10 tips to market your theatre production at VAULT Festival 2023

Whether it’s a new writing or a musical, there are endless ways to promote and market your next production at VAULT Festival. Almost every marketing campaign’s objective is to maximise sales - here’s how we do that.

Liam McLaughlin is the Executive Director of Just Add Milk (JAM) and has worked in theatre/arts marketing since 2016. He has worked in marketing departments across London and the UK, including the senior marketing team at the Royal Shakespeare Company for Matilda The Musical, My Neighbour Totoro and The Mirror and the Light (West End). He runs his own independent marketing company LiamMarketing.

1. Marketing campaign timeline

Once your show has been booked, it’s a good idea to draft a timeline of your entire marketing campaign. This should be from the day you go on-sale to the day it closes. Whether, it’s 6 weeks or 6 months, map out the timeline on a spreadsheet, or a free workspace planner like Trello, and start writing in your plan.

Include everything: key dates like press night, photography calls, release dates for content, interviews, feature releases, ticket offers periods and so on.

This will also help you visualise where you can improve your campaign, for example you might see there’s a lack of content in the weeks leading up to the production - do you need to book more media (videography or photography) in to buff up your content output?

2. Write your own press release and distribute it

Usually falling under the realm of PR, if you’ve got a small budget you might not be able to afford a PR team. If you can afford PR, then definitely invest in one. But if you can’t, this is a way to give yourself more visibility in front of the press for reviews, listings and features.

The release should include all of the listing information for your show, including dates, times, ticketing information, cast, creatives and more. The most important thing about a press release is to stay factual; this is a one or two-sided PDF that outlines your show to the press. If they do decide to read it, the information needs to be quick and easy to read as they’ll be receiving hundreds a month.

3. List your show

A free and easy way to increase your show’s visibility is to list it on theatre/arts channels. Websites like TheatreWeekly and LondonTheatre1 allow you to manually list your show, meaning their users can find out about it. If you create a press release and distribute it, you may lucky and get listed on bigger websites like WhatsOnStage or TimeOut.

There is also Stagedoor, London’s theatre app. You can write to their listings team with your press release and as long as it runs for over a week, they’ll list your show on their website and app for free.

4. Artwork and photography

Arguably one of the most important parts of your marketing campaign.

The artwork for the poster is what audiences and customers will see and associate your production with. It doesn’t need to have thousands of pounds worth of photoshop and design layered over it, it just needs to represent your production’s story and be visually striking. A quick-win: faces always work. If you can, try and do a shoot with the actors and incorporate them into the poster. We’re naturally drawn to faces and it’s an easy way to stand out in a crowd of other posters (if your show is part of a festival).

Even if you don’t have a big budget, you’ll be able to find a friend or callout for someone who has a decent camera to shoot your poster artwork (key art) and rehearsal/production photography.

Rehearsal photography is ideal for giving the audience an insight into the shape the production it taking. Though it probably won’t sell many tickets, rehearsal photography is an excellent tool to use to bulk out your content over a few weeks - releasing new shots slowly over social media.

Production photography should be vibrant, colourful and stand out. An absolute-must, production shots are key to your opening night/week campaign and will also help you flesh out the remainder of your run - in terms of social media content. You can also pitch production shots to publications, like WhatsOnStage, for an exclusive (meaning they’ll release it first ahead of anyone for a bigger splash).

5. PS swaps

What is a PS swap? You’ve heard of PS at the end of a letter - the postscript. Take that idea and move it into a marketing email from a theatre that you’ve subscribed to. More often than not, they’ll have a little section a the bottom that introduces one, two or three other shows that are happening elsewhere in the area with a heading like “From our friends” - that is a PS swap.

You can swap your show to go onto other venue’s or company’s marketing emails and increase your visibility - usually targeting an audience that would like to see your work. If your new writing show was playing at Theatre503, you might ask the Royal Court for a PS swap as their audience also engages with new writing.

You can also do a tweet swap/social swap; simply tweeting or posting about another show in return for a venue or company doing the same for you. It gives you a chance to engage with a new audience and will hopefully drive awareness through your partner’s followers.

6. Earlybird offers

If your show isn’t selling well, it’s tempting to offer big ticket discounts. Sometimes, it’s the only way to shift tickets but it doesn’t always work and can often lead to customers feeling like you’re devaluing your work and they’ll feel less inclined to purchase a ticket.

