Advertising methods

[Darin Steffl]

Just figured I'd share how we advertise movies/times and see how everyone does theirs. We're Kasson State Theatre in Kasson, MN. Started in 1937 as a cinema. 7 or 8 churches then operated in the building until 1998 when it was restored back to a movie theater by two local sisters. They listed it for sale and I bought it in March of 2020, just one week before we had to shutdown for Covid. We reopened in March of 2021 for Godzilla and have been open for first run movies since then. This is not my primary business but my main business income is what allowed me to purchase a single screen theatre that does not turn much of a profit.... yet ha!

For movies and our showtimes, we post them on:
-Website
-Phone Hotline
-Facebook with boosted post of $50 per week
-Mailchimp email list
-Our marquee
-Google Business

The old owners prior to March 2020 used to put them in our local newspaper as well but I have not done that yet and am not sure if it's worth it. Our attendance is much lower than I'd like but it's still Covid. Our Google review average is 4.6 and Facebook is 4.9 so we are well liked. We went from 1,670 FB likes when I bought it and took over the page to 3,060 now so that has been successful growth over 2 years.

We're making updates to the Theatre, repairing things, renovating things that are noticeable. We receive great feedback from customers in person and via online reviews.

Should we add back in newspaper ads or just keep doing what we're doing and hope for the best that more people find us and choose us over the 3 big multiplexes just 15-20 miles away? We're adding a small second screen and will be doing some power recliners this year which is a fan favorite for some people.

Has anyone used Groupon to offer a promotion? They have been hounding us to offer something through them and I don't think it would hurt to try it.

Does Radio or TV work at all? I don't think the ROI is there.

We have some very loyal customers that I see often but we need more new customers, not the just the loyal customers over and over. We're doing our best to impress new people on their first visit and hope they come back and bring their friends with them. I think our growth will become a snowball effect once we get some more momentum.

[James Wyrembelski]

-Marquee
-Website
-Phone
-Facebook

Weekly newspaper ads are a thing of the past. Even the plex theatres around here stopped. The amount charged far exceeded any value, if there was any to begin with.

I tried the boost feature of Facebook only to see people that liked our posts happened to live in places such as the Detroit area (a nearly 3 hour drive south from here). We don't bother with that anymore.

The marquee and posters do make a difference. We're right on the main drag going through town (and the county), so those do get noticed. Especially posters under the coming attractions section.

The phone actually gets used quite a bit when Thursday/Friday approaches.

I'm only in a town of about 1,300 people and the county is fairly small (26k) so word is easy to get out for the most part.


I will say that I'm in a little bit of the same trap of seeing a lot of the same faces week after week since 2020. Previous to that we of course had regulars, but usually had different faces filtering through each week. Since December of last year I'm beginning to see more and more variety in people showing up. It could be an effect of the pandemic and now it's beginning to show signs of abatement as I see more variety showing up. Perhaps there's that effect everywhere, to a degree, right now.

[Frank Cox]

I'm in a town of (now) about 4500 people.

I live and die by my webpage. That's my main advertising.

However, I also advertise in a twice-a-month regional paper because a friend of mine owns it and he actually gives me the space for free; if it wasn't for that I probably wouldn't bother but my ad has been there for the entire 20+ years that he's had his paper so I just keep updating it every time he prints a new issue. I wrote the software that he uses to create his paper so I get a free ad.

I have an email mailing list that people can sign up for on the webpage and about 500 people subscribe to that.

I also get an occasional free (text) ad on the local cable tv community channel since I do some work for the cable tv company and that's one of the perks that comes with what I do.

I also have a "now playing" phone line with a recording that I update every week.

And I wrote an Android app that about 200 people (apparently) use, according to Google.

When I first opened my theatre I bought an ad in the local weekly paper because hey, that's what you do. Advertise in the paper. In fact, I even bought a full-page ad when I was playing Titanic. However, in 2002 when the first Spider-man movie came out they screwed up my ad and put in "Now Playing: Spider-man" a week before I was actually playing it. Oh damn, thinks I when I see that. I'll be turning people away all week when they come to see Spider-man. But you know know many people came to see Spider-man that week? Zero. Not one single customer. So that told me that nobody reads the ad in the paper and I've never advertised there since.

My yearly advertising expense is usually zero.

I do see a lot of brake lights going on when people drive by the theatre and are looking at the movie posters in the windows. My front windows are custom made to fit movie posters into. I don't have a marquee, though, since I'm not interested in standing on a ladder trying to chip the letters out of a frozen track at midnight in -40 weather.

I used to print a monthly flyer and mail it to every mailbox in the area. But in 2011 I mailed everyone a fridge magnet with the website on it and stopped doing flyers; ever since then my webpage has been my primary advertising.

