serve as a lead-generating tool, helping to increase your mailing list and capture new visitors. Use Google Analytics to understand who is visiting your site, where they came from, how long they remained on your site and which conversion goals they completed. You can use that data to adapt your website and use remarketing to reach out to potential audience members. Prospects that interact with your website will be tracked using “cookies” and can be served ads or other content very specifically based on what pages they visited or the shows or events they viewed.
Titusville Playhouse experienced increased ticket sales immediately following the launch of its new website.
Good Theater Marketing Needs Great Key Art and Branded Materials
The key art for each of your shows needs to be compelling. That image will be on all materials used in marketing and publicity and must tempt potential audience members to want to see the show. You also need branded materials for the theater: logo, typeface, and images that tell potential audience members who you are. The branding will appear as part of the programs, posters, lobby signage and in many other places to reinforce your brand continuously.
Proven Theater Marketing Strategy: A Good List
Your regular ticket buyers and subscriber base give you a good list of interested patrons, and you can grow this with some creative marketing. Offering a chance to win free tickets to a show is a good way to capture new emails. Having a regular newsletter with updates, events and special offers can encourage patrons to provide their emails as well.
Using website analytics, ticketing systems and/or customer databases, you can create segments based on past shows attended. You can also segment your list based on other profiles: older patrons, donors and supporters, then create individual marketing strategies for every segment. Keep people updated with emails about upcoming shows with interesting content: meet the cast, audience reviews, promotional videos, or interviews with the cast or creative team.
In all of your email marketing, make sure you are writing tantalizing subject lines and preview text, break up your text with headings and images, and include links to buy tickets that lead back to your site. Monitor and measure open rate, click rate, and conversions, and use these metrics to adapt your strategies to maximize what’s working. UTM codes on your digital campaigns will also allow for better tracking of individuals who click on your ad or email and then visit your website.
Timing is Everything: Use the Calendar
Since you have your season booked in advance, plan your marketing in advance. Create anticipation by promoting your whole season, offering limited-time discounts for advance sales or subscription packages, and planning and promoting special events around opening nights or world premieres. Highlight important dates such as when tickets will go on sale, when promotional campaigns should start and deadlines for submitting press materials. This long view can also help you allocate your resources throughout the year: some shows may need more marketing efforts than others.
Proven Theater Marketing Strategy: Social Media
Theater marketing is a fantastic fit with social media. There is so much wonderful content to post: your key art, rehearsals, pictures of the set, interviews with cast and audience members, and reminders about a show’s opening night or the final performances.
Take a look at your calendar and schedule your social posts to promote upcoming shows, classes or events. Make sure to include a link to purchase tickets in all your social media. Think about what platforms align best with your audience demographic: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. You should be posting on at least two of those platforms twice a week.
Proven Theater Marketing Strategy: Digital Advertising
Digital advertising is a very cost-effective way to advertise your show and meet your customers where they often are: online. Create specific digital campaigns for each of your shows. Google Ads will let your show appear when your keywords (title of the show/theater) are searched online. You can link right into the ticket purchase path on your website for that show, facilitating quick and easy ticket sales. You can then use search retargeting, which will allow you to connect with prospects who have searched your keywords and follow up by serving them ads related to the show or another show.
Running ads on Facebook will let you narrowly target who sees the ad, optimizing the chance that you will reach your ideal audience member for any given show. You can also boost your regular Facebook posts to reach an audience you define, visitors who like your page, visitors who like your page and their friends, or an audience created by Facebook. You can use ad retargeting: social media outlets like Facebook or Instagram use data from a pixel that is installed on your website and then serve ads to prospects on their respective social media platforms. You can get extremely specific in this kind of retargeting, for example, individuals within a 15-mile radius of your theater who like the music style that is featured in your show.
Our digital ad campaign boosted sales and helped lead to a sold-out run.
Both Google and Meta (Facebook and Instagram) have strict character counts for their ad copy, so be mindful of those restrictions when you are writing. For Google, create a variety of headlines and descriptions; Google will want about 20 headlines and five descriptions which they mix and match according to an algorithm that optimizes for search words.
Google also offers ad grants of up to $10,000 per month in free search advertising for non-profits. You should absolutely apply for and use these grants to help generate awareness of your theater!
Of course, track your data to identify which ads were the most effective and then adjust your ad strategy accordingly to improve your ROI.
Marketing Strategies That Go Beyond the Curtain Call
In addition to the performances of your shows, you can create events or special offers that will engage audience members and encourage them to become more involved with your theater. You can offer promotions – free popcorn during Saturday matinees, meet Santa, or a BOGO Mom’s Night Out. Offer your subscribers or donors some nice perks like talkbacks after the shows, open rehearsals, early access to tickets, or backstage tours. Group packages could include senior matinees, work outings, or birthday parties.
Partnering with local bars or restaurants to offer specials can help find new audience members. Think about your target audience members and consider posters or ticket promotions where they are – restaurants, clothing stores, coffee bars, bookstores, hair and nail salons, the gym – and try to reach them there.
Proven Marketing Strategies Will Build Your Audience
The wonderful work you are bringing to the stage deserves a wide audience, and we can’t wait to help you find it.
At Trillion, we’ve seen that pairing the effective marketing pillars of design, email, social media and advertising with the creative flair of the theater can be a winning recipe for growing your audience and retaining existing patrons. Because your performance schedule is always changing, your materials and marketing outreach must change also. This can be exciting, but can also be a challenge for busy theaters with a small staff. If you would like to see how Trillion’s talented team of marketers, designers, and writers can grow your audience, call us at 908.219.4703 or fill out our contact form.
