You may have read about certain productions that apart from sharing a story, they also have an audience in mind as they write the story. But of course, the moment you have written, edited and finally submitted your proposed story, once pre-production has begun, the audience would be put into consideration too.
Here’s the issue though – do you have a target audience in mind the moment you are already at the finishing touches of post-production just waiting for the playdate? In this vein, several questions pop up in your head. Some of the images displayed below might be similar to the questions that have come up once marketing the theater production is now planned.
Kids are usually an easy target market to cater and you can thank Disney for that. As long as a story is family-friendly with catchy tunes that can help them remember the story more and it is general patronage, then a little emphasis on lessons learned would be expected.
In some cases, if you want to tell a story, think of presenting it in teasers in a way that a 5-year-old kid can understand. And it’s not simply because children are your expected audience. Remember, parents with the needed ticket-buying power includes very busy people who may only have 30 seconds at most to glance at your theater poster to see if it’s something that can easily be digested. The easier the teasers and posters to understand, the quicker buying decisions are made.
Let’s face it – media is no longer exclusive to broadcast television, radio and print media. If some folks have heard or read about you, it might be from social media like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or Instragram. With the advent of smartphones it will not be surprising to hear responses to the question “From where did you hear or read about us?” as “From Twitter” or to be generic “From my timeline”.
That’s the wonder of social media. For less than 30 seconds, you can capture their attention and make them watch or listen to what you have to plug like your theater production. If they mostly rely on their smart phones to get alerts on the latest theater plays or musicals, then you should spend enough time to upload photos or links that would keep them interested long enough to ensure that their attention is secured. The best way to know that you have succeeded is by checking the ticket sales.
This question is viable to ask if you have been performing the same play several times already. Now you need to understand or at least know why it’s the same audience that keeps coming over and over again? How can you tell? Let’s just say some of them still post it on social media – the selfies with the stars, the blog reviews, the sightings, etc. If you’ve been performing long enough on the same play and would stay long enough for the after-party, you would eventually come across a person and say “Oh it’s you again! I may have seen you here before.”
This scenario would have been better if the fan that approached is accompanied by a few more friends that she convinced to watch the play. You see familiar faces but does it result in more incoming “converts” to your theatrical fan base? Have “theater groupies” been formed after a few people convinced their friends and family to watch more of the consecutive playdates even if they have seen these productions the first time around?
Family and friends are a given to attend more than one performance. But have you turned them into advocates – the kind of crowd that would refer more and more theater enthusiasts and casual musical fans that brought even more people are the run went? In this vein, it’s okay to have the same audience if these noted “repeaters” brought more and more people every time they decided to watch the rest of the performances as well. That’s when the power of word-of-mouth advertising bears delicious fruit.
Lastly, feedback. Rather than rely on feedback that “It’s okay” or “I liked it”, try not stopping there. It has reached a point that such replies have become default answers for folks that are not so sure if they liked the play or not. But don’t push them for specific answers either. There is a good way to use follow-up questions to elicit honest feedback.
Now if one who just saw your play answers “It’s okay”, the appropriate follow-up question would be “What was your favorite part of the play?” The tone used in asking this question would also be crucial in eliciting a natural answer since if the performances turned out to be really great, he or she can point out a scene where they laughed the hardest or a scene that tucked into their heartstrings hard enough to induce tears.
For folks that answered “I liked it”, you can ask next “What part did you like best?” Memorable performances get stuck in the head long enough to last weeks, what more if you ask that question minutes after the performance? For example in the musical “Marco Polo: An Untold Story”, you can ask them which scene they liked best. The music must have been still ringing in their heads long enough to remember everything that they liked about a particular scene. You can use the positive feedback as a springboard to advertise or market the succeeding playdates for your theater production.
You may have been familiar with this method in some movies where they namedrop some notable critics that gave their production glowing reviews. They use the same quotes in encouraging everyone else that sees your teasers and plugs to watch your production. The target market is obviously everyone else who missed the premiere night. This is what premiere nights are for – to solicit more positive feedback in encouraging those who are still undecided over watching your play or not to finally see it. Excitement creates urgency and this urgency encourages more people to see your play, not just your family and friends.
This article was inspired by a comprehensive online manual for marketing plays by Theater Folk. There would be more to come that would be helpful for theater workers apart from critiques and reviews of musicals and similar theatrical productions.
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