Theatre Marketing: The Importance of Landing Pages

So I've written a few posts in this series on Theatre Marketing, mainly having to do with social media, but there's one thing I haven't mentioned... Any good social media marketing campaign is ALWAYS integrate with email, web & print. Always. Period.

So in a effort to expand what I've been talking about, I thought I would go over the importance of Landing Pages. Not sure what a landing page is? Check this out.

Now that may be a little too much info to wrap your head around if you aren't used to doing online marketing, so here's my working definition:

"A landing page is where you want you customer to go to meet their needs. It needs to be concise, well laid out and drive them towards action."

So in theatre, our most common form of a landing page is the individual show page. If I'm not explaining myself enough, here's an example of one. Since we are talking about theatre, from now on I'll be referring to the "show landing page".

So why are they important?

A show landing page is where your audience decides whether or not to purchase advanced tickets and/or attend in general. That's a pretty important page then, right?

There are a few things that EVERY show landing page should have:

1. Name of the show & dates of performances (duh)
2. Visual element - maybe a production photo or the show poster
3. A link to buy tickets
4. A short summary of the show - it's important that it's short and engaging

Here are a few things that you might also want to include:

1. Links to reviews
2. Links to press photos, production photos, costume designs or set design (or maybe a widget that displays them all for you?)
3. Audience quotes or tweets about the show
4. Links to buy show or theatre related merchandise
5. Links to other relevant content (audio clips, etc.)

Now it's also important that it has a clean, easy to read design/layout and to test!

In theatre we have the luxury of being able to try different layouts & designs for each show.

Now this is just a primer for the world of landing pages, to get you thinking about what changes can be made. This is by no means the end all be all, so keep thinking, keep playing.

Bonus Tip: Landing pages are also a great link to include the in the BTA Newsletters instead of just the theatre's website. A well laid out landing page will allow patrons to see what else you have coming up, while still giving them the information they are looking for in one click.

BTA is moving & we've got stuff!

So in an effort to streamline BTA's expenses, we're moving our office. We've got some stuff to get rid of though and we're hoping you all could help us out a bit.

We're asking for donations for the items pictured below, we'll be taking the best offer and giving priority to Organizational Members (since we know they need this stuff the most), then our individual members and finally non-members.

And for the record, we currently have two of the large coffee urns and 4 of the red office chairs.

We've got some pretty cool/practical stuff, so feel free to email info@baltimoreperforms.org with your best donation price. All items must be picked up on Friday, January 29th.

Theatre Leaders Rountable Notes

Obviously some theatres identified activities as challenges, others as strengths. This provides an opportunity for sharing resources, knowledge, and skills. This is understandable, considering that the group represents touring companies, educations and children’s theratres. Old and new companies, to companies looking for a home…some theatres are run by young practitioners, some by more experienced thespians.

The group decided to meet bi-monthly to explore solutions to some of their shared challenges. Therefore, the next meeting will be scheduled for March. Fells Point Corner Theatre has offered their space.

Additionally the BTA will set up a web group, such as Yahoo groups or Google Groups, to help facilitate the needs of the group. Stay tuned for more information!

Thanks to Lynn Morton and Fuzz Rourke, for facilitating the discussion, and to Spotlighter’s Theatre for hosting the evening.

Best Practices – what we do well

Smart about artistic choices as a new company

Utilize community resources

Development of audience and talent via education programming

Audience Retention

Art reflecting the community

Cultivating theatrical programs for the community

Reaching out to new/entry audiences

Developing relationships with hosting venues/partnerships

Leveraging the internet for marketing

Incorporating social media into marketing and communications

Getting students excited about theatre, exposing them to work they didn’t know about

Collaboration with other art forms

Networking with specific communities or markets

Working with non-traditional talent groups

Surviving over a long period of time!
Traditional exposure/supporting first time directors

Support classroom work-tying programming to school curriculum

Attracting new and returning subscribers.

Asking them “why?”/providing personalized, enhanced customer service

Challenges

*Items colored red are Identified as the most important.

Storage (of stuff)

Care of building (maintenance, etc)

Finding space to perform/rehearse/education

Finding Technical resources/cultivating/educating tech staff

Board Recruitment

Utilizing Board Members to their greatest potential

Educating the Board

How to embrace new technology

Cooperative Marketing

PR/Promotion/Publicity

New media/viral marketing

Building word of mouth/urgency of marketing

Grant Research

Capturing an audience (recruitment)

Keeping company members (or students) engaged and focused

Finding time to see other theatre’s shows

Support of arts education

Paying artists what they deserve

Audience expectations

Audience Engagement

Increasing materials costs

Lack of coordination between theatres play selections—doing same shows w/in a season, etc.

Communication between theatres

Diversity—at all levels (casting, artistic work, engaging talent and community)

Any of these sound familiar?

