In the last articles, we started with the basics: 10 steps that you need to have an entity and get it off the ground, followed by a discussion of how to build an audience base. Now, in part three, we’ll move into the basics of branding, marketing, and PR so that you can sell what you have. After that, we’ll finish by talking about hiring and managing a team and then, lastly, creating a board and fundraising.
So, now that you have your e-mail list of opera fans that like your company and a good social media presence, what are the next steps to getting people to come to your shows? You want to start first with branding.
Branding may seem like a frivolous thing when you have critical things on your plate like incorporating your entity and creating bank accounts but, trust me, it’s critical. A good brand shows people that you’re new and unique and also gives a mental snapshot of your company to someone who has not seen or experienced your shows before. Brands usually consist of a mission statement, a company name, a logo, and sometimes a phrase or tagline that further explains what you do.
Mary Lutz, a fellow soprano in Chicago, and I created our company, OperaModa, to be an entity that hired young, emerging opera singers and that performed American operas in English. We felt that the name was modern and fresh, but also seemed approachable and young. You can see the logo we created at OperaModa.com and on p. 38 of this issue. Our tagline riffs off of the “Moda” in our name, which stands for “Modern Opera Done Artistically.” Logos can be made easily for free at LogoMaker.com or FlamingText.com, or you can ask a friend or fellow singer that is great with graphic design to help you. Never pay more than $100 for a logo, if you go for a custom solution.
Your logo should correspond to the design that you use for your website. You want to have a website that you can update regularly with new performances, press and audition notices, and the like. Sites like WordPress.com or Wix.com can walk you through setting up a page and Web hosting—which is basically where you pay a small monthly fee to keep the site live. These sites don’t require you to buy a domain name, which is probably best when you are at an early stage.
A standard opera company website should usually contain at least the following six pages:
• About Us—where you explain the company’s mission and who you are.
• Seasons—which talks about your current and past seasons.
• Donate—where you should collect online donations or link to a place where people can donate. Donations can be collected through PayPal; just follow the path on the PayPal home page to create a business account and then place the link they provide you with on their site’s Donate page. PayPal does not require an ongoing fee to use its service. Rather, it just takes a small fee per transaction. (An example would be roughly $2.50 taken per $100 donation.)
• Press Room—where you should post your recent press clippings and reviews that your performers garner on the road.
• Team/Hiring—where you talk about your team, audition process, etc.
• Contact Us—which should give your phone number, e-mail, and address. A quick note here: While you can register 1-800 numbers via the Web using sites like www.eVoice.com or www.800pool.com, in the beginning it’s best to just use your personal number and make your voice mail message correspond to the company instead of just your name. An 800 number can cost as little as $10 a month, but when you’re starting out, every little expense counts. Consider this option down the round, once you are more established.
Your website and logo are the first two pieces of your branding, but there’s an offline component as well that rounds out your company’s “package.” Business cards and show postcards are a good idea for most opera companies, so that you have something professional to show potential venues, directors, and auditioners. Don’t go overboard on these. Just use VistaPrint.com for free or highly discounted cards and a site like PrintingForLess.com for show postcards.
You can also place your logo and mission statement on a piece of paper to hand out as a standard meeting handout, and a similar “Team” slide if you wish. Stationary can be blank pieces of paper with your logo placed on the top—and if you have a meeting where you need folders of information, just get white address labels and white folders at OfficeMax or Office Depot and print the logo on the stickers for the folders. Try to strike a good balance between both inexpensive and professional-looking items.
When your branding is complete, you can use it for the launch of your first e-mail to your e-mail list! You can also use it for some of your social media efforts as well—these should always be evolving with your brand. From this point on, you will mainly be marketing each of your shows in periodic bursts, while using e-mail marketing in between shows and seasons to remind your audience of your mission and upcoming works.
Now let’s talk about marketing a show. Most opera companies operate on a shoestring budget, so it’s really quite hard to figure out how to get something for virtually nothing. For this reason, I’ve already talked about social media in our last article. It’s the best free way to get your name out there as a brand, before you begin your show marketing.
When you begin to market a show, there are several kinds of marketing you can do, depending on your resources. The first (and cheapest) kind is viral marketing, which deals with your performers and staff and their networks. Send your performers and staff e-mailed JPEG images of your show postcard for promotion to their own e-mail lists and social networks. If you have time, pair this with easy-to-cut-and-paste tweets, with the hashtags already established, to make it simple for performers to share.
