This year’s AMA Conference was focussed around the theme of A New Adventure – after a couple of years of postponed shows and disappointed audiences it was set around getting us excited by our jobs again and the opportunities that are out there. We took 3 marketeers from venues within the house network to the conference in Birmingham under a house bursary and were lucky to be joined by other marketing teams already attending the conference from Worthing Theatres, Chichester Festival Theatre, Farnham Maltings and The Point in Eastleigh to make a super house marketing delegation!

Our delegates report back on their experiences; about what they learned and what advice they would give to a conference newbie.

JULIE COLE, THEATRE ROYAL BURY ST EDMUNDS

From the conference I hoped to make some connections with peers and start to build a network of industry ‘friends’ who could become sounding boards, mentors, advisors etc. The reality exceeded my expectations on this front – the bursary group Jonathan put together made for the most relaxed, instantly familiar group which enhanced the conference experience.

It’s hard to pick just one session that inspired me the most as there was such variety and I came away with insights and actions from most of them. My top 3 would be Substrakt: Effective Research On a Limited Budget, Hull Truck: Great Adventures in Story-Telling and Digital Culture Network: Why Are You Measuring That.

I also found the final keynote – A Very Human Adventure – really interesting. Some great insight into the human brain, what motivates, the positive impact of culture and social connections and how that could be applied in theatre.

In terms of main takeaways from the conference – Just get on with it! Sometimes it’s easier to put off moving forward because you want to get everything right and get a complete marketing strategy in place but sometimes taking the first step is enough. Do a little bit of research, start a small segmentation strategy or start measuring one new thing at a time. The next step will probably come naturally. I have recently written our Audience Development Strategy so this was perfect timing for me to tweak some parts, enhance others and push forward to put it into practice.

Will you be able to take anything new into your workplace’s internal policies? We don’t really have an internal training budget but I will be pushing for us to encourage as many staff as possible to step outside the organisation, engage with industry experts and connect with peers to give us all a wider perspective. In a year’s time I hope that we will have an organisation-wide focus on audience development and audience experience.

In terms of advice for a future first-time attender conference – Plan ahead! Thoroughly review the programme and select a mix of sessions which will give you the broadest experience – a combination of topics you are currently working on and some outside of your comfort zone.

SOPHIE WOODS, CRANLEIGH ARTS

At the conference I wanted to learn new techniques for bringing in new audiences and stay on top of marketing trends. I think the most interesting session was the session was Great Adventures in Storyland. Ruth Cooke, the presenter from Hull Truck Theatre, talked about bringing in different audiences and bringing in different areas of the community. She talked about combining a craft session with a storytelling session. We do both of these sessions separately and I hadn’t thought of combining them so I am thinking about doing this for a session at Christmas time.

I also found the talk on from Spektrix about the customer journey interesting and we are in the process of making tailored automated emails for new customers and also sending review emails after certain events. In terms of things I learnt which I will be implementing back at our venue is using google ad grants, facebook pixels and QR code tracking – generally tracking the impact of our marketing efforts better. We are now flyering certain areas and seeing how ticket sales lift in that area with postcode tracking via QR codes. We are in the process of applying for a google grant. In a years’ time I hope that we have got to grips with google grants and also Facebook pixels. These are all things that I learnt about on the conference but haven’t yet been able to put in place. I hope to have a volunteer flying team so we can target different postcodes to see which are best areas are.

I would tell a future conference newbie to try and go to the smaller sessions not in the main room as I feel I got more takeaways from these sessions. However I also think I learnt the most from talking to my fellow house network professionals.

SARAH WRIGHT, THE MILL ARTS CENTRE, BANBURY

From the conference I was particularly keen to learn more about creative ideas for evaluation and audience development, since these are particular focuses for us at the moment. The most interesting session was run by Spot on Lancashire all about their work in library spaces; it was absolutely fascinating concept and amazing to hear about the importance of being led by the community!

The conference was also great for learning from marketing professional not working directly in Theatre. I found the session run by Ten4 Design called “Why You Should Get Rid of Your What’s On Page” especially interesting. Despite the provocative title, it was interesting to re-examine the assumptions behind common website set-ups.

Hull Truck Theatre’s story of hyper-local audience development based around one particular local residential estate highlighted the importance of focusing on one specific aspect of audience development at a time, rather than trying to take on too much at once.

The most important learnings I will take home from listening to people’s various projects is the length of time required to make meaningful change – and the importance of consistency, reliability and trust. You cannot underestimate the importance of consulting with and being led by the community as a starting point for any new project. In a year’s time I hope we will have identified particular communities we are trying to reach and be in the process of consulting with them to see how we can best serve their needs.