The director's job is done when the show opens, right? The blocking is set, the cues are called, and the actors have found their rhythm. For so many leaders in the community and professional theatre world, this is a beautiful lie.
The reality is that as soon as one fire is put out, another one starts. The director’s hat comes off, and the marketing hat goes on… and for most of us, it doesn’t fit quite right. You’re juggling rehearsals, budgets, and last-minute production crises, and now you’re also supposed to be a social media guru, a viral video creator, a graphic designer, and a master publicist. It’s exhausting.
If you feel stretched thin, you're not alone. The issue isn't a lack of effort or passion; it's the lack of a simple, repeatable system. Trying to do everything at once—to be everywhere online, to chase every shiny new marketing trend—is a direct path to burnout and, worse, to marketing that doesn't work. The result is a frazzled director and an empty house.
But what if you could quiet the noise? What if you could trade that feeling of frantic, reactive chaos for focused, proactive confidence? You can. This is your official permission to stop doing everything and start doing what works. This 5-step sanity check will help you focus your efforts, save precious time, and actually sell more tickets.
The first step toward marketing sanity is to stop chasing vague objectives. Goals like "sell more tickets," "get more followers," or "create buzz" feel productive, but they're useless as a compass. When you aim for everything, you achieve nothing. The key is to anchor your entire marketing campaign to a single, measurable outcome.
Think of it like giving a note to an actor. You wouldn't say, "Just be better in Act 2." You'd say, "In this scene, your objective is to get her to forgive you." The same clarity is needed in your marketing.
For each production, define one primary goal. It should be specific, measurable, and time-bound.
Instead of: "Sell tickets for Our Town."
Try: "Sell 85% of our total seat capacity for the entire run of Our Town by closing night."
Instead of: "Grow our audience for the summer musical."
Try: "Collect 200 new, local email addresses from audience members during the three-week run of our summer musical."
Instead of: "Get more people to see our challenging new play."
Try: "Completely sell out our two weekend matinee performances to attract an older, retired demographic that we haven't reached before."
See the difference? A single, clear goal becomes a powerful filter. It simplifies every decision you have to make. Should we spend $100 on a newspaper ad? Does that help us sell out the matinees? Should I spend an hour making a TikTok video? Will that help us reach 85% capacity? If the answer is no, you have permission to ignore it and move on.
Defining the right goal is the bedrock of any successful campaign. In Chapter 3 of The Show Must Go On(Line), we provide a detailed worksheet for choosing and tracking your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) so you always know if you're on the path to success.
You cannot speak to everyone. Your theatre is not "for everyone." Even if everyone is welcome, not everyone is your target customer for a specific show. Trying to market a Sondheim musical the same way you market a zany British farce is a costly mistake. To make your message resonate, you have to know exactly who you're talking to.
It’s time to create your "Audience Avatar"—a fictional stand-in for your perfect ticket buyer for this specific show. You're a theatre artist; treat this like character development. Grab a piece of paper and answer these questions:
Name: Give them a name. (e.g., "Main Street Mary" or "Cultural Carl").
Demographics: What’s their age? Their job? Do they have kids?
Motivation: Why are they coming to your show? Are they looking for a fun date night, an intellectually stimulating experience, or a family-friendly outing?
Hesitation: What’s their biggest barrier to buying a ticket? Is it the price? The time commitment? Not knowing if they'll like the show's content?
Information Source: Where do they find out about local events? Is it a specific Facebook group, the local newspaper's online calendar, or word-of-mouth from their friends at the coffee shop?
For example, for a production of Steel Magnolias, your avatar might be "Brenda." Brenda is a 55-year-old empty-nester who loves going out with her friends. She's active in a local book club and follows three local news pages on Facebook. She wants an experience that is emotionally resonant, funny, and will give her and her friends something to discuss over dessert afterward. Her main hesitation is getting everyone to agree on a date.
Now, every piece of marketing you create is a direct conversation with Brenda. The Facebook post isn't for a faceless crowd; it's for her. The email subject line is designed to catch her eye. This simple exercise transforms your marketing from a generic broadcast into a personal invitation.
