Branson Shows Cooperative Marketing Effort Wins International Award

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RANSON, MO—A cooperative marketing effort organized by Branson’s show industry is helping to promote the city’s entertainment in new ways and has recently been named a “Silver Award” winner in the 2021 Summit Marketing Effectiveness Awards.

The new promotional effort for Branson shows is funded by a small per-ticket fee collected by the theatres on their online ticket sales. These funds, which totaled $130,174 in 2021, were used to operate a cooperative ticket sales website, BransonShowTicketsDirect.com, and to purchase digital marketing on the Google, Microsoft and Facebook ad networks.

In addition to promoting the destination’s diverse and world-class entertainment to a larger audience, a main goal of the campaign is to encourage consumers to make purchases directly from the shows and their box offices.

“Our team at Grand Country Music Hall couldn’t be more thrilled with the success of BransonShowsTicketDirect and of the co-op,” said Heleena Campbell, director of sales for Grand Country Music Hall. “Being able to work with together with our theatre community as a whole has been incredibly beneficial for Grand Country Music Hall. We look forward to continued success and much more growth as a result of these efforts.”

In early 2020, a handful of Branson shows began working together to establish this marketing effort, which is managed by Branson-based ShowsTown LLC. Over the past two years, that group has grown to more than 50 shows and currently represents a majority of Branson’s live shows.

In 2021, BransonShowTicketsDirect.com had more than 548,000 visits and recorded 2.3 million pageviews. The Google, Microsoft and Facebook ad campaigns garnered more than 8 million impressions and can be tracked to at least 8,100 online conversions and a 10:1 return on ad spend. The ads also generated 33,600 phone calls.

“Branson has long been known for its vibrant and amazing shows, and we’re honored to help carry that message to the next generation of audiences,” said James Little, managing partner of ShowsTown. “This award validates the theatres’ efforts to streamline the online customer experience and to promote Branson shows to existing and new fans.”

 

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About ShowsTown LLC

ShowsTown LLC is a Branson-based technology and digital marketing company that has developed a unique, cloud-based ticket sales system. The ShowsTown system is used by a majority of Branson shows for their on-website sales and is the technology behind BransonShowTicketsDirect.com.

The company was founded in 2020 by longtime Branson website developer James Little. ShowsTown is a service partner of Stripe, which is the world’s leading payments platform used by Shopify, Wayfair, Instacart, Peloton and many other major ecommerce ventures.

More information is available at showstown.com

 

About the Summit International Awards

Over the past 28 years, the Summit International Award organization has established itself as one of the premier arbiters of creative and marketing excellence.

The Summit Marketing Effectiveness Award competition is based on the premise that the goal of marketing communications is to change, influence or reinforce an audience’s knowledge, attitude, or beliefs. Using this premise as a basis for its judging criteria, judges considered more than 1,900 entries from corporations, advertising agencies and other organizations in the 2021 Marketing Effectiveness Award competition. Of these, they selected about 7% to receive awards.

More information is available at summitawards.com