Are you a WAISTWATCHER? Can you give us a hand?

One of the core components of good show marketing is knowing who your audience is and planning smart to reach them. You can buy all the TV, radio and print you like and still miss people though (as was evidenced this weekend when overheard at the Watchmen was "they should have an intermission in three-hour movies, you know, like back in the day when they had plays"). Some shows come with built-in niches. For a show like Motherload we'll obviously reach out to mom groups and play-date services. For HATS! we located all of the Red Hat chapters in a 100-mile radius.

For WAISTWATCHERS: The Calorie-Free Musical we've been reaching out to health and fitness organizations: Weightwatchers, Anytime Fitness, Shapes and the like. Still, it would be a virtual impossibility for us to hit up every single gym, weight loss center and health food store in the whole DMA.

And this is where you might come in ...

Grass-roots level marketing is important. It costs nothing in dollars usually, but is often the most labor-intesive and elusive. Our patrons operate on a grass-root level when they see a show then tell their friends who would like it to make a plan. They help us by posting links in their blogs or on their social networks. They can also help us out by taking a poster or some flyers to a relevant business they frequent - in this case like those gyms, weight loss centers or health food stores I mentioned previously.

Can you give us a hand?

If you've seen the show already, you know what folks are in for. Maybe you'd like to come back again and bring a friend? That might be possible for us to work out. You scratch our back and maybe we can scratch yours. Maybe you haven't seen it and you'd like to. Pitch in and we can probably take care of you, too.

So let me know if you can lend a hand. Any and all help is appreciated and we're always working on a show like this that's here for such a long time to help make sure that the show stays top of mind with folks.

Help like this isn't valid just for WAISTWATCHERS (though, admittedly, it's my most immediate need), but you can always help any show at TBPAC by doing any of the following:

• Request a poster or flyers to put at a relevant business, your work or church
• Follow us (tbpac) on Twitter, friend us on MySpace or join the group/become a fan of us (tbpac) on Facebook
• Use the forward to a friend feature on an eCenter newsletter that you think someone else might be interested in
  
• Post tinyurl links to your Twitter status
• Post links to our blog or our videos or photos to your Facebook or MySpace profile.
• Post how excited you are to see a show or what you thought of a show to your blog or social network

TBPAC is here for the community, and the community can also help us continue to bring the best of touring shows and regional productions by pitching in to get the word out!