Community Theatre ticket sales and promotional help
So by virtue of being on the board of a local arts nonprofit I am now the defacto marketer for our community theatre group. We live in a tiny ass town, 1200 people and run out of a church that was donated to the art center.
Thanks to having the building donated, our theatre has very few expenses. As such, it feels like I am supposed to keep marketing on a shoe string budget. The core theatre volunteers also tend to buy things out of their own pocket so most productions don't have a costume or prop budget as they just *appear* so we can run an entire show on just paying for rights, scripts, posters, social media ads, and some miscellaneous costs.
The other board members think this is great because it feels like a lovely fundraising tool (some of them show up to do FOH/concessions on show weekends but otherwise very little involvement) but I feel the pressure of filling seats and to be frank it feels like every show is getting less audience members. It doesn't help we went from one weekend runs to two so now we have 300 seats to fill and...not very many local people to fill them with.
I have no guidance on what metrics to be looking for, or what percent seats sold is a success. At what point will our actors walk out on stage to 20 people and just not want to do it anymore?
I just want to go back to sewing occasional costumes and not having any responsibilities....
ETA: My question actually is, what specifically do small theaters do to market a show? What should go on my pre-show checklist of making sure the word gets out beyond friends/family/patrons of the art center?