"How's the show going?"
When a director, choreographer or curator hears that question they interpret as "is your artistic vision being realized."
When a marketing person like me hears it they think "is the show going to make its financial goal?"
To help answers that question . . . and prepare my organization for the consequences of said answer, I use benchmarks.
Don't let the word "benchmark" freak ya out. It's just a way of focusing on certain indicators that help you determine how things are going.
For example, at my day job the benchmarks look like this:
Say I need to sell $70,000 in single tickets to a show.
I should have 20% of those tickets sold before we do our first performance, so that would be $14,000.
I should have sold another 20% worth of tickets before our Opening Night, which is about 9 days after the first performance. So that's another $14,000.
The rest of the money comes in during the rest of the run, which is typically about three weeks long.
How did we come up with those benchmarks? Basically by observing sales patterns for shows that were financially successful and seeing what they had in common.
Coming up with similar benchmarks for what you do could prove to be invaluable.
Here's why.
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Most artistic events come and go relatively quickly. My theatre's productions run for five weeks. A dance company may perform over a few weekends. An art exhibition may run for 8-12 weeks.
All in all, it's not a lot of time.
Without benchmarks, the window of opportunity to put a show in a better financial position may come and go without you even realizing it.
Here's an example:
Alright, so I need $14,000 in sales before the first performance of a show.
The day before the first performance I check sales (in real life I check sales every day, but let's just pretend I only do it once in a while).
Sales are at $9,000.
I've got a situation.
Does it mean the show is going to flop? Nope. But it's something I should be aware of.
But the good news is that I still have some time to make some adjustments in my marketing strategy, or in a worse case scenario, tell my boss that I need to lower the ticket projections fo the show . . . which gives my boss some time to see if he can pull in some extra funds.
That sort of thing is only possible because I have benchmarks in place.
Now let's say I have no benchmarks. I just let the show open. Two weeks pass. The reviews are in. They aren't great. Sales are bad. The show is officially in trouble.
Now what?
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Assume that I decide that the way for me to increase sales is by running twice as many newspapers ads then I normally do. Let's ignore, for now, whether or not this is actually a good idea.
By the time I have had the ads designed, called the newspapers to order more space and sent the new ads in . . . another week has passed.
The show has a five week run. I lost two weeks waiting. I lost another week executing my plan. Now I only have two weeks left.
Wait if the ads don't work?
Then I'm screwed, because I don't have time to try anything else.
Remember, in arts marketing time is a valuable weapon and having some benchmarks will help you to use your time wisely.
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