[Mark Lane]

Darin
Don’t take this the wrong way,. go slow. You have almost zero experience running a theater under normal conditions. The last two years have been far from normal. Dealing with the studios, the health department, the state of Michigan, even the customers,have all be far difference since 2019. If you are basing decision on the last two years, you might regret those decisions as things start to settle back into a somewhat normal business.

For Advertising, we use a recorded phone message, marquee, posters, and Facebook.
Create a budget and then give people something to talk about. You are allowed on discount day per week, Use it to your advantage. If we have a movie for two weeks we sometimes offer a $1.00 day on the second week.
We have provided Thanksgiving dinners, and other dinners in connection with a near by restaurant. Free dinners is something people will talk about. Have an ice cream social with free ice cream. We recently had a bring any container and we would fill it with popcorn for $2.00 (with limits) promotion. I prefer a low cost over free movies because “free” seems to bring out disrespectful people but .50¢ brings out a better crowd.
Work with your studio reps for some swag for drawings or to use for promotions. We have had mixed results with older movies. They are cheap but don't generally bring out a large crowd. Don't be afraid to ask your reps for favors.. The past few months we have been given the okay to split the screen and to show a new release for just one day with no admission charge. What use to be a firm NO two years ago, is now something the studio will sometimes consider.

If you come up with something fun, or creative, people will advertise for you. If you use print media, give the newspaper something worth reporting and they will write an article about the theater or event which is free. We just had a write up in MLive which has helped bring new customers to our theater.

Be careful with tinkering with the ticket prices or including tickets in with any promotion. If you offer a buy one get one free deal... the studio might say you owe them for the free ticket. You generally are only allowed 2% comp rate. You are allowed one discount day per week. The studio can not tell you how much to charge so the discount day could be very low, but the studios are a bottle line company.. if you are not making them money that they expect, your ranking will drop and you will not get the movies on a timely bases.

[Mike Blakesley]

I had a similar experience as Frank on a newspaper ad. One time I sent the paper two weeks worth of ads at once, and they printed them in reverse order. Over the two weeks we didn't have ONE SINGLE person even ask about the mistake in the paper. Nobody came in to go to the "wrong" movie. no complaints, no reaction whatsoever. When the pandemic hit and we had to close, of course the ad stopped too.

When we reopened, the newspaper lady called to ask if we wanted our ad back in and I told her we were still really underwater budget-wise (which wasn't a lie) and we'd have to wait a while. Since then things have returned pretty much to normal but we haven't put our ad back in the paper. We've had zero requests by the public to put it back in.

We do a weekly email (via Mailchimp) that goes to about 750 people. We have a phone recording that gets quite a bit of traffic too --- more if we're playing a movie that appeals to older people.

I have spent money on a Facebook "boost" a couple of times, but I can't say it made our results any different than "unboosted" posts. I have our Facebook set up so anything I post there goes onto Instagram as well. I'm not sure how much traffic our Instagram gets. I have not messed with TikTok yet but I have a new concession girl starting in a couple months who is 15 so I'm thinking of putting her in charge of a TikTok for us. I did create a hashtag (#forsythmovies) on Facebook and Instagram but I don't know how to find out if anyone uses it.

Our marquee is probably our most valuable advertising. We're right on Main Street so we're pretty hard to miss. But since we get a lot of out-of-town customers, a very close second place would have to go to our website. It's really old and antiquated but it gets the job done. It gets about 80% of its hits from phones.

When we reopened from the pandemic we went to reserved seats, which have become very popular. We use the RTS app and it has been great for what it costs. I'd like to see some added features but that might raise the price. I'm not sure how many people get their movie info from the app vs the website, but we've had quite a few shows in the past few months where we were nearly sold out before opening the doors.

Onesheets are also a valuable asset but some studios are infuriatingly slow at sending them out. (I'm looking at you, SONY and LIONSGATE.)

[Jim Cassedy]

Two of the smaller neighborhood theaters I sometimes do some work for gave up newspaper ads several
years ago when the papers jacked up the ad prices almost 200%. Some of the senior citizens complained
at first, but they eventually got over it. Although those theaters have an online presence, an informal survey
of customers (before Coronapacoplyse) revealed that most of the people who came to those theaters lived
right in the neighborhood, so their #1 source of info was 1) An electronic sign/poster that displayed films &
show-times for the week; 2) The online phone recording; 3) The website. As I said most of the people who
went to those two theaters lived nearby, and so they passed the theater multiple times during the week,
and took note of the shows & times that way. A QR code, posted on the doors, also takes people right
to the current show-time web page. Even most of the senior citizens seem to handle QR codes OK.
I was surprised how many people still called the recording. But, I have been at the theater early in the
morning before they open, and have heard that line ringing almost constantly with calls some mornings.
If they forget to change the sign, some people complain. But if they forget to update the recording, or to
put the line back into the "auto answer" mode, the complaint quotient goes through the roof. I guess
it all depends on the neighborhood & the customer base.