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What We Can Do For You
The key to our marketing success is simple. We put ourselves in the customer’s place. By understanding your audience, we can choose the right way to reach them with the right message and we can find you new audiences.
We make sure all marketing is targeted at the customer. So, no press stories that don’t advance the product, no advertising in irrelevant publications, no spam, no spending money if the value can’t be measured.
We cut out any clutter that gets in the way of your message and the person it’s aimed at: no complicated websites, no letters with verbal diarrhoea, no print with words in colours you can’t read.
We don’t ask you to change your product, we do make sure you maximise its potential sales.
PR
At The Mayflower, we built good relations with the local media. We organised regular stories and events and sent out frequent media releases. We regarded even ‘bad news’ as an opportunity for good publicity.
When we decided to have a blitz on repairing seats, we accompanied it with a media campaign to find someone to be a ‘seat tester’, resulting in lots of press and TV coverage of a ‘bottoms’ audition.
When a booking fee on tickets was introduced, we realised it could have an adverse effect on sales and the theatre’s image. We made sure that it was presented positively as a way of the theatre retaining more funds for its future development. The result was a handful of complaints and miles of good publicity.
We’ll court the media for you. We have a huge database of contacts in the regional media. We understand the needs of journalists and broadcasters. We’ll write press releases that get printed. We’ll think up great stories. We’ll organize your press calls and photo opportunities. We’ll see you through potential PR disasters.
Read our top ten tips on writing press releases
Planning
Poor planning equals poor performance. At The Mayflower, we planned for five years ahead, one year ahead and for each campaign.
We will provide you with a marketing strategy for reaching your market and achieving results, providing Key Performance Indicators along the way. We make sure all aspects of your marketing- advertising, mailings, print, PR- work together so that the sum is greater than the parts. Every pound to be spent is noted and justified. Targets are set and results monitored so we can amend and adapt as necessary.
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Targeting
Targeting is by far the most important factor in the effectiveness of mailings. If you’re not careful, you’ll find you’re sending out junk mail or spam, which is both wasteful and potentially damaging to your reputation. We believe the most cost effective way of making sales and building good customer relationships is Database Marketing to identified Market Segments. The right message to the right person.
We will help you build a strong database of active customers using tried and tested ways of capturing names and we’ll show you how to target them effectively. Then we’ll give you a schedule of timed customised mailings to follow because regular communications build customer relationships leading to more sales.
Print
A good design has to be more than pretty. It has to inform, sell and be easy to comprehend. That’s why The Mayflower’s season brochure generated over half of all tickets sales.
We know the colours that appeal, the type that’s easiest to read and the images that sell. We’ll make sure your brochure uses the best selling pages for your most important messages. In short, we will work with you to make sure your brief to the designer will achieve sales and not just look pretty.
Here are some other tips on how to make your marketing more effective.
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Copywriting
Never underestimate the power of words, whether in a direct mail letter, an email, a website or a season brochure. Research shows that, after targeting, the most important factor in the success of a mailing is how they’re written. We write copy that sells.
We’ll make sure your letters survive that first two second glance and get read. And that they get a response.
Read our top ten tips on writing selling copy
e-marketing
The website we started for the Mayflower became one of the UK’s top five theatre web sites (Yahoo Alexa ranking) and the most visited regional theatre site.
Promotion, search engine advertising, and the use of links and keywords drove traffic to the site and built a massive opt-in email list.
Websites shouldn’t just look good, they should be easy to use.
It’s important to make your visitors ‘stick’- for example, give them insider tips or the opportunity to network with like-minded people. Offer incentives for your audience to give you their email addresses. Update news or a blog to get them coming back regularly.
Read our top ten rules for an effective website
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Branding
Your company has a brand image whether you like it or not. It’s whatever people think and feel about it through direct experience, what they’ve seen or read and what they’ve been told.
So start with your image. List the strengths and weaknesses of your company’s image; decide where you want your company to go in the future and where you want to position yourself in your market. To succeed, you’ll need a consistent message that encompasses logo, colours, ‘voice’ (the way your company expresses itself) and integrates with all your marketing.
Like many theatres, The Mayflower seemed old fashioned and elitist. We re-branded it as a modern company dedicated to customer satisfaction and introduced a new logo that reflected both quality entertainment and the theatre’s heritage.
Pricing
It’s a key marketing tool that can make or break a product. It’s about making sure each customer pays the maximum he or she thinks your product is worth, but it’s also about your image. Are you ‘cheap as chips’ or, like Stella Artois, ‘reassuringly expensive’?
Analyse your pricing history, your product, your market, your competitors to see which prices and offers sell best and worst. Once you’ve launched your campaign, monitor sales against targets with a view to raising prices, removing discounts or introducing offers depending on the level of sales. This way you’ll get the highest yield possible.
Read our top ten tips on getting the price right
Research
Never stop monitoring, researching and testing. That’s how you get inside the minds of your customers or audiences.
Look at past results, current trends and use surveys to understand your audience and what they need. Then apply the information to increasing your sales.
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