Notes generously taken by BTA Board Member Michele Baylin.
Photo by Flickr user rosengrant.

BTA Annual Meeting: Individual Artists Speak Up

I'm a little delayed in writing my recap of the Annual Meeting, but better late than never... right? ;)

When I heard that at the Annual Meeting this year they were going to be discussion groups I immediately jumped at the chance to facilitate the individual artist group.

We had a collection of directors, actors, teachers, musical directors; unfortunately no technical artists. That is definitely something that was noticed by all and was a topic of discussion amongst the individual artists.

To start out we had everyone write their #1 challenge on a pink sticky note and their #2 & #3 on blue sticky notes. This allowed us to categorize the major themes with in the community. The big 3 for individual artists ended up being:

1. Recognizing there is room for improvement with the Baltimore talent pool and hoping that the theatres support us in that. (my own words, if you were there and think something different, please comment!)
   
2. Finding tech people
   
3. Marketing & PR support for the shows we create
   

What surprised me was that the concerns of actors fell in line with the concerns of the directors for the most part. I always think of the roles as having different perspectives about what is going on, though it's quite comforting to me that the actors seem to care as much as the directors do about the "other side" of doing theatre - meaning finding a lighting designer or a costumer, etc. Sometimes I find as a director that actors are too wrapped up in the work they are trying to do to recognize how hard the other part is, or at least sometimes this has been my impression. It's comforting to know that as a director, my actors are just as worried about all the things I'm worried about.

Now there was a lot more discussed. It was great having so many individual artists show up and contribute to a great discussion. Definitely looking forward to continuing this conversation. Any ideas how? The Organizational Members are doing their bi-monthly roundtables and potentially a list-serv, in what ways can the individual artists connect with each other?

~Lynn

Theatre Marketing: Some ideas of how theatres can utilize Twitter

So continuing on with this series of theatre marketing and following up on my last post about Twitter, I'd like to suggest some actionable ways that theatres can utilize Twitter as a way to connect with their audiences.

1. Reservation Line - You already use phone & email, why not use Twitter to take reservations as well. It's instantaneous enough that you can confirm as soon as you receive the reservation.

2. Follow-up on audience experiences - Keep track of mentions on Twitter, recognize what people are saying about your theatre or shows and respond as a human being.

3. Build buzz - Have some really awesome rehearsal or production photos. Upload them to Flickr or Twitpic (etc.) and share them with the Twitterverse. Pictures are worth a thousand words so use them to help build buzz about your awesome shows.

4. Share reviews - Had a really awesome review? Then share it with the world. This will also help build buzz for the show.

5. Retweet what people say about you - Word of mouth is always the most reliable form of marketing, so be RTing you are helping spread the good word about your theatre.

Somethings to remember -

• People connect with people, not with faceless organizations. Identify who is tweeting on behalf of your organization and don't lose the personality!
• Don't be scared of the negative, look at it as an opportunity to connect with your audience. If someone tweets negatively about a show, how about invite them to preview for the next show (free of charge of course).
• Be responsive, don't just broadcast. Interact with your audience and you'll create a much deeper bond with them.
• Stay on top of it. Don't let days go by before answering a tweet, you wouldn't let days go by before returning a patron call, would you?
  

Bonus: Take a look how the new theatre company Glass Mind Theatre has taken using Twitter into their artistic process. There results are fascinating and you can see the productions yourself at Mobtown on January 29th & 30th.

What other ways do you think you could use Twitter?

Don't forget to follow @balttheatre as well!

Theatre Marketing: Tweet, Tweet

So what's so great about Twitter?

Many things.

• It's an awesome way to connect with your patrons and give them an inside look at what is happening within your theatre.
  
• It gives you a chance to promote your shows, for free.
  
• Baltimore is a BIG town for Twitter & technology in general.
  
• Offer discounts and find new patrons.
  
• It's easy to share information, which means it's easy to share information about your theatre as well.
• There are tons of add-on applications or mash-ups that allow the creativity to flow with how you use Twitter.
  

So how many of you use Twitter?

My next post will be about ways theatres can utilize Twitter to effectively engage their audience, stay tuned...

Smoking in the theatre? Yes? No? Maybe so?

Though I've already posted this article on the BTA Facebook Page & tweeted it out, I'd like to get a conversation going amongst the theatre community about smoking in our local theatres.


Do you allow smoking in your theatre or did they at a theatre you've worked at? Any restrictions? Why or why not? Is it gross? etc.

Comment with your thoughts!

Disclosure: I'm an ex-smoker, who really has no problem with herbal cigarettes being used in productions, especially if you have a small stage. It's amazing the way 1 cigarette can fill the room with nastiness. And in my last show we used herbal cigarettes during a piece that was all about smoking & smoke breaks.