Before the Curtain Rises: How Content Builds Anticipation and Fills Theater Seats

When the cast and crew have been assembled, the costumes and scenery built, the dances and music numbers perfected, you might not have much energy left for actually marketing the event! 

Good event marketing means that your website needs to show up for returning patrons who are actively searching for your shows and for people who may not even know who you are and what you have to offer.

Content marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach both groups at the same time. By publishing regular, engaging content related to your events, you can build up interest and excitement — who knows, you might even need a bigger venue to accommodate all the new patrons! 

Content Marketing for Theaters

So, how can theaters use content marketing to promote an upcoming event? 

In essence, content marketing strategies leverage the fact that your audience is always online to build up interest and excitement for live events. 

An effective content strategy should be structured around your performance schedule, so that there is consistent content provided throughout the year to keep interest and engagement high, even during the off-season.

Content is simply anything your brand publishes related to your event details, including:

• Text-based content, like blogs or interviews
• Photo-based content, like behind-the-scenes shoots, cast photos, images of past performances, or artist features 
• Video-based content, like Q&A sessions, clips of rehearsal sessions, snippets of live performances, or tours of your venue

The quality of your content will communicate to your viewers the quality of your shows. In other words, an audience used to well-produced reels and TikToks will get excited about your live community theater when they see similar content published by you.

Ready to design a promotional content calendar that gets the whole town excited about your shows? Give our digital marketing experts a call.

Blog Writing for Artistic Directors

Blogs are still the bread and butter of most content marketing efforts. This is because blogs provide an evergreen way to communicate to search engines what you’re all about. 

For example, the artistic director of a community dance program could publish a biweekly blog in which they document some of the exciting classes offered, the progress of the students, or the achievements of program alumni. All of this information is indexed by search engines and helps your website rank higher than your competitors when local people search for keywords like “live music near me.” 

For technical SEO success, you don’t need to publish a blog every day; however, consistency is important. Our team of writers creates compelling content tailored to your unique words and goals. Give us a call to discuss affordable, custom-quoted packages for blog writing. 

Email Marketing for Performing Arts Schools

Keeping audiences engaged during the off-season can be a challenge. This is where email marketing can really shine in the live event and performing arts world. 

Around 90% of Americans check their email every single day. This makes it a great way to re-engage past audience members. 

Remember, people hate spam, so you don’t need to email every day. Biweekly emails that contain valuable content are a great way to keep people interested in your shows. Feature information about high-interest topics, like:

• Upcoming event promotions
• Post-event content like cast photos or short clips of performances
• Casting calls or class enrollments, if you offer these
• Ongoing interviews with artistic directors, choreographers, musicians, etc. 

Keep the emails brief and visually interesting, and you can ensure that people won’t forget about you in between shows. 

E-commerce Product Pages for Event Spaces

Many venues are harnessing the power of e-commerce sites to reach event organizers and patrons alike. They offer a convenient way to standardize your event listings, ticket sales, and even season passes. 

On an e-commerce platform like Shopify, each product page can function as its own event page, so it’s important that the content encourages visitors to click “buy tickets.”

Effective content for an e-commerce page includes clear and detailed explanations of the event, including:

• Time
• Location
• Duration
• Age range 
• Details on food
• Parking and directions
• Special policies
• Refund or transfer policies
• Ticketing procedures 

If your e-commerce site doesn’t load correctly or doesn’t process credit card information securely, though, you won’t increase ticket sales.

An optimized event page for e-commerce sites will be:

• Fully optimized with keywords for search
• Logically linked to other pages on your event website
• Featuring high-resolution but quick-loading images to convey the event experience
• Updated to ensure quick load times on desktop and mobile
• Equipped with local SEO best practices 

If you need a fully optimized e-commerce site that brings in new ticket sales and securely processes transactions, give us a call. 

SEO Content Writing Services for Theaters

It can be hard to fully convey the excitement of a live event in words, especially if new audience members aren’t familiar with the style, genre, or particular show. 

Professional content writing services can make your event come alive through the written word and your own event images — helping return audiences and newbies alike feel excited to be part of something real and electric. 

Not only do you need to communicate how special your theater is to people, but you need to make sure that search engines index it properly so that it will be shown in local search results! This requires a delicate balance of writing for two audiences — the search engine “crawlers” continuously evaluating your site and the real-life humans ready to be persuaded by your event content to take in a show. 

