While everybody has their face stuck to screens, whether TVs, tablets or mobile phones, many parts of the theater industry are left with empty seats and fledgling community. The typical theater marketing plan of direct mailers, email blasts and hounding phone calls simply end up going into the trash, spam folder or unanswered. There is a solution – and that is digital marketing. Specifically, highly-targeted, audience-based, digital marketing.
With the recent excitement over the musical Hamilton, theater marketing has a new opportunity to reach a potential audience that is freshly engaged and energized about the theater. Of course, Hamilton is a bit of a different bread – a modern musical for today’s audience (with rapping!) – and it’s only based on Broadway in New York (for now).
Hamilton’s success came partly through a highly targeted approach that brought the musical to those likely to be interested. The “Americana” inspired subject matter, mixed with the style of music, created cross-over appeal that was leveraged in their approach to promotion. Theaters across the United States can recreate this approach, by understanding who their offerings will appeal to, beyond “theater-goers”, and target those audiences.
Theaters across the United States can recreate this approach, by understanding who their offerings already appeal to, and discovering additional audiences similar to their theater-goers. Their current audiences have interests expanding beyond the theater, it’s these outside interests that can connect theater marketing to lookalike audiences. These lookalike audiences relate to a theater’s current audience through shared interests and, therefore, are more likely to respond to the theater’s marketing.
How do I find my theater’s target audience?
Defining your target market boils down to identifying specific characteristics of the people or businesses who are most likely to buy your product or service.
There are two different groups of criteria you should look at to begin getting an idea of your target market:
- Demographic (age, race, religion, gender, family size, ethnicity, income, and education)
- Psychographic (personality, values, opinions, attitudes, interests, and lifestyle)
After you put together the demographic and psychographic traits you believe comprise your ideal customer base, take a look at your current customers and what motivates them to do business with you. This can help fine-tune your target market even more. Try to align what you understand as your target market with the customer base you already have as much as possible.
Determine a lookalike audience
Once you have you target market you can find your lookalike audience. The easiest way to determine your lookalike audience is to actually use a tool like Facebook’s ad feature, which is specific for this marketing practice.
When creating your lookalike audience you have a few choices, you can set-up a tracking pixel on your website for Facebook to determine your lookalike audience specific to your website (or a specific website page), or you can create a lookalike audience based on your current Facebook Page likes. For example, a local theater with a small Facebook Page following, but more active website would want to use the pixel, while another theater with a large Facebook Page following could benefit from the lookalike Page option.
Create your lookalike audience through the Ads Manager in Facebook and be ready to use this audience on a boosted post or an entire ad campaign to gauge the effects.
Start targeting
Once you determine your lookalike audience, start targeting them. Since you are already using the Facebook lookalike feature and have a custom audience created, one easy way to get started is with Facebook ads. But it’s not the only next opportunity. With your target clearly identified, you can begin to utilize the various digital (and classic) marketing tools at your disposal, including pay per click advertising, search optimization, additional social media marketing, and content marketing.
For example, create marketing content that can reach this broader lookalike audience, such as new hashtags in your social posts or articles in your blog.
You can also take a more classic approach by partnering with a local business your lookalike audience appreciates. This could be a local wine purveyor or restaurant and create a dinner and show deal to attract them (and connect your initial target audience to their business as well).
Use digital marketing and lookalike audiences to expand your local theater marketing reach, getting people off their phone and watching live art at your location!
With the help of the LocalVox platform, keep all your online marketing in one place, connecting your content marketing from blog to social to email with the click of a button, check it out today!
Has your business done targeted and lookalike marketing? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
The post The New Age of Theater Marketing Has Arrived appeared first on LocalVox.
No comments:
Post a Comment