What’s the job?
Head of theatre marketing.

Who would I be working for?
Any of the 1,000+ theatres that are dotted around the UK or for a broad range of producers and production companies all over the country.

What do they do?
The job of theatre marketing is to make people aware of your theatre and the shows it has on now and in the future. This includes creating artwork, creating leaflets and posters, paying for adverts in the media and creating content for social media.

What sort of work is involved?

• Making plans for how to promote upcoming shows.
• Putting together a calendar of content to upload to social media.
• Arranging the creation of social media content. This could be things like photoshoots with the cast, short films or video diaries, exclusive reveals, etc.
• A large theatre might have a marketing team, so you would have to manage staff and get involved in hiring new people.
• Setting budgets for your campaigns and making sure that your team sticks to them.
• Organising the creation and distribution of marketing material, such as flyers etc.
• Placing adverts in newspapers and on the internet, radio and TV.

What skills do I need?

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills. Marketing is all about communication, so this is essential!
• A good eye for detail and the ability to analyse marketing campaigns to see what is and isn’t working.
• Creativity is needed to come up with new ideas and to improve old ones.
• Good IT skills, as so much marketing is done online and on social media now.
• The ability to work under pressure and to tight deadlines.
• Good maths skills, so that you can work with budgets and analyse data from your campaigns.

What qualifications do I need?
You can do a degree in marketing, but many people start out in junior positions and work their way up, learning as they go. Other qualifications that could help include business studies, psychology, and management. It also depends on the employer, because if you work for an engineering company they might want people with a science background, whereas for somewhere like the Apollo Victoria Theatre where Wicked is showing, people with theatre experience and knowledge are more useful.

What hours would I work?
Generally speaking, something like 9.30-6 from Mon-Fri, but there could be some evening and weekend work required at certain times, especially when you attend events or shows.

Where would I work?
If you work in-house at a theatre, wherever there’s a theatre! But if you work for a marketing company, these tend to be concentrated in cities and towns, but you can find marketing agencies all over the UK.

How much would I get paid?
A junior assistant’s salary starts at around £18,000, with gradual increases as you work your way up to marketing executive and marketing manager. A high-level marketing director at a big organisation could be earning upwards of £60,000.

Can I do work experience?
Lots of work experience will really help you out when it comes to getting a job in marketing, so it’s always worth asking your local theatres and marketing companies if you can help out, or see if your school has any links and could organise some work experience for you. But even things like helping to promote your own blog/website, a school play or a family business will help you to learn some of the skills you need.

How might the job change in the future?
Like many jobs, marketing is constantly changing as new technology and new forms of social media come on the scene, so people in marketing have to be on their toes to make full use of them all. New software will probably give marketing departments new ways of getting their message across and analysing data, and maybe holograms and other cool tech will be used in adverts to really make people pay attention!