As you know, Kyle and I are doing a huge theater show on May 6th. http://fantasyofillusion.white.prohosting.com.

I am wondering when people start buying advance tickets. So far to date, we have 6 tickets sold. I am thinking that for a show like this, because it is a family show people will buy their tickets at the door. The theater holds 650 people.

We are still 8 weeks out. So far we have sent out about 1,000 flyers to MOM's clubs, magic clubs and libraries. About 6,000 more will be going out to schools, daycares and businesses within the next 2 weeks. We are already listed on a few online community calendars and have ads in 2 newsletters. We also plan on sending out press releases in April to a few newspapers. I was wondering what else we can do to get advance sales, or is it still too early to do that?

Thanks for any advice.

Kelly

May 6th does not give you a lot of time to sell 650 tickets. If you do a search here on the Café you will find lots of ideas for promoting a theater show.

Your poster/flyer capmaign is important, getting listed in community calendars and ads in the newspaper are also important, but as I have discussed else here, there are two components to an effective campaign - the mass media element, and the interpersonal element.

Your mass media campaign will increase public awareness for an event, but it will not move people to behave in a certain way, i.e. buy tickets. Research on public information campaigns confirms that every effective campaign that wants to get people to act in a certain way has to include an interpersonal campaign that coincides with the media campaign.

Think about it, a movie studio can dumps tons of money into television advertising, but if your friend tells you that the movie sucks, you are not buying a ticket. On the other hand, a movie may not do much advertising, but if two or three of your friends tell you that you just have to see it, you will be much more likely to purchase a ticket.

That's why personal appearances before the event are very important, particularly for an "unknown" performer. You need to get out there interacting with people who will start talking about your event. Promotional teaser appearances that you set up at stores, schools, community centers, etc. When you have have lunch in a restaurant, do a couple of tricks for the waitress and leave a few flyers, perhaps some "two for one coupons" or "free child with paid adult" coupons. Wear out some shoe leather meeting people and promoting the event every place possible. The more people you touch in person, the more tickets you will sell.

To get people talking, plan some sort of publicity stunt, perhaps in conjunction with a local commercial promotion at a mall. The added benefit is additional press coverage. Speaking of that, work on getting a feature story in all the local newspapers the week before the show. Don't overlook the weeklies. Feature stories have more power than paid advertising.

There are lots of other things to do and when you do your search you will find some great suggestions. The important thing to remember is that the promotion takes as much work as the show.

Jim

PS: The link above is not working.

Hi Kelly
Welcome to the magic Café. I'm booked on May 6 or I would buy two tickets.
HAVE FUN
Al Angello

Jim,

Thank you so much for your advice. It comes highly appreciated. The only problem with personal appearances, is that the event is in NJ and we are in PA also the fact that we work during the week, makes it a bit more difficult to do schools and the like. BUT, we can go over there some weekend before the show, and go to lunch someplace as you suggested in the township and do some tricks as you suggested.

We are doing a blue and gold dinner this weekend in NJ, and we have already sent the pack some flyers prior to getting booked, so we will bring more with us to give out, and maybe tickets. Do you think people will buy tickets at the blue and gold?

You mentioned 2 for ones, or free child ticket with adult. etc on the tickets, now on our flyer it's not listed as that, but can we still do that if we do stuff in person and still make a profit? We are doing a 75/25 split on the show since it is a fundraiser. We also have to split our 75% with our partners. Sorry if I forgot to mention that.

Also, should we start sending out our flyers ASAP? or should we wait another 2 weeks? We just don't want them to get lost or thrown out. Sorry if I sound a bit wishy washy on this. hehehehe

Al,

Thanks for the welcome anyways. But if you know of anyone who might be interested, please pass the word along. Tickets are $10/8/6.00

Thanks again,

Kelly

That does pose some challenges. Definitely set up some radio interviews if you can. Do some telephone call-ins with the morning drive time DJs with some sort of radio stunt the week before the show.

Can you make money with discount coupons? Yes, as long as you are putting people in seats that would otherwise be empty. You know your breakeven point, that is, how many tickets you need to sell to break even. Hopefully, it is no more than 65% of the house. The other 35% of the house represents pure profit. If those seats are empty, then you lose it forever.

You have 650 seats; let's subtract 30 seats for cast comps, press tickets, radio station giveawas, giveaways to the nice waitress, etc, and that leaves you with 620 tickets. 65% of 620 = 403 tickets. Let's assume that's how many you need to sell at an $8 average price to break even. The remaining 217 seats (35% of 620) are the seats you really want to fill to make some money.

