“Marketing works with the big picture. It’s holistic. It’s the conduit of information about the art, who creates it, why, and who will be interested. It’s understanding the heat of the work and its relationship with audiences. It’s the network of blood vessels that provides the two way communication between arts practice and the public”  (Hill, 2003, p31)

With the ever popular social media making marketing a potentially easier task , we still felt that traditional types of marketing would aid our advertising and promotion of our show. For instance we decided to use stickers with our company logo on as a tool of creating a relationship with our audience members. By giving them a sticker with our logo on , not only gets them excited and intrigued about our performance, but it is also a way of doing outside marketing. When an audience member goes away wearing one of our stickers this enables others to comment and ask what the sticker is about, creating this outer network of marketing and advertising of our company. This social inclusion into our marketing strategy is something which we will intend to continue in the future, as we want to get people talking about our work. The use of stickers was also incorporated into interconnecting all of our social media pages as we told people to tweet us if they were wearing or saw one of our stickers. This built an acknowledgment of our Twitter and Facebook for the audience as we were asking them to get involved and show off their stickers.

This original , versatile and economical marketing tool enables us to really build a relationship with our potential audience members, this little keepsake could possibly improve our audience base  by a small percentage but in this day and age everything counts. This isn’t a costly purchase and will be hopefully be something we continue to use for future marketing of shows and our company. Other things we hope to look into will be badges, fridge magnets and pens, these of which will all come with our company logo on.  Although other theatre companies use this type of advertising tool, we feel this adds a different level to our company relationship with the audience. Having such a varied target audience we feel this will attract a range of people to the work which our company aim to produce in the future.

Works Cited

Hill, L (2003) Creative Arts Marketing, Oxford: Butterworth p-1-35

By advertising and promoting our shows online through social media has had huge impact on our ticket sales. This is a massive improvement from what traditionally would have been a long winded process by having to flyer and goes out into the streets and speak to people. Although we may be loosing the connection with the real, social media has saved us money which for many theatre companies is something which we struggle with. Having such a tight budget our main way of promoting and advertising our theatre company was done through the use of social media.  Without the use of social media, I feel nowadays a lot of companies would be in trouble if we didn’t have all of these technological advances which have improved our marketing strategies by so much. “The emergence of Internet-based social media has made it possible for one person to communicate with hundreds or even thousands of other people about products and the companies that provide them.” (Glynn Mangold 2009, p357)

These popular sites are sites which society use on a day to day basis, they are becoming a necessity in daily life, and people are always checking their phones for updates. This is why we felt our main marketing strategies should be focused towards social media. We are forever searching for new innovative ideas to market out performance.

We have used a reoccuring colour scheme of cream and black throughout our social media platforms and sites so that they are all interconnected and attractive, this is a feature which we will continue to use for further projects as we feel it attracts our potential audiences.

Like other theatre companies we want to promote our show in anyway we can because of the competition that theatre has nowadays. To engage our potential audience members we felt a promotional event would aid ticket sales. An acoustic night was put on and we delivered a great night but also were able to sell a number of tickets. Without social media such as Facebook we wouldn’t have been able to get the number of people to attend the event. Over half of the people that came to the event bought tickets for the show. Facebook made this very easy to promote as we were able to create an event which was sent out to numerous people and included details of both the acoustic evening and our show. “[R]ecently reported by Arts Professional, is that Facebook, Twitter and blogs are increasingly the means by which ticket sales are driven, rather than reviews or traditional forms of advertising.” (Gardener, 2010)

But social media also is a free way of marketing and advertising our work to the public, it is a quick and efficient method and tool which delivers an easier solution to marketing your company.By using social media we are saving money which for many theatre companies is something which we struggle with. Without the use of social media, I feel nowadays a lot of companies would be in trouble if we didn’t have all of these technological advances which have improved our marketing strategies by so much.  These popular sites are sites which society use on a day to day basis, they are becoming a necessity in daily life, and people are always checking their phones for updates. This is why we feel our main marketing strategies should be focused towards social media. We are forever searching for new innovative ideas to market out performance.

One of the ways we have recently added a new exciting idea to our marketing was by creating a competition to win exclusive ‘Golden Tickets’ to our sold out show. By tweeting and face booking about this particular competition gains interest for those unfortunate people who didn’t manage to get a ticket. This particular competition linked with our show Take Me By the Tongue, the person who tweeted us with the most ridiculous song lyrics would win a ticket. This thrilling opportunity pushes us beyond your bog standard theatre company as it shows we have the modern eye to what a contemporary audience are looking for.

