Bauer Entertainment Marketing President Brian Bauer recently stood before a room full of theater owners and marketers at 7:30 in the morning. No slides. No agenda. Just coffee and a lot of people who really, really want to sell more tickets.
They didn't hold back. Last-minute buyers. Checkouts with more steps than a Fosse number. Attribution reports that make about as much sense as the plot of Cats. Here's what they asked, and what Brian told them.
1. "Everyone buys at the last minute now."
This one got the most nods in the room. One owner watched a Friday show jump 50% in reservations after food orders and staff schedules were already set.
"Fans have more choice than they've ever had before. Shoot, I don't know what I'm doing next weekend. Let alone you're asking me to buy something three or four months from now."
Brian's advice was to work with the behavior, not against it. Target superfans and core buyers early, since they buy almost regardless of the show. Pause paid ads during the mid-cycle dip and lean on organic. Then turn ads back on for the final ramp.
"We had a client with an 18% lift year over year because we said we're not going to combat or retrain how they're buying. We're going to lean into it."
Then answer the hard question: why should someone buy today instead of tomorrow? Theme nights for first responders or teachers. Loyalty perks. Limited merch bundles, like a signed poster for the first 50 buyers. And value, not discounts.
"Really try not to discount. Think about all the value that's included in a ticket. Oftentimes it's just repackaging what's already there."
2. "Everything changes every six months. How do we keep up?"
Most dinner theaters are family-owned. Marketing is one hat among many. Google, Meta, and AI tools change faster than a part-time team can learn them.
"It's an arms race. There's a shiny object syndrome you can fall victim to. You're never going to know it all. What's important is understanding what has been working for you and what hasn't, and then pouring fuel on the fire of what's effective."
Brian's rule of thumb: put the bulk of your budget behind proven channels and set aside about 10% to test new ones.
3. "What do we do when a show just isn't selling?"
"First, you breathe. Into a brown paper bag, if you have to.”
Then diagnose. Brian sees three main roadblocks: price sensitivity, a lack of scarcity and urgency, and a value perception problem. Figure out which one (or which combination) you're dealing with before you change anything.
Price: look for a consistent pattern in social comments about cost.
Checkout: compare website traffic to ticketing activity. Lots of add-to-carts with few purchases usually means account creation or surprise fees.
Urgency: watch your own copy.
"I can't tell you how many times I've seen social posts saying 'there's still time, there are still tickets left.' You're telling somebody the exact opposite of what you want them to do."
Countdown clocks are underused in emails and on social. Just don't set them too far out. And remember you control your own offers. A Presidents' Day promo doesn't need a reason beyond the calendar.
Value perception is the hardest. Ask the people who did buy why they bought. Put a short survey on your site asking what's keeping visitors from buying today.
If discounting becomes necessary, do it strategically. Early, limited deals through partners like Costco or Living Social can work as a marketing expense that starts word of mouth.
Running discounted "dark" Meta ads from a sponsor's or production's page protects the perceived value of buying direct from the venue.
4. "We run the same marketing plan for every show."
"What's marketing? It's storytelling. And we've got to know who we're telling our story to. If you're trying to tell the same story to everybody, it's going to fall flat. And if it's the same story every single time, it's going to fall flat twice."
Start with a template, but build each campaign around the specific audiences for that show. Date night. Girls' night out. Affinity groups. Then answer the question that separates your production from the one two hours away: what can people experience here and nowhere else?
"There's a million ways to skin that cat. But you still have to answer why this isn't just another show."
5. "Our artists are pushing back hard on AI."
One attendee described performers asking for contract language banning "any AI" and a designer refusing to work with theaters that use it. Others pointed out that AI is already built into Photoshop, InDesign, and Canva.
Brian treated this as a crisis communications problem.
"The last place you want to be figuring out how to respond to a crisis is in the crisis."
Document your stance and your responses now, before your comments section lights up. Pay special attention to staff and social managers with strong views. Many theaters land on a line that's widely accepted: AI for analytics, not for content. And there's an upside for anyone committed to original work.
