Know Your Audience: How Clackamas Repertory Theatre Set the Stage for a Successful Season

Competition for theatre-goers’ attention – and wallets – can be fierce, especially for local performing arts companies such as Clackamas Repertory Theatre. To ensure success, theatres must know their audience and understand the best ways to communicate with them.

Understanding this reality, Turtledove Clemens has developed a toolbox of effective tactics to provide valuable insights to the minds of theatre partons and translate the resulting knowledge into ticket sales.

Clackamas Repertory Theatre (CRT) named Turtledove Clemens its strategic marketing agency prior to the start of its 2015 season.

To ensure an accurate understanding of CRT and its customers and establish a firm foundation for future marketing efforts, Turtledove prioritized the creation of a Marketing Advisory Panel. Consisting of company members, donors and ticket holders, the panel provides valuable feedback on important subjects such as key marketing initiatives, campaign themes and logos.

In 2015, Turtledove conducted in-depth patron research for CRT before and during the show season. Turtledove then used the findings to develop and execute integrated marketing campaigns that produced a 125% increase in new user web traffic to the theatre’s website and a 110% increase in overall web traffic, compared to the previous year.

For the upcoming 2016 show season, Turtledove collaborated with the CRT executive management team to create a series of distinctive show posters for the three productions: One Slight Hitch, The Music Man and Steel Magnolias.

Turtledove also continues to provide strategic marketing counsel, targeted digital, social media, print, public relations, and cable TV advertising to promote CRT and its shows. Additionally, the agency assists CRT with donor and volunteer outreach programs.