When planning a dance, one of the biggest challenges is to get people to attend your event. For Homecoming and Prom this may not be as hard, but other dances may have lower attendance than it’s more mainstream counterparts. Maximize your dance’s revenue with marketing and brand techniques that will increase attendance at your dance.
Build a Brand
A brand is an intangible marketing or business concept that helps people identify a company, product, or individual. – Investopedia
A brand is the life blood of your dance. Usually brands are talked about in terms of a business, but branding is a concept that can be used for events and, in our case, dances. Here are some steps you can take to make a memorable brand for your event.
Dance Theme
The first thing that your team should choose is the theme of the dance. This will guide everything about your dance from the creatives you make (fliers, social media posts, etc.), the fonts you use, and the decorations you buy. Once you build your theme, there’s a few more things to think about.
Need some ideas for themes? Click here.
Color Scheme
Choose a few colors that you will use to guide everything from fliers to decorations. Here’s a few ideas for a couple of themes to give you a good idea of what a color scheme might look like.
Western Theme:
Space Theme:
80s:
While you don’t need to, if you are interested in learning more about color schemes: click here (external website).
Fonts
Next, you need to choose a few fonts. This is what you’ll use on every piece of material for your dance from fliers, to banners, to social media posts.
For fonts that are not already on your computer, look at fonts.google.com for some different font options you can download. These can also be imported into Google Docs and other Google platforms.
If you are using Canva for your graphic design, there is a large library of fonts that you can use on that platform.
Dance Logo
Now that you have a font, color scheme, and theme, it is time to make a logo. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t have a master graphic designer or artist on your team. There’s a lot of creative things that you can do with just text, colors, and effects in software like Canva.
Here’s an example for an 80s homecoming logo:
This was all done with built-in Canva fonts and a simple drop shadow. The trick is to keep the fonts in with the theme you’re going for and use effects like drop shadows that make your logos look more “professional”.
Tell People About It
If people don’t know that the school dance is happening or where to buy tickets, no one will come! You need to get the word out using as many methods as possible. Here are a few ways that you can promote your dance.
Fliers
The easiest way to get the word out in a school is a massive flier campaign. Build a flashy flier in Microsoft Word or Canva. Make sure that you include a few things on this flier:
- Date
- Time
- Ticket Price (Don’t forget to direct people to your My School Dance!)
- Theme
- Location
- Event (Homecoming, Prom, Winter Formal, etc.)
Social Media
Use Social Media to promote the dance! Make something go viral in your school! After people know the dates and location with fliers and announcements, you need to get people engaged with content such as a Promposal contest, videos from the royalty candidates, and whatever else you can think of.
Use Canva to create short videos or graphics that can draw attention to the post’s content.
This could be done on Snapchat, Instagram, or anywhere your students are.
Remember to have a link to your My School Dance page so people can buy tickets!
Always make sure what you are doing on social media is approved by administrators at your school.
Final Note
To make marketing your dance successful, consistency is the key. People need to be reminded that the dance is happening for it to be successful. Increasing the time that your audience spends engaging with the dance before it happens increases the chance that they will buy a ticket.
Create a designated workspace. If you do not already have an office, set a place in your home as your 
