Marketing and Promotions in the Performing Arts-Using Post Cards

When marketing a theater you need to be able to play to your strengths, remember as a theatre you have a lot of interesting things to say and a lot of rich visuals to choose from. This gives you an advantage in post card marketing, in which so long as the card looks even mildly interesting people will at least glance at it. Post cards in general have a fairly low cost per delivery, at a bout 30 cents for printing and shipping if you print them in house. This is a huge plus for a theater, because it can be easier in a community to figure out who to send the post cards to.

Although this might seem high when compared to the 5 or less cents per person with a news paper keep in mind that this cost is not for those who actually see the ad in the paper. Many people don’t open the paper all the way, and people are very good at ignoring ads in papers. Further papers are delivered to many people you do not want to reach, as most performing arts and theater programs are truly marketable to a small portion of the population much of your ad dollars will be wasted in newspaper and other forms of marketing with a long reach. This does not mean that you should not market in papers and on the radio, merely that you should insure that these forms of marketing work within an overall strategy, rather then having your strategy rely on this.

Post card marketing also has the advantage of giving you the opportunity to be creative and to call people to action. One method of post card marketing would be to give people who have signed up with you in the past, something for their birthday. Perhaps the post card could be a coupon for something free from the bar and concessions of your theatre. Or you could partner with another organization, and offer something free to their customers, this way they get the free present to give their customers and you get someone you can send something to. And if they don’t show up to buy a ticket you’ve lost nothing but the price of post card, because in this case you are not the one printing and sending the post cards your partner business is.

Quality not Quantity.

The Biggest Cost in mail campaigns is going to be the postal service, and since quality items, well designed, printed on good paper will tend to get better responses it is better to use higher quality work. There are innumerable graphic designers out there who would love to work with your theatre for surprisingly little if you can’t afford one full time. I would recommend that you stay clear of outsourcing graphic design overseas because as a local theatre it is better to help someone in your local community. After all can an organization which claims to be supporting the arts in a community send art jobs overseas? Probably not, and doing so further means that you will loose the insight of someone who thinks everyday about how to reach people in your area. Graphic designers are marketers in many ways, and they are usually fairly good at planning new ways to reach the people in the area’s they live.