Works Cited

Gardener, L. (2010) Theatre: Wake up to the digital age! [online] Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2010/apr/18/theatre-digital-twitter-facebook-social-media   [Accessed 22/05/2014]

Glynn Mangold, W. (2009) Social Media: The New Hybrid Element of the Social Mix, Business Horizons.  52(4) p357

Hand Me Down Theatre is socially available on multiple types of social media. These include the ever popular Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. With the huge demand for social media on a day to day basis, we felt it compulsory to join in with the craze. “As of September 2013, 73% of online adults use social networking sites.” (pewinternet.org, 2013) We would be silly not to indulge into social media when such a high number of people use it. We wanted to connect with a wider scale of audience than what Lincoln had to offer, social media offers the opportunity to divulge into a broader range of people, business’s and theatre companies. With these ever changing digital platforms forming, we felt it a priority to offer our audience a look into our journey and process into the development of our show over the last few months. We regularly update our social media with little snippets from rehearsals, information about the show, and trailers and videos By posting on a day to day basis, helps our viewers and followers get a feel for the type of work that we do and help them to see into our performance for themselves. “In today’s world, social media is a must – a powerful tool for expanding your audience base” (Mitchell, Online)
Twitter offers us the opportunity to focus our posts and tweets to specific niche audiences, by hash tagging particular words or phrases for example #Shakespeare we open up our sites to those specific lovers of Shakespeare because they can search and will be able to find us and see that this is a topic we use in our performance of Take Me By The Tongue. “Twitter tracks phrases, words and hashtags that are most mentioned and posts them under the title of “trending topics” regularly.” (Kwak et al, 2010) It offers us a platform to gain followers which create a relationship between us and our cyber audience.

And it isn’t just us, thousands of theatre companies have taken to social media, for example traditional theatre company The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) surprised us with their use of twitter. Not only do they promote and tweet on a regular basis but they have used Twitter as a platform for a performance. This is such an exciting way of connecting with the widespread audience which the RSC has. “The Royal Shakespeare Company today joined with the cross-platform production firm Mudlark and Channel 4’s digital investment fund, 4iP, to launch Such Tweet Sorrow, a drama in real time and 4,000 tweets, very roughly based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet” (Kennedy 2010) This style of performance connects both Shakespeare lovers with the modern users of social media.
Marketing over time has developed into a social media craze, with the triumph of the internet and improvement of technologies; we are now able to do so much more for so little.These sites have enabled us to post information quickly and efficiently to the wider audience, providing them with up to date and relevant information about our company. Facebook lets us create groups and events to publicize our performances, which helps with ticket sales as people will be able to know when and where the performance is, a good feature about Facebook is that it sends reminders about particular events. Instagram is a way in which we can show people the development and process of our piece through images, linking these images with Facebook Twitter and our blogs creates a circular marketing process. Hand Me Down uses Instagram to post pictures from rehearsals, trailer videos and posters and flyers. And to really capture the essence of what our company is about.

YouTube has become a world wide sensation, which aids us to show off our companies ideas visually through sound and video. YouTube lets us look for music, films, and readings and shows us a variation. Millions of people use YouTube, so a wide variety of people can look at your work. And Instagram has led us to be able to show sneak peaks of scenes, trailers and photos of every day process enabling us to create a photo feed of our development which a lot of people are interested in.

But what Hand Me Down wants to deliver to our audience is a new, exciting way of seeing what our company is about. We urge to offer some thing different than what other companies do.“The idea of the ever-growing toolbox and of diversifying ways of communicating with audiences is a trend echoed by a number of companies, ranging in budget size from multi-million dollars to nearly nothing. Even as social media has permeated theatre marketing, many theatres still struggle to understand how they can use social media most effectively.”(Peter, 2010, 9)This is something that we strive to do, use the varied range of social media to the best ability and to be the most effective when promoting and advertising our work.  All of our social media sites are interconnected in some way shape or form. For example Youtube videos and trailers are posted on Twitter and Facebook, this allowing the potential audience to travel freely through our sites. And in the future we will endeavour to use social media to our advantage, offering our audience as much as we possibly can through these digital platforms. As a company we aim to go with the times and seek to keep up with the ever changing technologies.

Here is all the information you will need to find us.

Works Cited

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Kennedy, M. (2010) Romeo and Juliet get Twitter Treatment. The Guardian, 12^th April 2010. Also Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2010/apr/12/shakespeare-twitter-such-tweet-sorrow

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Kwak, H et al (2010) What is Twitter, a social network or a news media?. International Conference of World Wide Web, 591-600.
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Mitchell, A. (2014) Promoting Your Performance- In the News, and Social Media. [online] Available at: http://performingarts.about.com/od/Administration/a/Promoting-Your-Performances.htm [Accessed 22/05/2014]
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Peter. R (2010) Social Media Marketing Takes Center Stage. Southern Theatre; Fall. 51 (4) 9-19
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Pewinternet.org (2013) Social-networking-fact-sheet [online] Available at: http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/social-networking-fact-sheet/ [Accessed 22/05/2014]