Clay Mabbitt

My name is Clay Mabbitt. I have a professional marketing background, and a love of theatre.

After seeing and being part of some exceptional theatre that never found its audience, I felt compelled to share what I know to help raise the level of promotion going on for stage productions.

Welcome, and if you’re new to Sold Out Run I encourage you to take a quick look at what this site is about.

SOR 008: Marketing at a Fringe Festival (Part 2 of 2)

Wednesday, May 22, 2013
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As the title implies, this is the second episode of a two-part podcast where I walk-through the approach I took when promoting a show at the 2012 IndyFringe Festival. The show was very successful at the box office. In the last episode I talked about the marketing approach, including what channels (blog, Facebook, etc.) we wanted to use.

In this episode I get into some of the specific tactics we used to achieve that steady content drip that is so key to successful promotion.

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Don’t Put Up Trash Just To Fill a Spot On the Calendar

Monday, May 20, 2013
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Whether you are marketing a stage production, a vacation spot, or a brand of shoes one of the keys to a successful marketing campaign is to have a steady drip of new promotional content. This allows you to stay in front of your potential audience for an extended period of time – long enough to get through their initial hesitation about something new and get them comfortable enough with your show to buy a ticket.

If you follow this philosophy (and you should), you have a certain number of spots in your calendar that need to be filled with new marketing material. Sometimes you’re going to run out of time. The great promotional piece you had expected to have ready on a certain day isn’t ready to go, but you’ve got this spot right here that you wanted to fill. Do you put out nothing? Do you throw together some half-baked idea just to keep the spot in the calendar?

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SOR 007: Marketing at a Fringe Festival (Part 1 of 2)

Wednesday, May 15, 2013
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Being part of any theatre festival is a fantastic opportunity to get exposure to new audiences. The people attending these festivals are clearly interested in discovering new performing arts options in their city. When you get accepted into a festival it would be so easy to relax on your marketing efforts because the festival itself is going to bring you all kinds of foot traffic, but you still need to get those people walking past to stop and watch your show.

Putting a store in a busy mall guarantees that people will be walking past the front door, but it doesn’t guarantee they will stop in and buy anything.

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Finding Sponsors: a Job For Marketing or Fundraising?

Monday, May 13, 2013
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A show that performs well at the box office should easily pay for itself, but you need money for costumes, props, printing, and just about every other possible expense of the show long before opening night. Finding sponsors for the show is a popular solution, and in addition to cash a good sponsorship can also be a tool to help you move tickets. Since a sponsorship is so helpful on multiple fronts, it isn’t always clear who should take the lead on recruiting sponsors. Is it a job for the producer who handles so many of the financial decisions? Or should the marketing lead who’s working to fill the seats step in?

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SOR 006: Matt Lehrman

Wednesday, May 8, 2013
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Matt Lehrman has been thinking about arts marketing at a very high level for quite a few years. I first came across him a few weeks ago when he was presenting his Audiences Everywhere™ workshop in Indianapolis. What stood out to me about Matt is that he isn’t content to accept empty seats. He views them as the enemy.

On one level or another, all of us who are involved in theatre marketing feel the same way, but we often slip into the trap of  viewing them as an enemy we can never hope to defeat. I have the sense that Matt views empty seats as a tough enemy – maybe an enemy that will require all our savvy and creativity – but ultimately an enemy that can be overcome.

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3 Things Never To Say When Promoting a Show

Monday, May 6, 2013
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Whatever formal initiatives you have in place as part of your theatre marketing, you should be broadcasting more informal (or at least more conversational) updates, too. This happens in face-to-face interactions when people ask about the show and over social media channels like Facebook and Twitter. If you aren’t careful you (and your cast and your crew) can unintentionally say something about the show that sends the wrong message about the quality of the production.

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