Background

Hunter Drama is a Newcastle-based youth theatre company and part of the internationally renowned Stoddart Entertainment Group, a locally founded live theatre production company. Led by Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Producer Daniel Stoddart, Hunter Drama has spent years giving Newcastle’s young performers a professional stage to shine on, in productions ranging from beloved classics to contemporary crowd-pleasers.

Method Marketing has partnered with Hunter Drama on several previous productions, managing paid social campaigns to help sell tickets and build audiences. Those campaigns definitely had their highlights, but they also operated within some very normal constraints for community theatre: 

• Ad budgets set at a conservative, sensible level for each production
• Creative content shaped by tight rehearsal windows and production schedules, rather than dedicated content budgets
• Production titles that weren’t always as widely recognised as Matilda The Musical. 

Add a Newcastle audience whose entertainment dollar – and Friday night – is often already spoken for by the Newcastle Knights, along with rising cost-of-living pressures squeezing discretionary spending, and consistently hitting ticket-sales targets had proven challenging.

So when Hunter Drama secured the rights to Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical JR. for a July school holiday season at Hunter Theatre in Broadmeadow, the stakes were higher than usual. A well-loved title, a talented young cast, and genuine momentum riding on the outcome – for this production and for Hunter Drama’s future seasons. Daniel and the team, including Media and Marketing Manager Liane Morris, gave us a clear brief: don’t play it safe this time. Think big.

The Challenge

The goal was to sell 3,000 tickets across a roughly six-week campaign, a scale of result Hunter Drama hadn’t achieved in recent years. Getting there would mean rethinking not just how much was invested in advertising, but how that investment was structured, sequenced and timed across the campaign.

Our Approach

A budget built on data, not guesswork

Rather than pitch a budget based on what felt comfortable or what Hunter Drama had spent before, we built our recommendation around the Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) data from previous Hunter Drama campaigns. That data told a clear story: when investment and strategy both matured, so did the return. Acting on it meant proposing a significantly higher ad spend than Hunter Drama had committed to any single production before – a genuine leap for the business, and one that needed a smarter strategy behind it to justify the risk.

Katie Cowling, Digital Services Director at Method Marketing, explains the thinking behind the strategy:

“Ticket-buying data from Hunter Drama’s past campaigns showed us exactly when audiences were most likely to convert. Once we had that pattern, the budget almost recommended itself. It was less about spending more for the sake of it, and more about spending enough, in the right place, at the right time, to let the strategy actually work.”

A layered creative funnel, not a flat one

Previous campaigns had generally run on a single message and a flatter structure, more a function of tighter budgets than deliberate choice. For Matilda, we built a three-stage creative funnel: Education, Engagement and Urgency.

Early creative introduced the show and its story to audiences who might not know Matilda The Musical JR. or Hunter Drama. As the campaign progressed, character-led content built emotional connection and excitement. In the final weeks, messaging shifted to urgency and social proof, built to convert warm, engaged audiences into ticket buyers before seats ran out.

Running a proper funnel like this needed a steady supply of fresh creative, and Hunter Drama backed it fully, investing early in a high-quality show trailer, and professionally produced cast-led material. That commitment to strong creative gave the strategy something to work with.

Budget-stepping to match the buyer journey

Data from past campaigns had also shown that ticket-buying intent builds significantly as opening night approaches. So rather than spreading spend evenly across the six weeks, we back-loaded both budget and creative intensity, building warm, engaged audiences early and then increasing investment in retargeting and urgency-led creative as the season drew closer.

It worked exactly as planned. The week of 2–8 July – the final full week before opening night – delivered 130 website orders (not individual ticket counts, as one order can include several tickets), the highest of any week in the campaign, at the highest weekly spend. The algorithm had effectively been building toward that moment the entire time.

Getting the audience right

Alongside past attendees, Hunter Drama families and local prospecting audiences, we tested a broader mix of audience segments than previous campaigns had allowed for. One insight stood out: grandparents (65+) emerged as a high-intent secondary audience, delivering the best click-through rate of any age group in the campaign, at 6.99%. It’s a reminder that the people most excited to bring the grandkids to the theatre aren’t always the first audience a campaign is built for.

Key Results

The campaign closed early. Not because it ran out of budget, but because on 10 July, Hunter Drama advised they had essentially sold out – just one day after opening night, with an unspent budget still on the table.

• 428 website orders, at an average campaign cost of $11.79 per order
• A Meta-reported purchase ROAS of 13.51× – for every dollar invested in advertising, the campaign returned $13.51 in attributed ticket revenue
• A single animated social ad drove 172 of those website purchases on its own – 40% of all conversions from one piece of creative
• Grandparents (65+) delivered the campaign’s best click-through rate of any audience, at 6.99%
• The season was essentially sold out within 1 day of opening

It wasn’t down to the strategy alone. A well-known title, reasonably priced tickets and Hunter Drama’s own commitment to quality creative all played their part. But it was the data-led budget and layered funnel that gave the campaign the structure to convert that opportunity into a sold-out season, rather than a near miss.

Daniel Stoddart summed it up in an email to the team a day after opening night:

“With most shows now only having single seats left, this is essentially a sold-out season. What a great position to be in. Thank you for all of your work on this project – we wouldn’t be in this position without you.”

Liane Morris, Media and Marketing Manager at Hunter Drama, reflects on what changed this time around:

“This campaign was different from day one. We trusted Method Marketing’s recommendation, backed it with a real budget, and invested in strong creative early rather than leaving it as an afterthought – that hasn’t always been the case for us in the past. Seeing it pay off the way it did gives us real confidence to plan our future productions with a similar approach.”

Angela Henderson, Client Services Director at Method Marketing, explains what the result means:

“It’s genuinely pleasing to see this result. At a time when we’re seeing headlines about professional productions closing early and real concern across the live theatre sector, it’s a great reminder of what’s possible when a data-backed strategy, strong creative and a client willing to invest come together at the right moment. There are some great learnings here to carry into future campaigns.”

The Bigger Lesson

The strategy behind the Matilda campaign wasn’t complicated. It was disciplined. Rather than guessing at a budget or spreading spend evenly across the campaign without strategic thinking, we used data from Hunter Drama’s own history to plan ahead: how much to invest, how to structure the creative, and when to weight spend and momentum for maximum impact. 

The result speaks for itself. Data doesn’t replace a good show, a talented cast or great creative – but it does tell you where to put your money and when, so those other things can do their job properly.

Ready to Think Bigger About Your Next Campaign?

If you’ve got a launch, an event or a season where a lot is riding on the result, a plan built on data – not guesswork – can be the difference between hoping for a sell-out and engineering one. 

Get in touch with Method Marketing to talk through what a strategic, ROAS-led campaign could look like for your business.