Sunday, April 21, 2013
Filling the Empty Seats First
MARKETING THE ARTS TO DEATH: It’s 7:59 PM at a one-hundred-seat venue and a show is about to begin.
Seventy-five seats have been sold since the on-sale date. The first tickets were sold to buyers who were eagerly waiting for the event to happen. As time went on more tickets were sold, but the relative enthusiasm of the buyers tended to wane as the sales campaign unfolded. Finally, in the days and hours before the event, a few stragglers tipped into the ticket-buying category and shortly before curtain time, the seventy-fifth buyer walked up to the box office.
Who’s the most important customer?
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8 comments:
This article provides a really interesting perspective. Usually, I think that the most dedicated and interested audience members are the most important audience members. I usually never think much about the few that are less interested, but just interested enough to attend a show. While I see this author's take on the importance of the seventy-fifth and seventy-sixth audience members, I disagree that they are the most important. Yes, it is worth looking at less interested audience members, analyzing what made them want to or not want to attend the performance, and adjusting marketing based on that information. However, I think that marketing can only do so much, and the most marketing a production gets is usually from word of mouth. Thus, the more audience members that attend your show who are dedicated, enthusiastic and loyal, the more likely it is that they will tell their friends. The more people they tell, the higher the chances are that new, possibly enthusiastic and loyal audience members will attend the show, and the cycle will continue. Simultaneously, it is important to attract different types of audience members. If a theatre investigated just the seventy-fifth and seventy-sixth audience member each night, and what drew those audience members to see the show, their data may vary greatly from night to night.
This is a really interesting article. I never thought about it as who didn't come to the show, number 76 so to speak. When we talk about audiences its usually about who's buying tickets before the show opens not who runs in last minute. The latter was always the nothing better to do group. The idea of marketing to them is really quite smart. That just leaves the question of how do we market to them. How do we market to an audience that is completely unknown. Yes that last seat has someones name on it, and yes there was someone who almost came but didn't. But we don't know who that person is. How do we market to an unknown audience. I think thats half the reason we market to the first 30 audience members, we know them. There is a name and a face that we can aim at. The 76th audience member, not so much.
I think that anyone in your audience is the most important audience member. I also feel like, while you may think that the first audience members, the dedicated subscription members, are the most important, when it comes to marketing, odds are higher that they're going to come to see the play regardless of what the marketing department does, as they are already interested, and if they have a subscription, they already know about what is happening. They can be thought of, I think, as a ready made audience, similar to how comic book movies have a prebuilt audience of fans of said comic book, people who are almost guaranteed to come. Thus, marketing strategy should focus more on enticing those who might normally not come, a rather scary prospect since, as Jenni points out, they are an unknown audience. We don't know how they're going to react, unlike the loyal subscribers.
I feel that the author isn't quite phrasing correctly what he means to say. There is a difference between the most important audience member and who marketing should be targeted to. I think that the most important audience members are the subscribers, particularly the ones that donate. And the necessary time, energy, and money that is required should be spent to keep them happy. But when you are marketing and advertising your show, you should not have to think about them that much, they will come. It is only at this point that audience member 76 is the "most important." What I think that really means is that they are the ones you should be directing advertising towards. If that is what the author really means then I do agree.
I hate that this asks who the most important audience members are. They should talk more about what made them buy tickets and present this as more of a marketing article from the beginning and not by asking who is important. A good marketing research is a survey asking why they came or what of there marketing strategies worked.
Something that you have to keep in mind is that a satisfied customer will usually share their enjoyable experience with 3-5 other people, while an unhappy patron will often share their story with 7-10 others. With this in mind, your most important customer is your unhappy one. Yes, the first group of patrons including members and season holders are consistent but that's why they are not the top priority. As long as you keep providing the same or higher quality entertainment those patrons will return. The important thing is to keep the people that are there on a whime or testing the theatre out happy all the time. Here is where you earn costumers and keep them for life as well as encourage them to tell others. The most efficient bad press is word of mouth.
I think everyone is important, but some theaters may decide to put their focus on gaining new audience members than constantly focusing on their subscribers. In reality most seasoned subscribers will keep subscribing unless they are unhappy with the product and treatment; therefore you would like to think that more marketing would go into getting new audience member into the seats. How to achieve this is always the problem or question as the article mentioned. Sometimes even free/cheap shows don't sell out and the most publicized may have a good audience. What really gets people into seats are reviews and the buzz behind a show and from what their friends and friends of friends have to say. Which again only happens when you have a good audience.
Clearly all patrons are important but this articles has made me think of when it comes to producing a bigger audience for the next show, which group is the most important? The first group isn't that important, they mostly include family, friends, and patrons of the arts people that will come no matter what. I think the second group may be the most important. They decide whether they want to see your show or someone else's show. The second group is also the type that spreads word of mouth reviews for others to go see it if they had a good time.
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