Achieving Record Ticket Sales for Ballet West
Results
26%
Increase in YOY Ticket Sales
21%
Increase in YOY Nutcracker Ticket Sales
+
Record Ticket Sales in 2024
Company:
Ballet West
Business Type:
Performing Arts - Ballet
Project Goal:
Increase Ticket Sales
The Challenge
In the competitive world of performing arts, ticket sales often determine the success and sustainability of a company. Ballet West is one of the world’s largest ballet education and performance centers, and has been a fixture of the Utah community for decades. Feeling their agency relationship had grown stale, they approached Avalaunch Media looking to strengthen their advertising initiatives with an emphasis on brand exposure and ticket sales growth.
There were looking for a fresh approach in their digital ads that would target their ideal audience and serve ads that would excite them enough to take action and purchase tickets.
The Approach
Avalaunch Media immediately dove in to the Ballet West ad accounts looking for optimization opportunities. The accounts included Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube and Programmatic advertising. The team quickly found numerous areas of opportunity to help improve the accounts and increase performance.
Avalaunch media has helped with the following:
- Creating a detailed media plan for each performance
- Providing a weekly breakdown of advertising spend and the results
- Working with Ballet West to provide input on ad creative
- Establishing audience profiles and set up targeting by geographics and interests
- Setting up conversion tracking
- Adding a post-ballet performance review so we can track results on each show
4 Pillars of Avalaunch Media Digital Advertising Strategy
1. Identify what historically has worked and hasn't
2. Create a process and media for each performance
3. Design the creative and optimize the performance ad campaigns
4. Analyze the ad performance and strategize future performance
The Results
The partnership between Ballet West and Avalaunch Media has been incredible. The performances are selling out and the return on advertising spend has been remarkable. In fact, a recent article that appeared in ABC4 Utah said the following:
Salt Lake City’s Ballet West reports nearly selling out all 10 shows of this season’s production of Swan Lake, attracting an astounding 16,348 attendees.
This makes this season’s Swan Lake the most attended Ballet West production in more than 40 years and the second-most attended production in the company’s history, surpassed only by the Nutcracker.
“There were some performances where there were literally no seats for sale and there were some that there were just scattered singles throughout the run,” Michael Scolamiero, Ballet West’s Executive Director, said.
Scolamiero said the production generated more than $960,000 in revenue, which is several hundreds of thousands more than the production generated in its last run five years ago.
The record attendance, however, comes after Ballet West’s production of Dracula also outperformed previous records, suggesting a promising upward trend in overall attendance.
While Scolamiero said they are still diving into what is leading to this success, they believe the heightened interest in Ballet West can be attributed to several factors, including an increase in returning attendees and greater focus and spending on marketing.
By partnering with Avalaunch Media and implementing innovative strategies, Ballet West overcame its challenges and achieved remarkable success in reaching its record ticket sales. Through digital marketing, community engagement, and strong brand creative, Ballet West expanded its audience base, increased ticket sales, and continued as a leading cultural institution in the community.
This case study underscores the importance of strategic marketing in the performing arts industry and demonstrates how collaboration between a marketing agency and a professional ballet company can drive tangible results and sustainable growth. Avalaunch Media is a leading performance arts marketing agency and would love to help your organization grow in the same way we have helped Ballet West. For a free consultation, please contact us today!