An introduction to marketing your theatre production

Marketing vs Publicity

Before we dig into marketing, it is worth covering the fact that a promotional strategy typically has two sides:

• Marketing
• Publicity

Marketing is any promotion that you pay for. Things like posters, flyers and advertising make up the core of most marketing strategies. This is the topic we’ll be covering in this article.

Publicity is the promotion that you earn. This includes media coverage on TV, radio and in newspapers. It also covers free promotion like social media events and even word of mouth.

Publicity is a complex topic and one which we’ll address in a separate article in the future.

Theatre Marketing tools

Theatre has relied on a classic set of tools to promote shows for a long time. That’s because, for the most part, they work. Posters, flyers, and advertising are still influential today, but newer tools are also necessary.

The advent of social media and the internet have brought new tools that get your message out to a wide range of people you’d never have reached in the past.

These tools, when put together, are sometimes referred to as marketing collateral.

Poster

It may be old-school, but the poster has been a practical part of marketing campaigns for a long time and still is. In recent years the way we a poster has had to change.

The key to understanding the poster is considering the way that your potential audience member interacts with it. A poster is mainly a tool that quickly conveys information or piques interest.

Your audience will only see a poster as they pass it on a bus or as they walk into a cafe to grab their morning coffee. The time in the viewer’s eye line is short, so it has to work fast. If they walk away with the title of your show and they are interested, it has done well.

Flyer

Another old-school tool is the flyer. It is the poster’s more descriptive counterpart and is still effective. Unlike the poster, its use is much the same as it always was.

The critical part of the effectiveness of your flyer is getting it in people’s hands. You can hand it to them, have them pick it up at the library or even put it in their mailbox.

Once it’s in there had it has more time than a poster to work. To get someone to read it, you still need to catch the reader’s attention. Once they begin reading, you have more time to give them detailed information. You can use the text on a flyer to persuade or inform.

The added bonus of a flyer is that your audience member can keep it to refer to, so it needs to have the correct information.

Advertising

Adverts are the other staple of marketing (strictly speaking, both posters and flyers are adverts). There are many places you can pay to place your adverts like newspapers, TV, radio, magazines and now digital outlets.

Newspapers were a healthy option when people still read them, but you should take care that you are using your money well as those readers age. TV has always been expensive and typically out of reach. Radio still has a good reach, but you’ll need to choose your audience carefully to make sure the money spent is valuable.

Digital

This brings us to the digital realm. Advertising on the internet has become highly effective and is financially within reach of most projects.

There are a few different types of advertising that you can look at. The main types are:

• Social media ads (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram)
• Search Ads (Google)
• Display Ads (Google)
• Private arrangements with individual sites

Digital advertising is a complex topic that requires its own articles. Still, almost every show should consider using boosted posts and social media advertising.

It is also worth noting here that social media blurs the line between publicity and marketing. You can set up Facebook events and use them for free, but you can also pay to boost your posts, so they reach more people. This is an excellent example of how different parts of your promotional strategy work together.

Email

Email can be an extremely effective way to let people know about your show. It is flexible and able to send lots of good information. It is delivered straight to the “hands” of the reader too.

The challenge with email is the list of addresses. Due to people constantly sending us unwanted emails, spam filters can easily catch your message. You need to be careful to send only to people you have the right to.

Of course, you should send to your personal contacts and those of your cast and crew (via them, of course). You can also try and build a list of interested punters, but that’s hard unless you have time and a track record.

Many organisations with address lists may help by sending your email out on your behalf. You can also pay to send to some industry lists.

Be aware that some countries don’t use emails as much as others. Their society might be more mobile-centric, and SMS might be better for them.

Work out what you’re selling

Before you get far with any marketing, you’ll need to spend time working out what you are selling.

As a creator, you’ll probably feel like you know what your show is, but marketing will require you to think about it from a different perspective. All marketing aims to understand the best way to communicate your performance to your potential audience. If you want to do that well, you need to know a bit more about:

• Your show
• Your audience

For each of these areas, sit down with your core team and do some brainstorming. Don’t get fancy. Try and create a list of each topic using concrete facts about the show.

It’s easy to get tied up in selling an emotional experience without the concrete facts that may sail past your audience.

If you are scouring the internet for an answer, you’ll probably be skimming hundreds of pages. You are instinctually looking for keywords that let you know a more profound read is worthwhile.

The same with your audience. You need to find that keyword that will get them to read more. The only way to do that is to have a concrete understanding of who they are.

Designing the message

Each of the tools above has its own format for delivering the information. The message is made up differently for each and depends on how the audience engages with it. As we discussed, a poster needs to have a strong image, but a flyer relies more on text.

This section looks at the individual building blocks that you can use to build each different tool.

Copy

Your copy is the words you use to sell a product. Copywriting is written about extensively on the internet, and if you search, you’ll find many tutorials. Using words well is the key to good adverting.

I recommend you start with your copy before anything else as the process of writing it helps you understand what you are selling. This makes the other building blocks easier to create.

Begin with the results of your brainstorming. You want to write copy that does two things:

1. Tells your audience about the product
2. Persuades them that they want it

You will need to take all of the critical important information about what the show is and describe it in a way that catches your audience’s attention.

Your copy should be about 100 – 200 words long. You should also create a version at 75-100 words in case you have less space.

Aim to get your reader’s attention as soon as possible because if they stop reading, your words are useless.

Your copy makes the basis of your flyer, event descriptions on social media and even radio ads.

Tag lines

The tag line takes your copy and reduces it to a single line. You’ve seen them attached to films, and there are many famous tag lines.

It aims to hook your reader quickly. This takes a lot of effort and will probably take longer than 200 words of copy. It needs to get across a fundamental idea about the show in a short amount of time.

You can either stick to facts and let the audience know what they are looking at or try and arouse their curiosity and make them want to learn more. Each approach is valid and choosing, which depends on your copy, image and show.

You’ll use tag lines on posters, visual content on social media and many other places.

Images

The visual content of your marketing tools can have a massive effect on your promotional success. Images are powerful, and we’ve all had that experience where you haven’t understood an idea until someone drew a picture.

Images have the power to convey subtle things like emotions that are difficult and time-consuming to describe. This means that creating a compelling image for your marketing is essential.

The idea for your image will come from your brainstorming and the copy you’ve written. The image should grow out of the information about the show. It need not literally be a scene from the show, but it should represent part of the experience.

It is a good idea to create an image that features a person or a face. The human face is expressive, and people naturally connect to another human. This way, you also have the option of having two messages in one. The face carries part of the story while the background image paints mood, tone or setting.

Make sure that any image you create has plenty of space to add text. When you combine it with text, like a title or tag line, you don’t want that text to cover critical parts of the image.

You’ll use it in posters, flyer, social media and anywhere visual.

Assembly

Assembly is really another way to talk about the design of the collateral. You’ll need to make marketing collateral for different purposes, and that involves combining the three building blocks in different ways.

Design is important. Remember that these marketing tools are not art. That isn’t to say they can’t be beautiful, but the aim is to communicate clearly and sell your show. The design is a building block in itself.

So form rules function for the most part. If you choose a font that isn’t easily read, then your copy dies. If your title obscures your image, the poster is useless.

The list of possible designs you need includes:

• Street Poster
• Small poster
• Flyer (various possible formats – choose one)
• Social images (may need a layout for each)
• Online adverts
• Newspaper adverts

Conclusion

We’ve now covered the basics of marketing a theatre production. This core part of your promotional strategy is critical to getting an audience.

Take time to read more about designing collateral and spreading the message in the articles that branch off this one.

Also, make sure you take time to check out Theatre Production 101, an overview of the producer’s process.