Building Audiences One Encounter at a Time

Just how does this work? A few specific instances:

You are producing artistic director of a theatre company. You provide 8 performances weekly in a seven-show season, in a 400-seat theatre, over a period of 30 weeks. This gives you a potential maximum audience reach of 96,000 patrons in a year. When these audience members are at your theatre, they are absorbing much more than simply an engaging play or musical on stage. They are taking in an entire afternoons or evenings experience, all of it registering. You make a point of having at least one senior staff person in the lobby at every performance, prior to the show, during intermission, and at the end of the show. And this individual goes on stage just prior to the curtain rising, to give his/her name and position with the theatre and present a concise 3-4 minute curtain speech. Theres a captive audience in those seats. You have information that you want to pass along to thema thank you to corporate sponsors, a welcome to specific groups attending that day, notice about your next production, announcement about your subscription campaign, a special raffle taking place or benefit event coming upthis is just a sampling of announcement items. It is do-able in a brief time and youve immediately accomplished two goals at once. Youve passed along information that may generate a next action step from your audience and youve given them a face to recognize, belonging to your organization.

That senior staff person is now standing in the lobby at intermission, and because his or her face is now recognizable, a woman who runs a college alumni association comes up to that staffer and asks if your theatre offers special group rates and if her alumni association can use a theatre evening as a fund raiser; a teacher comes up to that staff person and asks if there are plays coming up during the season that would be suitable for his 10th grade English class; a business owner approaches and asks about the program advertising rates. In just one intermission, youve generated potential group sales, a student matinee performance, and advertising sales, provided appropriate follow-up is initiated in a timely fashion. And each of these inquiries, being somewhat impulsive in nature, may simply not have happened had the three individuals needed to remember to phone or e-mail the theatre on a subsequent day.

Of course, having that recognizable face in the lobby also means greater ease in trouble-shooting before a minor problem becomes major. Audiences will feel more comfortable going up to someone they recognize in order to voice a need or a complaint. Its so hot in the hall. Any chance of adjusting the air conditioning? Theres no more toilet paper in the third stall in the ladies room. I spilled some coffee on my shirt. Do you have any club soda I can use to prevent staining the shirt fabric? These are not major emergencies, but they are inconveniences that, if quickly dealt with, become a way to further enhance your reputation for great customer service.

Now, your performance has ended and the audience is leaving. That same senior staff person is standing near an exit so that as audience members are leaving, they have the opportunity to give feedback to the staffer. If they choose not to say anything, thats fine. If they make a special point of coming over to say something, you can be pretty confident that theyre giving you truthful feedback, for good or for bad. For heavens sake, avoid directly asking them, How did you like the show? Having cornered them verbally, youve tossed out any validity to the response they give you...

Read more at http://artsmarketing.org/node/1233