Marketing
Marshfield Community Theatre:
You Have the Right to Remain Dead
The campaign
In 2021, Marshfield Community Theatre produced the show You Have the Right to Remain Dead, a fun murder mystery show. As their Marketing Director, I had the unique task of promoting this relatively unknown show, encouraging our community to purchase tickets and support MCT.
The Goals
Goal #1: Have an average of 75 audience members at each of the 4 shows.
Goal #2: Make $1,000 in total profit to support future MCT productions.
Audience Personas
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Lisa
Lisa is 55-years-old, and a fun-loving woman always ready for the next adventure. She recently became a grandmother, and she loves to spoil her grandkids. But, that doesn’t mean she’s slowing down. She is still on-the-go, working hard to provide for herself and her family, even though her kids are all grown up. She uses her spare time to support local business & organizations, and wants to find opportunities for her grandkids to explore their skills.
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Noah
Noah is 27 years old and is finally feeling settled as an adult. He is currently working in his first manager job and is excited to continue moving up in his career. Noah loves following the latest in pop culture, binge watching the best shows on Netflix and still finds time to grab a drink with his friends. Noah actively avoids advertisements and would rather see what the latest influencers on Instagram or TikTok are recommending. He wants to make a positive difference in his community and believes that there is something he can do to make things better, he just needs to find it.
Communication Mix
Website
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The central hub for all of our content, where visitors can get more show information, purchase tickets and see promotional materials like photos and videos.
Public Relations
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We sent out a media alert to local outlets, and the Marshfield Mail sent a reporter out to cover the show as a story. We regularly work with the Marshfield Mail to promote our content, and we love getting the coverage. The full story can be found on the Marshfield Mail website.
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This email announced that tickets were on sale and provided information on how to purchase them. It resulted in a 36% open rate, which was a new record for opens with MCT emails at the time.
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This email featured a blog post called 5 Reasons to See You Have the Right to Remain Dead on marshfieldtheatre.org, and resulted in a 29.6% open rate.
Social Media
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We arranged a promotional photo shoot featuring the cast, shot and edited by me, to highlight the overall look and feel of the show and provide a behind-the-scene look at each character.
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We created a variety of video content across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok to promote the show. We created a mix of longer-form polished promotional content and shorter, off-the-cuff videos to show the audience a more detailed look of the show.
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We also created several promotions to encourage more ticket sales, including BOGO deals for educators, healthcare workers, and first responders. We also ran a student rush promo that allowed students to get at-the-door tickets for online prices.
Evaluation & Goal Measurement
Goal Measurement
Goal #1: Have an average of 75 audience members at each of the 4 shows.
We sold a total of 268 tickets, which averaged out to 67 tickets per show. While slightly under our goal, it still came out to be a higher-than-average number of tickets sold for a smaller MCT show, in particular to murder mysteries.
Goal #2: Make $1,000 in total profit to support future MCT productions.
After expenses were factored, the show made $1,628.06, exceeding our overall financial goal.
Website Analytics: Landing Page
Pageviews: 791
Unique pageviews: 633
Bounce rate: 76.47%
Total Reach: 25,062
Average Reach: 1,139
Total Engagements: 2,188
Total Reach: 14,335
Average Reach: 500