Touring is a different discipline from a single run. Every date is effectively its own small launch — a new town, a new venue, a new local audience who have never heard of your show — and yet it all has to hang together as one campaign that builds momentum across weeks or months on the road. Mobius runs marketing, PR and distribution for theatre tours, joining up the national picture with the work that has to happen venue by venue.
The hard part of a tour is that awareness does not travel with the show. A great week in one city does little for ticket sales in the next unless the marketing is already working there. We plan a campaign that runs on two levels at once — a consistent national story and identity for the whole tour, and targeted local activity timed to each venue's on-sale and performance dates — so every stop has its own push while the tour as a whole keeps building.
We handle the national announcement and press night that set up the tour, then work date by date to land regional and local coverage in each market — the previews, features and reviews that sell tickets locally and build the show's reputation for future life and bookings. It is sustained press-office work across the whole run, not a single burst at launch.
Paid social is where a tour lives or dies commercially. We run geo-targeted campaigns tuned to each venue and its catchment, split between prospecting activity that finds a fresh local audience and retargeting that follows up warm interest, with conversion tracking set up against each venue's ticketing so spend optimises towards actual sales. As the tour progresses we use what each date teaches us to sharpen the next.
Touring is where physical distribution earns its keep. We plan and produce print and out-of-home across the whole tour — artwork, posters and placement around each venue and town — and coordinate distribution on the ground so the show is visible where its audience actually is, date by date. Tying that distribution to the digital campaign is what stretches a touring budget furthest.
Most tours play receiving houses, each with its own marketing team, audience and ticketing system. We work alongside those in-house teams rather than around them — sharing assets, coordinating local offers and discounts, and making sure the venue's own channels and your national campaign pull in the same direction.
Our touring work spans national, mid-scale and family tours across two decades. Recent and current tours include Hijinx and Blind Summit's Meet Fred, a 34-venue anniversary tour across Wales and England; Ad Infinitum's Last Rites; the Wilko tour; the national tour of Santi and Naz; and One Foot in the Dark across UK receiving houses. We have also worked with English Touring Theatre and LUNG, with family-touring producer Kenny Wax on The Gruffalo and We're Going on a Bear Hunt, and with companies including The HandleBards, The Paper Birds, Box of Tricks, Cahoots, Jasmin Vardimon Company, Ramps on the Moon and the National Rural Touring Forum.
We would love to help you with your tour. Contact us to set up a meeting.
Yes. We run marketing, PR, digital advertising and print distribution for UK theatre tours, coordinating one national campaign with the local activity each venue and date needs.
Awareness does not carry from one town to the next, so a tour needs local activity timed to each venue alongside a consistent national campaign. We plan on both levels at once, and work closely with each receiving house.
As early as possible — ideally before dates go on sale. The earlier we are involved, the more we can shape the national launch, the per-venue plans and the print and distribution schedule around the tour.
It depends on the number of dates, the venues and the mix of PR, advertising and distribution involved — we build a bespoke plan and budget around each tour rather than a fixed package. Get in touch for a tailored quote.
Explore related Mobius services: print distribution, festival PR & marketing and our international services. See touring in action in our Wilko tour case study.
We measure against real box office data wherever the venue’s ticketing allows — tracking the lift in ticket sales around each activity, from press hits to flyering to digital bursts. That means we can show what actually moved tickets, rather than reporting coverage and impressions in isolation.