Instead, when you go on-sale for the first time and plan your marketing campaign, factor in two or three offers you want to run with way ahead of your opening night. Your venue or festival may offer their own ones, but you’ll be allowed to do them too. If you do, plan them way in advance and focus on the objective behind them. Do you want early bookers to be rewarded with 25% off when they book?

A discount or offer strategy should not devalue your show, it should encourage bookers to booking early so they’re rewarded. A good strategy is to put your best offer first (furthest away from the opening night) and the worst offer last (closest to opening night). With customers more likely to pay closer to the production, or even on the night, you’ll minimising the amount you lose while guaranteeing some sales weeks, or months, before the show even opens with the better offers.

Example:

• 8 weeks out, 40% off full-priced ticket for 5 days

• 4 weeks out, buy one ticket get one half price for 5 days

• 2 weeks out, 15% off full-priced ticket 24hr offer

If you really are struggling with sales as you open and you want to advertise more offers, try and make them exclusive for the first week/first few shows only. It’s likely your final shows will sell well and its a good way of front-loading your audience.

7. Have your own website

One of the more expensive options in the list, but necessary if you wish to build your own audience for future shows and other projects you develop or produce.

Having a ticketing page on the venue or festival is great for selling tickets, but that’s it. If you want audiences to properly engage with your work and you want to build an audience for the future, it’s time to setup your own website.

As well as including your own version of a show page on your website, that links to the official ticketing page, consider creating a few more pages that give people an idea of what your company is about and who’s a part of it. This can include, a Who We Are page, What We Do page, Contact Us page and anything else you feel is important to share. Don’t forget to set up a mailing list too. This is crucial for future work that you do, even if you don’t send regular emails straight away.

8. Solus/E shots (email marketing)

Budget-dependent, email marketing is a great way of increasing awareness early on in your campaign or when you receive positive reviews. As well as emailing your own database using something like Mailchimp or Squarespace, you can also purchase solus/e shot packages from bigger companies like WhatsOnStage, Official London Theatre and Stagedoor.

They’ll create an in-house (their own branding) email to send to large segments of their own customers or audience data (anywhere from 5k to 250k people depending on your options and budget). You’ll then fill in the required information, such as copy, high-resolution artwork/photography and any reviews (if relevant), and sign off the final version before it’s sent to a large segment of people. Usually, you’ll also get to choose the target audience; if your show is new writing then your partner may be able to target a new writing segment of audience/customers.

Tip: make sure you ask the partner for analytics before you hand over any money. E.G. what their average open rate, click through rate and conversion rate is.

9. Print, but don’t overprint

It’s tempting to order thousands of A3 posters and A5 flyers for your run, but it’s no longer necessary. Despite the worldwide environmental disaster you’ll be contributing to, there are much smarter ways to do print advertising.

If you print posters, ask the venue or festival the absolute maximum you’ll be allowed to put up. If you want to put more up in a local cafe, or arts centre, again ask how many you can put and order as close to that number or fewer. The same goes for flyers, perhaps print about half or even quarter that you’re tempted to order as the majority go into the bin and who actually picks up flyers? Instead, save your budget (and the world) and include QR codes on any printed material so that people can go straight to your ticketing page, your website or a Linktree with all relevant sites.

Once your show is running, go a step further and print one visible QR code and stick it up as audiences enter the theatre. Instead of a freesheet/programme, encourage them to scan the QR code and download a pre-made digital one.

10. Front-load your friends and family

In most cases, the end of your run will be the busiest part of the entire run. Friends and family will be desperate to see it and although it’s tempting to get them in for the final perfjoamcne to celebrate can can shoot yourself in the foot if the rest of the run hasn’t already sold out.

Front-loading your nearest and dearest into the first few performances (or week if it’s a longer run) will increase the likelihood of selling out one of the first shows. This can create a positive ripple effect for customers wanting to book: they’ll see an early show has sold out and it will encourage them to book sooner. It also encourages the customers who usually pay on the door to book in advance so they don’t miss out.

If you manage to get an early show sold out then you’ve guaranteed sales and a something to shout about in your social media campaign messaging - potentially sending a flurry of activity to the box office.