The first workshop I attended today was a session on Marketing in the Royal Opera House’s beautiful Ondine & Petrushka Trust Room. The session was extremely interesting, but with lots of workshops and exhibitors to visit, I sadly didn’t get to stay for too long!

The main topic of conversation in the workshop was on audience segmentation. It was interesting to discover how large organisations market their events/content to people who will be most interested.

I discovered that mass marketing is not the way forward. Though it may seem like the easiest option, it is often expensive and time-consuming, it ends up not being the most effective way to advertise. It is better to target to segmented audience types.

Workshop attendees were given the opportunity to discuss how they think that the Royal Opera House and Target Live advertise to different audiences. Almost everyone in the room suggested targeting different audiences by their age group would be the best way to get people to attend a show. Surprisingly, this is not how shows are advertised as not every one of the same age group will like the same things!

Amongst many other things, I discovered that though marketing can be expensive it is still a great industry, essential to the success of the theatre industry as a whole.

This was a great session, in which I learnt a lot in such a short period of time – it was almost like a taster to working in marketing!