Blog How Can I Promote Lesser-Known Titles?

How Can I Promote Lesser-Known Titles?

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AUTHOR: Sarah Berry

Mar 02, 2024

4 Min Read

In the dynamic landscape of the arts industry, promoting lesser-known titles presents a unique challenge. These artistic gems of creativity often struggle to capture audience attention amidst the vast array of entertainment options available.

Through strategic marketing tactics, arts organizations can effectively navigate this terrain and shine a spotlight on these hidden treasures. Let’s delve into successful strategies used by various arts organizations, offering insights and recommendations for promoting lesser-known titles.

Curate Compelling Content

Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati (ETC) adopts a strategic approach by curating content on their show landing pages to resonate with potential audiences. By listing reasons why audiences would enjoy a particular show, showcasing similar productions, and presenting related media titles, they create a compelling narrative that draws engagement. And this stellar messaging doesn’t just live on their website…

Harness the power of storytelling.

ETC carried this approach into their video content for a Meta campaign promoting What the Constitution Means to Me. They emphasized the narrative and emotional appeal of this lesser-known title to captivate both new and existing audiences.

This post drove the most impressions of any in the campaign and resulted in an engagement rate of 0.16% and the highest link click-through rate (CTR) of 1.34%.

Embrace Audience Realities

When faced with the challenge of promoting Run Bambi Run, a new title that didn’t immediately resonate with their core audience, Milwaukee Repertory Theater took proactive steps.

Lean into word of mouth.

Milwaukee Rep started their digital campaigns earlier than usual, allowing ample time for a longer consideration stage and for word-of-mouth promotion to take root. For these campaigns, they also created more social content than usual, particularly emphasizing video. This strategy enabled them to effectively narrate the show’s story and provide audiences with a preview of what to anticipate.

Test to find what resonates.

Given the abundance of content available for this campaign, their CI consulting team experimented with targeting various audience segments with tailored content. They also implemented a strategy of having multiple posts live simultaneously and switching them off based on frequency and performance within each audience segment. By collecting and analyzing data on audience behavior, preferences, and campaign performance, the team gained valuable insights that drove more informed decision-making.

This approach proved successful, resulting in significantly higher-than-average engagement rates. The Meta campaign finished with the strongest ROI of any Meta campaign in the past two seasons! It resulted in an ROI of 1,448% and the growth of their retargeting pool by close to 3,000 new visitors. The YouTube campaign resulted in an ROI of 921%, which was their strongest YouTube campaign yet, as well as growth of their retargeting pool by around 2,000 visitors.

Maximize Lead Generation

First Stage, a children’s theater based in Milwaukee, executed a dual-purpose campaign last summer aimed at generating new leads while raising awareness and driving ticket sales for Dream, Quickie! Dream!, the first show of their season.

Drum up excitement with incentives.

By signing up with their email, users either had a chance to win free tickets or receive a discounted opportunity to see the world premiere production. The lead generation campaign ran for one month and resulted in close to 400 leads for an average cost of about $3.80.

Leverage first-party data.

Later in the season, the single-ticket campaign on Meta finished with an overall ROI of 435%. The most bottom-of-funnel audience, which included the list from the lead generation campaign, performed exceptionally well, finishing with an ROI of 2,689%, emphasizing the importance of building strong first-party data for future campaigns.

No Name Recognition, No Problem

Strategic promotion is vital for elevating lesser-known titles. By embracing innovative strategies and storytelling techniques, arts organizations can ensure these hidden treasures receive the recognition they deserve.