"Garbage in, garbage out. As more people go down the AI slop route and that becomes the standard, what actually stands out and resonates with people is the human stuff."
6. "We're opening a new 1,100-cap room. How do we fill it?"
Awareness takes repetition, and it has to start long before opening night. Brian has watched new venues hold a grand opening to crickets because they didn't build an audience first.
"If you think you've penetrated a market and people know you exist, no. Keep going."
Contests and golden ticket giveaways (tools like Gleam.io reward fans for sharing), Facebook event RSVPs that notify friends, and hard hat tours all turn early fans into a launchpad.
Then don't rush people from awareness straight to the sale.
"Consideration is the fat middle. That's where people spend most of their time."
Give them a clear destination that shows exactly what the experience is like. And because buyers wait months for the payoff, give early buyers something now: a digital members club, a welcome package, a first look.
7. "How do we find new people?"
A 53-year-old theater said the same faces like every post.
"If you're fishing from the same pond and expecting different results, you're going to be banging your head against the wall."
One of the biggest untapped opportunities: venues only capture the ticket buyer. With about 2.7 tickets per order, that means you don't know two-thirds of your audience. Touring shows have their own fan lists, merch buyers, and social pages. Collaborate with them. Do the same with sponsors and member businesses on co-promoted giveaways. Build lookalike audiences from your best buyers. Program for new crowds with podcasters, YouTubers, or comedians.
Brian also floated an idea he hasn't seen anyone run yet: a parents' night out with a nearby childcare center.
8. "Should we be on TikTok?"
Several theaters in the room weren't. One attendee called it an awareness platform, not a ticket-selling one. Brian agreed, and said that's exactly the point.
"It's the same as a billboard. You're not typically looking at a billboard and immediately going to buy. It's an awareness play."
If you hear "I would have gone if I'd known," you have an awareness problem, and TikTok and YouTube are where younger audiences and creators live. But quality beats coverage.
"I would rather people focus on one platform and do it correctly than try to do everything for everybody."
Speak each platform's language, and hand it to a digital native when you can. "One of the worst things you can do is post something that was on trend three weeks ago." Back it with a written brand guide so creators have freedom inside clear lines.
On bringing the same influencer back show after show, Brian's take was to give them promo codes or co-hosted giveaways, then check whether followers are actually tired of it.
"Because you live, eat, and breathe it, it's going to feel a lot more repetitive to you than to someone casually scrolling."
9. "Our attribution never adds up."
Even with AI tools, one attendee said reports were convoluted, with different platforms claiming credit for the same sale.
"Here's the plain truth. There's no such thing as 100% attribution. There just isn't."
Meta only credits purchases within a seven-day click window. View-through attribution overcounts. Someone clicks an ad for one show and buys a gift certificate for another. iOS privacy settings made all of it worse.
So zoom out. Calculate your overall conversion rate, apply it to the traffic each channel drives, and compare sales when a campaign (or a billboard) is on versus off. Connect your ticketing platform to Google Analytics so tracking survives the jump from your site to checkout. The goal is to be directionally correct, then spend your energy on sound marketing.
10. "Is AI just telling me what I want to hear?"
One owner spent four hours analyzing her numbers with Google's AI and walked away uneasy. Brian runs the same input through several AI tools and decides based on the overall picture.
"Take it with a grain of salt. Cautious optimism. Nobody's going to know your business better than you know your business."
The biggest question
The room didn't stay tactical. One owner said gas over $5 a gallon was squeezing his audience. Another wondered aloud whether a generation worried about the future will ever show up for theater shows.
Brian's answer was rooted in purpose.
"What enlightened me during COVID was how important live experience was for people. They hungered for it. In-person connection mattered more than ever. And as AI proliferates, AI cannot replace people coming together for shared experiences."
The job is to make that experience easy to find, easy to buy, and worth the price. Everything above is a version of that.
Want more butts in more seats? Book your 3 Free Ideas session with BEM, and we'll show you where your next sold-out show is hiding!
