Community Theater Green Room Discussion Board: How do you advertise your shows?

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kaelidancer
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Joined: 8/06/08
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Posted: 12/19/08 at 5:08pm

Here's something we started doing recently...

We discovered that the problem with posters is that a lot of them end up as "souvenirs"... which is fine, because I keep them too... but it sucks paying to print a bunch of posters that will never be seen by anyone not in the show.

So, we cut back on our posters, and got some business cards from VistaPrint. For $50 we are able to get 1500 two-sided full color cards. Cast members can take a handful. Leave some in local businesses who have a business card rack. Leave some on those newspaper boxes. Leave one when you tip your waiters. Keep some in your purse (or whatever) and just hand them out whenever the show comes up. "Oh, you're in a show? When is it?" "Here you go!" Blam, butts in seats.

A local comic shop I frequent even agreed to take 500 of 'em and give one to every customer who came in!

And the best part? Unlike those darn posters... all the business cards went out, and were distributed to more people than would have seen the posters... for a lower price! Can't go wrong.

The website's www.vistaprint.com :)

Kaeli Gardner
Johnson City Community Theatre
www.jcct.us
www.gardnerarts.com

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tristanrobin
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Posted: 12/19/08 at 11:11pm

We also use far more fliers than posters (though we hadn't thought of business cards - good idea!) ... we also do table tents in local diners, which get a lot of attention.

The best (and cheapest) way we've found that gets real attention is the scrawl under the screen on the weather channel. People constantly tell us they saw the ad on tv.

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GElliott
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Posted: 12/20/08 at 10:38am

I really like the business card idea as well as the table tent suggestion.

Do you guys have any feel for how much return you got on them? Did you track how your patrons found your show?

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chelserin
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Posted: 12/20/08 at 12:02pm

I went on vistaprint yesterday and ordered business cards for our next show. Great idea! I agree about posters, personally I end up with at least three still in the back of my car at the end of the run...;p

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imamember
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Posted: 12/21/08 at 1:04pm

We have a deal worked out with our local american speedy printing office. We pay for programs wit a 10% discount and we get posters fliers and business cards in exchange for a full page ad and a button on the website. The cards are a semi first for us. We did it with Seussical last spring but not since for some reason.

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Stageref
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Joined: 7/30/08
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Posted: 12/26/08 at 2:01pm

I love the idea of community theater awareness ads. Maybe a pooling of resources to keep local companies top of mind. A key is new audience members. They are always so surprised about the quality of productions that our community presents.

Please allow me to say, stageref.com isn't advertising per se but it allows companies to list and cross-reference their shows which, in our humble opinion, adds an air of professionalism and community for your members and audiences.

Stageref.com
The new, free, on-line social experience of community theater productions and people

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John Luzaich
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Posted: 3/26/09 at 5:18pm

We end up spending very little actual advertising dollars because of the following: We send press releases to 32 different newspapers. Some are weekly, some daily. We send P.S.A.'s to 16 radio stations. (the newspapers & radio stations are in an hour radius of us). Go beyond what you think your reach is. We've grown our mailing list from 3000 addresses to 6500 addresses. We've grown our e-mail list to 1050 e-mail addresses. (lot's of room to grow here) We've been very creative in the print ads we develop. (but, we don't spend a lot) We've done many, many trade deals. (I have an ad in your playbill/program, you have an ad in mine) with many theatres, university/college programs, professional theatres, other venues, radio spot trades, TV spot trades.

develop a facebook page - our is www.facebook.com/osterregent , we're about 400 fans, again, room to grow

ITUNES - build songs of upcoming shows and publish the link

text message list (we haven't done it yet, some larger venues are - you need to get the individuals permission first)

send an e-mail blast on a monthly basis and change it up (we did it the old fashioned way and are now using Constant Contact - google them)

read the book "Don't Just APPLAUD, Send Money" by Alvin H. Reiss(many, many great ideas in there, including the "$10 Lousy Bucks" letter that we borrowed)

read the book "Web Sites for Culture" by Eugene Carr

read the book "Arts Marketing Insights" by Joanne Scheff Bernstein (she compiled info after interviews with large and small venues all around the country)

read the book "How to Run a Theatre" by Jim Volz (one of America's leading theatre consultants - this is a must read!)

do podcasts (we don't do this yet, but larger venues and many symphonies do)

display at off-site places (shopping mall windows/kiosks, art fairs, business expos - great for growing mail & e-mail lists)

Take a re-look at your web site and update it... we just did! We found out if it's not up to date, people won't come back to it. www.osterregent.org (in 12 months we've had over 13,000 visits and 160,000 page views)

Most importantly - word of mouth, you do have some control... figure out who influencial people are and get them to your shows.

Who's going to replace the season ticket holders and older folks as they age out of our system? We need the middle group of age range and younger people. In that sense......

... find out which young people in your area do blogs, e-mails, facebook, twitter and are influencial with their peers and invite them to your show, or get them to your invitational dress/preview. They're the ones that will be all over the internet telling their friends that they need to go see your show!

Edited by John Luzaich - 3/11/11 at 5:44pm

John
cfct@cfu.net
http://www.osterregent.org
http://www.facebook.com/osterregent

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lparks
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Posted: 11/21/10 at 10:09am

We are a fairly new theatre going into our first season, but we have managed to bargain a lot of ad space. We recently worked out a deal to receive over $5,000 in free newspaper ads from a local regional paper that included print ads, online ads, mailing list ads, etc. We also gave them 10 tickets to Narnia to "give away".

Some of the cast of Narnia will be visiting B97 radio station (mainly top100 songs) on the 13th of Dec for a ticket giveaway and on-air interview. We also have 11x17 posters and rack cards going out for the show.

Mainly though, we are relying on word of mouth and hopefully a couple of good newspaper reviews to really bring in the patrons. Frankly, you can advertise all of your money away - but that is not promise of selling the show. If it's good, word of mouth will do 10x more than any paid ad would.

You would be surprised also at how much "free" advertising is available. Radio interviews, ticket giveaways, media sponsors (like we have getting $5,000 in ads in exchange for playbill ad etc).

Landon Parks,
Producing Artistic Director,
Bloomington Repertory Theatre Co

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Scott B
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Posted: 11/21/10 at 1:16pm

Along the lines of table tents in food joints ... we printed out 8 1/2 x 11 promos (basic black and white) and supplied them to a fast food place. They used them for place mats on the trays. Everyone who dinned inside the store automatically saw the promo.

If you can get a good deal on the printing like getting your printer to supply XXX amount in return for ad space in the program then it's a great deal. Put them in all the fast food, Chinese, and Mexican restaurants you can find.

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johndrake
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Joined: 5/13/11
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Posted: 5/13/11 at 12:18pm

Originally posted by imamember

Currently we advertise very poorly in my opinion.

We have nice posters made. They get put up in libraries, schools and the link. Some fliers are passed around.

We let people know of shows via our website as well as facebook and myspace accounts and groups.

We generally have a radio ad, although I don't know how much air time it gets.

We put a small ad in the local paper but it costs a lot and isn't very large. The paper generally does a basic write up of the show the week before and a review (if we're lucky) the week between.

The show is also listed on a community calendar on a public access channel.

I think there has to be more effective ways to get butts in seats though. I'm currently looking into local cable advertising and making simple advertisement commercials.

What does your group do?

We are a start up theater company and I liked the fact you are getting presence on local cable access. I realize it's different for every area, but may I ask how you were able to get on your local community access channel? Getting on ours is sort of labyrinthine....thanks for any suggestions.

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Topic: How do you advertise your shows?
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