Audience Segments You Might Be Overlooking (And Why They Matter)

Many theatres focus too narrowly on appealing to and marketing to “the usual suspects” of their base. (Research shows that white, affluent older adults, often in the Baby Boomer generation, are the most frequent fliers at theatres in the U.S.) And while these usual suspects should be valued within your ecosystem, there is a vast array of audience segments that you may be overlooking in your efforts to retain your base. Once you tap into different audience segments, you’ll see a major rise in ticket sales, engagement, and success for your theatre. On The Stage explores why audience segmentation matters, and a few segments to tap for your next showcase.

Why Segmentation Matters

To begin, let’s review what, exactly, audience segmentation is. Audience segmentation is the process of dividing your patron base and potential customers into smaller, more specific groupings based on shared characteristics. The goal? To better understand each group so you can tailor your messaging to them – meeting their specific wants and needs. Groups can be sorted by gender, income, location, lifestyle, or even purchasing behavior. 

There are myriad benefits to audience segmentation. A few of them include:

• Improved attendance and ticket sales – By identifying different audience segments, your theatre can create tailored marketing campaigns that appeal to each group’s interests and availability. For example, through audience segmentation, you’ll know to promote a family-friendly matinee to certain audiences and the edgy, experimental evening show to others.
• Maximized marketing budget efficiency – It’s no secret that most theatres have a limited marketing budget. However, by using segmentation, you’re allocating your resources more effectively, focusing on the most promising audiences for specific shows as opposed to broad-strokes marketing efforts that don’t hit your targets.
• Enhanced customer experience and loyalty – When your patrons receive specific and relevant messages, they feel seen, heard, and valued. Because of these positive affirmations, they’re more likely to attend your theatre more than once – and recommend your offerings to others.
• More informed programming choices – Understanding your audiences and their preferences will help guide you as you choose musicals, plays, and other programming moving forward – ensuring your schedule aligns with what your different audience segments want to see.
• A more engaged community – Your theatre, like millions of others across the globe, relies on community support to survive. That said, audience segmentation helps tailor your content and increase engagement, leading to greater follower counts, more likes, and more opportunities for brand sponsorships or business partnerships. 

Segments to Consider

Now that you’ve seen just how lucrative audience segmentation can be, it’s time to segment your patron base and potential customers to kick things off. Each theatre is like a snowflake, in that your audience segmentation groups may look different than others, but a few common segments you should consider include: 

• Lapsed attendees: Take a look at audience members who have attended your shows before, but haven’t in a while. If the group is significant enough, consider creating tailored marketing materials just for them. After all, an ‘I miss you’ message never hurts… 
• Young professionals and millennials: Target younger audiences, who tend to react to digital, organic marketing efforts more strongly than their older counterparts. Consider enticing them with evening shows or food and drink packages. 
• Donors, volunteers, and newsletter readers: There is probably a large group of folks who are involved with your theatre who haven’t bought tickets. Reach out to them, thank them for their loyalty, but push them to kick that involvement up a notch. 
• Students: If you want to get an even younger crowd in your theatre, target students! They’re typically attracted by discounts – so rev up those promo codes – as well as modern and interactive offerings. 
• Seniors: Older folks need attention, too! Segment out your senior audience members and entice them with matinee performances, classical plays, or group discounts
• Families: The bigger the group, the better, eh? Segment out audience members who typically turn out in groups for kid-friendly fare. 

How to Identify and Reach More Segments 

While the above audience segments are tried-and-true demographics you’ll be able to target, there’s always room for improvement. In fact, there are effective ways to both identify and reach more niche audience segments that can help boost your revenue, diversify your audiences, and increase your engagement. 

How to Identify New Audience Segments:

Analyze Your Current Audience

The first thing you need to do when searching for new segments is to understand the ones you have now. Splice up your ticketing data in helpful categories, like age, ZIP code, frequency of attendance, ticket type, or preferred show genre. Next, reach out to those already-established patrons about their interests; how they heard about you; and other relevant demographic info you don’t yet have. This will grant you a better understanding of the people who already like what you have to offer. Finally, review engagement metrics within your social media and email communications with patrons. Who interacts with you? What content resonates best with which segments? 

Do Some Community Research

You’ll need to know a bit about your community – and who lives there – to best create new audience segments. That said, dig into the hard numbers of your community. What is the average age of people in your community? Income level? Household type? Education level? You can typically get this information from U.S. Census data or local government websites, and it will help you in carving out new segments to target. 

After getting the broad strokes, look for more niche cultural trends or popular groups within your community that are underrepresented in your theatre. Lastly, tap local institutions – schools, community centers, senior living facilities, LGBTQ+ groups, artist collectives – and connect with them. You can even partner with these folks to co-promote events or offer group discounts.

Create Your Segments

After you’ve done your research and connected with potential partners, it’s time to create your new audience segments or personas. Your best bet to start is by creating segments from the most high-traffic or dense new demographics you’ve found and working down from there. 

How to Reach New Audience Segments:

Now that you’ve done the research, made the connections, and created your new audience segments, it’s time to connect with them and ensure they visit your theatre. Reaching these new audience members requires actionable items like targeted outreach, strategic partnerships, and tailored messaging. 

Partner Up

Consider the larger groups that represent the new audience segments you’re trying to reach. Contact them to be your co-captain in recruiting new patrons. For example, if a new audience segment you’ve created is ‘students,’ you’ll need to tap schools and universities in your area to help you get a foot in the door. Along the same lines, you’ll need to reach out to cultural organizations, senior centers, or other community ambassadors to help you make those important connections.

Tailor Marketing to Specific Segments 

The whole point of audience segmentation is to allow yourself room to customize and tailor your messaging to different folks. Once your segments are delineated, you can create targeted social media ads, email campaigns, and local influencers to help customize your message and maximize your marketing efficiency. 

Offer Accessible, Inclusive Events

Marketing to those outside your “usual suspect” comfort zone means that you may need to rethink your offerings and their accessibility. That means presenting new programming incentives, like “pay-what-you-can” nights, sensory-friendly performances, community nights, or just works that appeal to broader audiences.

Offer Incentives to First-Time Attendees

Along the same lines as accessibility, you should make your theatre as enticing as possible to new audience segments. This means offering first-time buyer discounts, referral programs, or even free previews.

How On The Stage Can Help

It’s clear by now that building targeted marketing campaigns using audience segments can increase your top-line sales, grow your audience, and increase your engagement. But if you’re a little confused on how to get started, On The Stage (OTS) can help.

OTS makes it fast and easy to create audience segments using your patrons’ past purchase, attendance, and donation behavior data. Segments can be created in seconds using only a few clicks, and they update dynamically over time as a patron’s behavior changes. That way, you never need to worry about a segment being out of date. Best of all, once you’ve created an OTS audience segment, you can automatically sync it with Google, Meta, and Mailchimp to reach your patrons wherever they are.

If you want to start on your audience segmentation journey, partner with the best; book a personalized demo with On The Stage to get started.