Marketing Metrics for Theater and the Performing Arts
We will add further metrics to this site every week 

One of the biggest differences between professional and armature marketing lies in the use metrics by professionals. Metrics are measures which allow marketers to know what direction they need to take their marketing and advertising campaign. It allows the marketers to determine trends in the theatre and in their advertising campaign. It also allows marketers to determine the best forms of advertising to put their money into. 

This is a short introduction to some of the most important metrics for marketing theater, the arts, and cultural activities.

Profit Margins

Marketing your theater costs money and so it is important to make certain that the arts program gets as much back as they can. Certainly there are times when an arts program will have the goal to introduce new people to the theater, community art centers after all should involve as much of the community as possible. At the same time however the arts program like any organization can’t afford to go bankrupt and so it must consider ways to insure that its marketing program gets the best profit possible.
 

Unit Margin = average value of a customer-the cost to obtain that customer

Margin % =Unit Margin / Selling Price per Unit.

If a theater tries three marketing programs one which costs $5000 one which costs $3000 and one which costs $2500 but the one which costs $3000 has a margin value 6 or 7% higher then the other two marketing programs, the arts organization should examine exactly why this program is more effective, and should think about expanding it into or eliminating the other programs.

Of course as a marketing program is increased its novelty can were off, or it could fail to bring in customers the other programs did, this is why it is important to have a marketing mix with variable values. And to watch the margins of the campaigns to insure that its values don’t drop too greatly.

Market Share

One of the more common metrics for marketers, market share defines the percentage share of the market which a company has. In theater this metric can be useful in determining problems or opportunities based on trends within the market. However what makes up the market in theater can be difficult to determine. Live theaters and the arts in general are often very small markets, in small cities their might be only one theatre which would have all of the market share for that city in live performance arts.

Competition with theatres then should be considered more broadly into various popular concerts, and of course movie theaters. At a local level many other things could be competitors with the arts programs, including sporting events, community dinners etc. All of these things take in the entertainment cash which the potential customers have, while at times directly competing with the theater for attention.

 Market share=Theater Ticket Attendance / Attendance for all entertainment based events.

 By looking at this from event to event the theater can begin to see trends. If for example the share drops a month before a specific type of event the arts program would plan accordingly. At the same time it is possible that certain types of events including or times could increase the theaters overall share of the market.

This is slightly different from revenue as revenue can go up or down depending on overall attendance which could be decreasing for the whole market. So the Theaters market share could increase even as attendance to all performance events decreases. In this case the theatre would know that the cause of the decrease is not from competition and so its marketing and research campaigns would be spent less on finding ways to compete and more on finding ways to get customers to want to attend some event.

Should the theaters market share decrease at certain times the theatre would know that its marketing budget and research might have luck trying to convince other entities customers to go with them.

 Penetration Share

For regions with many different theater and arts programs penetration share can be an important metric for determining what percentages of the population are reasonably possible for attendance. Penetration share is used by calculating  the theaters market penetration (percent of the population purchasing theater tickets) divided by all the theaters market penetration combined.

Penetration Share = Individual Arts Programs Penetration / All Arts Programs Penetration