You could have 100 two-fer coupons ready to go out the last week. If you have less 200 advance sale tickets a week before the event, you could start spreading the coupons around, because you still need to sell another 200 at $8 even before you hit the breakeven. If you have only 200 tickets sold two days before the event, dump all 100 two-fers in the hopes of putting bodies in seats. 200 tickets at $4 per ticket is better than 200 empty seats. Then during your final week promotions, radio interviews, etc., mention that people can pick up a coupon at such and such a location.

On the other hand, if you have 400 tickets sold in advance, you could toss the two-fers and try to get full ticket price for those last 217 seats. Even so, you may only sell 100 of them, so you could have accepted 50 two-fer coupons with no problem.

So you might want to consider having 50 or 100 twofer coupons available at the blue and gold dinner this weekend. Put a deadline on redeeming them in advance, however, say one week. Not everybody will redeem them, but it could stmulate some earlier advance sales and get people talking.

One other thing, you need to get people from the charity that you are raising money for involved in the campaign. They should be taking up the show. Try to meet with as many of those people as possible to build enthusiasm. Their job should be to move as many of the first 403 tickets as possible in advance. If you have a team of 20 people selling for the charity, every person has to sell 20 tickets. That could be hard, but even if they don't sell all there tickets, at least they are talking up the show.

Set a goal of having 400 tickets sold a week before the show and you won't have to worry about settling for discounted seats, or worse yet, "papering the house." That's when you give away the last 200 ticket free to deserving community groups just to put bodies in seats and have a theater at least half full. When that happens, it's not about making money, it's about spreading good will and having a fun show.

It's all a roll of the dice. The important thing is to fill that house one way or another.

Jim

AGHHHH my wife found the Café hide me hide me please. hehehe Now she knows my secret to success. The world will never be the same again. hehehe

In all seriousness, I want to thank you all for making her welcome and being so kind and helpful to her. It is greatly appreciated. She has been a huge help as we plan, pomote and execute our marketing campaign for our theater performance on May 6th.

To give a bit more background, we began doing the marketing for thsi show as early as th last week in January andhave been continuing to keep on track and on target with the marketing for the show. Kelly touched base a bit on some of the items we have done to date.

One thing I want to mention is that our overhead is really quite low on this event. Much lower then any other event we have done of this caliber. We were quite lucky to get into the high school and use their auditorium without owing the school anything at all. A fellow magician friend of ours is a former teacher there and stills runs their magic club. It is the magic club that is sponsoring us to be able to get us in to the school with nothing owed to the school in regards to rent etc. The percentage split ias based upon giving money and raising money for the club that is sponsoring us.

Also, since I am a graphic designer, my printing exspense is nothing. I am doing all the design and all the printing of the posters, flyers, tickets, programs etc myself and running them off at work aftre hours. This means no cost to us in regards to printing fees or material fees.

About the only overhead we have at the moment is mainly postage to mail the flyers out and a few other odds and ends. We are very happy about that as it means our break even point is much lower then other shows we have done of this type.

So, to the most part our break even point is much lower then we would normally have. We may hire a videographer for the show and if we do then I will recalculate the break even point at that point in time. We are also tracking all exspense but so far it has been minimal.

Jim: Thank you for your vast knowledge and insite here. tis is of huge help. I am going to recalculate our break even point to date and will try and get back to you guys on that soon.

We are indeed getting the magic club that is sponsoring us deeply involved in our marketing approach. Our contact (the former teacher friend I mentioned), already has gotten us on the public access Tv station in the area, has psoted posters in the high school and all the area district schools and will be getting our flyer ion the hands of every student in the school district., I also had him give tickets to each of the school offices with a poster for the office so that they can sell tickets there as well. The group will also be lacing posters up around town to as many locations as will except them. We are in talks on other things we cam have them directly help us with. I am sure there is more I can have them do, but would like options and ideas from the group here.

I will go in later on the details of what has already been done by us to date. Kelly touched base on some of it but I will try and give more details on that. I will admit there are some things I have not tried yet that I would like to do this time around. These are things I can look into and research here also but could also use anybody's help on them.

I am very good at doing the print side of things, but I would like to learn more about:

1) Press Releases: I have one written up and ready to go out but not sure if sending one out is the best or if we should send out several within the time remaining? Does anyone have any advice on this? Is it better to send out 1 press release at a certain time, or send out multiple ones?