Ideally, your staff and performers will release information in three bursts to their networks before a show. I try to get my teams to promote the show a month before, a week before, and then a day before. Time your e-mails to them with virtual postcards and suggested tweets to this schedule, so they can easily use your momentum to send the message on.
Most opera companies also make posters and postcards for performers to distribute although, in my experience, unless you actually take part of a scheduled rehearsal and use it just for promotion (a.k.a. put your performers in a car and drive them around to drop-off points with the materials), it’s not going to get done. Some opera companies give their performers discount codes that they can use to entice audience members further. In a few cases I have seen opera companies give performers a percentage of the take of the show’s revenues, in addition to a stipend per show, to incent them to spread the word.
Although it can be contentious, I am actually highly supportive of this model because it places all members of a corporate team to work hard alongside each other instead of placing the brunt of marketing on a young opera company. Older, established companies can have budgets just for marketing—but in younger companies, everyone needs to be a salesperson, whether they are the executive director or an understudy. Today’s opera world demands this. We’ll talk more about it in the next article.
Beyond viral marketing, there are a few other kinds of marketing that I have seen work quite well. In the online marketing category, group discount sites like Groupon are excellent for spreading the word, although they will force your take down significantly. I have had great luck with sites like Bloomspot in the past, which have a smaller, more local and specialized feel and mainly market events.
Last-minute ticket distributors like HotTix and smaller competitors are also an excellent way to make sales if you are less concerned about your overall take and more concerned about just selling tickets. You can also find the event sites in your area and simply list your show’s dates and ticket pricing—this should be a standard practice per show. The good news about going this route is that while it might reduce your revenues a bit, it’s all free to do and fills seats.
Offline, the marketing tactics that I have had success with are radio marketing, print marketing, and PR. Regarding radio marketing, both NPR and your local classical station are the best ways to get opera fans to perk up and take notice. With NPR, you’ll have to do underwriting, but it’s very effective. Buy lots of leftover space to save money, and make sure to mention that you are a 501c3; this will give you a bigger discount. With your local classical station, there also might be a nonprofit discount, and you’ll need a 15- or 30-second radio spot. Just make a sound clip for your radio ad using a software program like Apple’s GarageBand. You don’t need anything fancy. The station will give you guidelines on what you can and cannot say, as well as examples of previous ads.
PR is its own beast. As a new opera company, the last thing you want to be doing is paying a PR firm. It’s not hard to do your own PR; it just requires time and persistence. To get started, make a press release for your company’s launch, and follow it with press releases for your company’s shows and any major or unusual events (such as “OperaModa Turns 10 This Year!”). With press releases, it’s critical to have a title that grabs people and to keep them short—no more than one page. Reporters have very little time—you have to deliver them a story on a platter.
Once you have your press release, e-mail it to the local arts reporters and reviewers in your area. If you don’t have access to a database like Cision, which lists the contact info and categories of millions of reporters and reviewers around the country, you’ll have to gather their names and e-mails manually. This should not be too hard. Just visit the websites of the major press sources in your area and look at their Team pages to figure out who covers Arts and Entertainment.
A good follow-up is to mail the reviewers on your list tickets to every show—but be aware that every other company in the area is doing this too, so it will likely end up in a mail room. For this reason, make sure to stress to every reporter and reviewer on your list that they just have to say they are “Press” at your ticket desk to get in. If you can afford it, have a press opening before your main opening and toss in a champagne and chocolate reception. It never hurts to wine-and-dine your press and major donors.
Also, don’t forget bloggers. Find the biggest arts bloggers in your area and send them tickets to every show. A question I get a lot is if several audience members might hear someone getting into a show by mentioning they are press and take advantage of that for free tickets. It’s worth pointing out right now that it’s worth a little bit of lost revenue for a press story that brings in a slew of new audience members. You need to pick your battles.
Are there marketing tactics I did not discuss that might work to promote a show? Yes, but I think I hit most of the main ones here. Offline marketing, for major companies, can include billboards, taxi-tops, bus signs, and bench signs, and online marketing can include paid search, online banners, retargeting campaigns, and any slew of other things. But the focus of this article is really to get you off of the ground, so we won’t concentrate on those tactics now. You can write to me for help if you get to the size where you need them.
Next month we’ll discuss the basics of hiring and managing a team, so you can get other soldiers marching alongside you, spreading the word about your new company. Send any questions in the meantime to gthiers
@operamoda.com. I am always happy to help.