If you need help communicating all that you have to offer through your live events, talk to our team of 100% US-based SEO content writers. We custom-quote each content writing package to your budget and goals. 

Content Optimization for Performing Arts Schools

Your school, theater, or venue might already have a great website and social media presence, but there may be something missing that can boost your content marketing for event venues and help bring in the full bookings you need to grow. 

A content optimization analysis identifies where your on-page SEO and promotional content are already performing well and what can be improved for better performance. Think of it as a personalized report on how your event marketing efforts are working.

Once we have a full picture of your website’s current performance, we can deliver personalized recommendations for the kind of content that aligns with your goals and audience. 

Social Media Content Creation for Theaters

Most venues have social media accounts to post the dates and names of upcoming shows. This is a great start. However, if you only have event pages, you should know there’s a lot more you can do with event-related content to bring in a bigger audience.

This applies to both movie theaters and live performance theaters. A schedule of content designed around topics related to your events can help generate excitement for months before a big show. 

Social media is the ideal channel to share bite-sized content that builds connection, enthusiasm, and trust:

• User-generated content like #showselfies 
• Behind-the-scenes tours
• Event teasers 
• Movie trailers
• Event reminders to keep your audience’s attention
• Links to performers’ accounts to encourage sharing and growth 

Creating and managing a comprehensive social media calendar takes time. Our social media team can create a content management strategy that’s directly linked to analytics and reporting, so you know exactly how your efforts are resulting in increased ticket sales. 

FAQs: Improve Local Visibility With Content Marketing

Optimizing your content strategy boosts your rankings for people searching for a local event online. Not only does it help your venue or shows get discovered when people are intentionally searching, but it also keeps you top-of-mind during the off-season.

As a full-service digital marketing firm, SEO Design Chicago has over ten years of experience helping all kinds of organizations grow their web presence through personalized, custom-quoted digital marketing strategies. More effective than purchasing ads or posting on social media at random, a targeted strategy makes the most of your budget to deliver sustainable, ongoing growth.

When you’re ready to grow your event attendance through regular, relevant content, request your free call with SEO Design Chicago. 

In the meantime, check out some of the most frequently asked questions we get about optimizing your event website content for search. 

What types of content work best for theaters and performance venues?

Visually interesting content that generates excitement about your cast, crew, and shows is a great way to market a theater or performance venues.

Some ideas to get event professionals started include:

• Show previews
• Behind-the-scenes stories
• Director’s or choreographer’s notes
• Cast and crew features 
• Rehearsal footage
• Audience testimonials
• Season previews and teasers 

How far in advance should theaters start creating content for shows?

Ideally, a content calendar should plan out promotional content several months in advance. Content should build excitement, starting with teaser trailers, leading into engagement-building content like rehearsal clips and directors’ notes, and increasing in publication frequency up to opening night.

Don’t forget that you should keep publishing content during the run, especially via channels like email and social media that lead to direct ticket sales. 

Can content marketing help theaters attract new audiences, not just existing patrons?

Absolutely! Content can be designed around special interests that are aligned or adjacent to what your theater offers to capture the attention of new audiences.

For example, event marketers can create content around topics regarding extracurricular learning experiences for families that tie into visiting a dinner theater show together. 

Should theaters create content even between shows or seasons?

Yes, marketing beyond the event helps attendees continue to identify with your venue, building excitement for the next season. If your venue relies on donors, it also helps remind them that your shows need continuous support to plan and produce the next run. 

Maintaining a regular publishing schedule through social media, blogs, and email marketing helps maintain audience engagement even during the off-season. 

How can theaters reuse content across platforms?

A strategic content schedule will make the most of each piece of content to promote your event on multiple channels.

Best practices for effective event content marketing are to start with a long-form blog post. This lives permanently on your website and provides ongoing SEO traffic to your site. Next, the blog can be repurposed into smaller sections to create shorter social media clips and email campaigns.

Portions of these can be used to create event-specific pages organized around a single topic, like musicals or horror films. The shortest segments of your highest-performing content can be used in your press kit as well as in short TikToks, Reels, and YouTube Shorts. 

Is your website bringing in a consistent audience? Check now with a free comprehensive SEO audit!