Here is the single biggest source of marketing overwhelm: the lie that you have to be everywhere. You see another theatre killing it on Instagram Reels, you hear that TikTok is the future, someone tells you that you must be on LinkedIn... so you stretch your tiny team (which is probably just you) across five different platforms, doing a mediocre job on all of them.
Stop. You don't need to be everywhere. You just need to be where your Ideal Audience Member is.
This step flows directly from the avatar you created. Where does "Brenda" spend her time online? According to extensive data from the Pew Research Center, Facebook remains a dominant platform for users in the 50-64 age bracket. So, for Steel Magnolias, your primary channel is Facebook. That’s it.
If your audience is parents of your youth theatre students, your channels are Instagram and a well-managed parent email list.
If you're producing an edgy, experimental play to attract college students, your primary channel might be Instagram Stories combined with physical posters on campus.
This gives you permission to be excellent on one platform instead of being invisible on five. Go all-in. Post consistently, use video, reply to every comment, and engage with your community. Master one channel. Once it's running like a well-oiled machine, only then can you consider adding a second.
Struggling to Choose a Channel? The digital landscape is always changing. My book, The Show Must Go On(Line), dedicates an entire section to breaking down the pros and cons of each social media platform specifically for theatre marketers, helping you invest your precious time where it will get the biggest return. Click here to get your copy and find your audience!
The daily tyranny of the blank screen—"What on earth do I post today?!"—is paralyzing. It leads to last-minute, uninspired content that doesn't serve your goal. The solution is to stop being a "daily creator" and become a "batch creator."
Set aside one two-hour block every other week. That's it. This single session is all you need to create and schedule your marketing content, freeing up your mind to focus on, you know, directing the actual show. Here’s a simple workflow:
Brainstorm (30 minutes): Set a timer. Looking at your Goal (Step 1) and your Audience (Step 2), list 10-15 post ideas. Don't overthink it. Ideas could include: cast headshot and bio, a short video interview with a designer, a time-lapse of the set build, a famous quote from the play, a ticket giveaway contest, a "throwback" photo from a past hit show, etc.
Create (60 minutes): Open a free tool like Canva. Choose a simple, clean template that uses your show's colors and fonts. Now, create all the graphics for your 10-15 posts at the same time. This is exponentially faster than making one graphic every day. While you're at it, write the captions for each post in a simple Google Doc.
Schedule (30 minutes): Use a free tool like the Meta Business Suite to schedule all of your Facebook and Instagram posts for the next two weeks. With a few clicks, your content is loaded in and ready to go.
Two hours of focused work buys you two full weeks of marketing peace of mind. Your social media presence is now running on autopilot, consistently engaging your audience while you handle the thousand other things on your to-do list.
Finally, if you don't glance in the rearview mirror, you'll never know how far you've come or if you're on the right road. You don't need to become a data scientist, but you do need to create a simple feedback loop to make your marketing smarter over time.
At the end of your show's run, take 30 minutes to review. Keep it simple.
Look at your content: Open up your social media page. Which two or three posts got the most comments and shares? That's a huge clue about what your audience responds to.
Talk to your people: Ask your box office staff or front-of-house volunteers: "Did anyone mention how they heard about the show when they bought tickets?"
Review your goal: Go back to Step 1. Did you hit your 85% capacity goal? Why or why not? Did a specific marketing push (like a well-timed email) create a spike in sales?
This isn't about judgment; it's about learning. The goal is to find one or two small insights. For your next show, you're not starting from scratch. You're starting with data. You're starting smarter. "The video interviews with the cast did great; let's make those a priority next time. The text-only posts didn't get much traction; let's do fewer of those."
This system isn't about adding more to your plate. It's about taking things off. It's a framework for focused action: One Goal, One Audience, One Channel, One Batch Session, and One Metric. This cycle replaces the chaos with a professional process that saves you time, dramatically reduces your stress, and makes your marketing efforts infinitely more effective. It’s about putting on the "Marketing Hat" not with dread, but with confidence.
This 5-step checklist is just the beginning. If you're ready to trade overwhelm for a sold-out run, you need a complete playbook. The Show Must Go On(Line) is that playbook, packed with templates, timelines, and practical, budget-friendly strategies tailored for theatre-makers just like you.
Buy your copy today and make this your most successful season yet!