Marketing. Does anyone know secrets I don't know? Can you share them? Can we guess together?

We had a conversation about marketing. I was feeling slightly lost about what works, what I should be thinking about. When nothing seems to be working, then what? Here are some bullet points of notes I took. 

- Using national days/weeks (e.g world book day) for brand awareness. Helps leads to people knowing who you are and has led to bookings for workshops etc. 

- Using direct relationships. 

- Think about gatekeepers to your audience. Who are they are how do you reach them in time for them to then share/invite. 

- Conversation about influencers. You can do invites (to opening for example) and ask them to share but not guaranteed. Or you can do ‘paid for content’ where they are paid to come and you agree content that will be made. Success examples here especially within communities like family work. Success getting to people through cold calls to agents. 

- Focus less on making it sound good. Think about describing it really accurately, what do all your materials say about the show, do they give information? Does it have a live band? Is it dance? Etc. 

- If there is something unusual in the audience journey then make it clear what that is, takes away feeling of risk. 

- “Perceived value for money” if there is something that appeals (visuals, live music, big cast” then say it. 

- Local Engagement Specialists - paying local people to spread the word. Not necessarily theatre people. 

- Seasonality has helped, winter themed shows in winter for example, even if you could watch it anytime of year? 

- Do you know whose audience you need, is there a direct correlation between your work and someone else’s? Can you reach them? 

- Need to see advertising multiple times. If 1 is ‘no knowledge of this’ and 7 is ‘buying a ticket’ think about the different things to take someone on a journey to buying. (Like awareness, trusted rec, critical rec, right timing)

- Talked about right timing and when we all buy tickets. Pay day, buying a ticket when we have time to mull at the weekend. 

- Fandom networks, Discord being a platform for that. Can you create some kind of way of bringing people together who want to experience meeting new people and doing something together? 

- Idea of attending theatre because of what it says about your identity. It’s intellectual/creative/about something I like etc. 

- Talked about budgets and how much. Discussed 20% of overall budget as a min and maybe more. 

Audience segmentation things

- Trick. “Who do you want on the front row?” Identify the five perfect people who would be sitting in your front row. Name them, work out who they are. 

Then think about who is buying the ticket for that person, it might not be them. 

Where does the ticket buyer get their information. 

Start there. 

- Think about gatekeepers to your audiences. 

- Think about trust. Does the show align with what the venue/festival/space is trusted for? If not how do you bridge that trust to help someone take a leap into unknown? 

- Using a logic model to breakdown audiences and marketing campaigns.