Building Relationships

With the online world developing faster than ever it is very difficult to keep up with every single change. There are more and more ways to promote your productions and less and less time to learn and implement them in.

However, whatever changes with the internet there is one thing that will never change…

Relationships are the most important part of your marketing.

It doesn’t matter if you are marketing through Facebook, Twitter, a blog, mailing list, LinkedIn or any other way. If you don’t have a relationship then the people you are communicating with are not going to care about what you have to say. If they don’t care about what you have to say then the chances of them buying a ticket to your show is very slim!

Your main focus is to build a relationship and understanding with your audience.

This is something that is regularly forgotten by those of us involved in the arts. I am sure that you have received emails asking you to come and see a show where you…

• Can’t remember ever requesting emails
• Have no idea who the production company is
• Have never heard of the show
• Can find no information about it
• Are immediately deleting the email

The reason for all of these problems is because the people contacting you have not built a relationship with you. You don’t know who they are, why they are sending you emails and why you should bother spending money on a ticket to their performance.

Usually you have gone to see a show and given your details at the end requesting updates. But you don’t receive an update until their next performance which could be 1, 2,3, 6 or even 12 months away. By that time you have completely forgotten everything about them.

So where am I going with this?

I am heading towards the single most important thing in building and maintaining a relationship of goodwill and trust with your audience. Communication.

Communication is the key to any promotional endeavor. Stay in touch with your audience regularly. In fact let them know how often you are going to be in touch when they request your communications and then stick to it.

The communication and relationship you build at the beginning will determine whether they become lifelong fans or delete everything you send. It takes a little bit longer but when you start promoting your shows you will see it returned to you ten fold.