2) TV and Radio Media: This is an area I must admit I am totally new to. I would love to try and get radio and or TV coverage of any sort but how does one best go about doing this effectively? Any ideas or links where I can research this approach would be of help.

3) Public Appearances: We are doing a Blue and Gold Dinner this weekend that kelly has mentioned above. I plan on trying my best to use that as a way to sell some tickets and to get the word out about the show. The group knows of our May 6th show as that is how they found out about our services in the first place. if there are any ideas or suggestions on what we can do at this gig this weekend to get the word out and to promote the show, I would love to hear more ptions on this.

Also, since I am working my day job, I do not have as many options to get out there for other public appearances. However, I can do stuff on thr weekends as well as have my sponsor (the teacher of the group) go out and do some appearances for us. He is retired and has the time. What are some ideas on how best to get public appearances to promote the show? Any ideas on this would also be of help.

We want to do the best that we can in continuing our marketing effort and to do so effectively and to make sure we are exploring and using all the tools that are open to us to really pack the house as best as we can.

Once again, thank you for being so kind to my wife today and I look forward to hearing back from you all on your ideas and advice. I shall post more later but must get to my SYM club meeting. I have to teach tonight.

Kyle

Hi guys!

I just wanted to post a simple question now that I have had some time to think about a few things. I have designed full color flyers about the show and with all the details. I have also gotten approvals for a lot of daycares, public schools, private schools and retail businesses. These folks have already been called and we have rec'd approvales from them to send flyers to them for distribution amongst their students etc.

Most of these flyers have been printed, stacked, placed in envelopes and are ready to mail.

My question to you is this..as of March 11, our show date would be exactly 8 weeks (two months) away. I wanted to know what people's opinions were on when these flyers should be mailed out to those locations to maximize and get our best results. Should I start mailing them at 8 weeks or should I wait until about 6 weeks? Is 8 weeks too much time for somebody to recieve the flyer to seriously be thinking about it? I just wanted to get some people's opinions as to when might be the best time to mail these flyers out. As always, your ideas and suggestions are a huge help to me.

Kyle

Thanks for all the advice. It is greatly appreciated. I look forward to hearing any other ideas and suggestions.

Kelly

Three weeks from my last show I had only prebooked 6 tickers....we sold out all 500 tickets!

So don't get too stressed!

Howeverm you can encourage pre bookings by

1) offering charity/group/organisation discounts to those who prebook.

2) Do pre publicity and suggest a sell out show.

3) Get any friends/peers/family who are coming to buy tickets now.

Nicholas:

Thank you my friend for chiming in here. It is appreciated. We have started to get family and friends and relatives to purchase tickets and that is working well. We are also sending e-mail invites out to a lot of friends and past prospects, suspects and clients and did our first e-mail to them about a week and a half ago. We will be following up with this.

We already have about 15 advance tickets sold already. I know it is not a lot, but it is a start. 8 from a full page ad in a MOMS club newsletter / 2 from friends of ours who are also magicians and 5 from friends of the family.

I will go into more detail on what we HAVE done already and what we still NEED to do at a later time when I get the chance.

One thing we would like immediate advice or help on is a public performance we are doing tomorrow afternoon. Let me give you all a bit of a background on this.

It is a blue and Gold Dinner (of which Kelly and I have done many). They found out about us when Kelly called to ask them if we can send their group flyers for the upcoming Fantasy of Illusion (FOI) show. They said yes to the flyers and then actually booked us for this Sunday's Blue and Gold Dinner show.

I want to maximize my time at this event tomorrow and be able to also use it as a way to promote the FOI show in the best manner possible. I also want to get flyers out at this event and also let people know that we have tickets there etc.

My question would be this:

1) How best can we use this public performance tomorrow to get our FOI show promoted in the best way possible?

2) What is morally and ethically right to do at this event and what should we stay away from. First off, I want to make sure that I am delivering on my promise to them for a great show and I do not want to jeapordize my relationship with them by doing anything that would appear wrong. Any thoughts on this?

I was planning on:

1) placing out color flyers on the tables (with permission) for the FOI show
2) mentioning about the show at the end of our performance
3) mentioning about tickets
4) possibly offering a discount to the group that if they book within the next 2 weeks we will give them a free child admission with the purchase of one adult ticket.

Any other ideas? Also, how best do I do this without it being perceived the wrong way by my client etc. I do plan on asking and that may be what it boils down to. Just simply asking ahead of time. I just wanted to post this here to get others opinions and ideas.

Thanks in advance.

Kyle