From: GAzPuppets-AT-aol.com Date: Sat, 17 May 2003 01:30:47 EDT Subject: Re: PUPT: Moving Ears --part1_1c0.9bf26f8.2bf72307_boundary In a message dated 5/15/2003 9:45:40 PM US Mountain Standard Time, PPlace8587-AT-aol.com writes: > ..... I have a fairly new puppet theatre venture. I'm doing puppet shows > at a small theatre here in town and I want to increase the size of my > audience. The house seats 240 and we're getting about 40 people, mostly > pre-schoolers. I've sent fliers to pre-schools here in town. Elementary > schools, for the most part, won't accept fliers. You can advertise in > their paper, but it costs at least $40 per month. Ouch! Any other ideas > for advertising? I've also been doing press release notices and they have > run in the local paper for free. So if you have any other suggestions, I'd > appreciate it! Hope to see bunches of you at the Festival in Oklahoma. > Start a mailing list. Have it right by the register where people buy tickets and send a regular newsletter to those on the mailing list. Input the information in a database program. Our mailing list is around 13,000 families. I wish we had included the date they signed up when we first started as now it's hard to tell the old contacts from the new. Oh, well, some of the little ones are now old enough to attend our adult evenings. If you also ask for e-mail address, you can send e-mails about upcoming shows that won't cost postage or printing. Are you doing weekday shows? Offer a good field trip opportunity - reduced rates, convenient showtime, etc. - and send fliers directly to schools. It's tricky to get these to the right people. We usually put ATTENTION: K-4 TEACHERS printed on the flier above the address to help direct it to interested people. In our area, it's the individual teachers who book the field trips. And we send these out regularly throughout the school year highlighting the upcoming shows and the whole season listed, as well. Offer a birthday party deal. The birthday child invites other children, which brings more people into the theater. Give each child a schedule and discount coupon for return. Also, if you are doing shows elsewhere, you can use that contact to let people know about your theater. We distribute inexpensive "bookmarks" with the upcoming schedule, phone number, address, website and a $1 off coupon. The same bookmark is distributed to every child who visits with a field trip or birthday party. We have had a theater open to the public in Phoenix since 1988. Prior to that we toured. It was, and is, a LOT of work. We found that the touring helped the theater, and the theater helped the touring. Good luck with your venture! Where are you? Nancy Smith Great Arizona Puppet Theater <A HREF="www.azpuppets.org">www.azpuppets.org</A> --part1_1c0.9bf26f8.2bf72307_boundary
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