Filling Seats with a Granular Google Ad Grant Strategy

Mayflower Theatre is one of the UK’s leading regional theatres, hosting major touring productions, youth performances, workshops, and venue hire alongside its in-house restaurant. Like many theatres across the UK, their digital strategy was centred on reaching a younger audience and turning interest in local events into ticket bookings.

They came to us looking for a way to test paid search as a new customer acquisition channel, using Google’s Not for Profit Ad Grant of $10,000 USD per month to fund the activity. The campaign was scoped as a three-month proof of concept with three clear objectives:

• Increase the number of new bookers discovering Mayflower through search
• Grow online ticket sales and revenue across shows, workshops, and youth productions
• Demonstrate the commercial value of the Google Ad Grant as a long-term channel

We worked closely with Mayflower’s marketing team to design a campaign structure that made the most of the available grant budget while staying tightly aligned to their programme.

Rather than running broad, single-campaign activity, we built a highly granular account covering every upcoming show, youth production, and workshop on the website, alongside dedicated campaigns for venue hire, the restaurant, and more generic local intent terms such as “things to do in Southampton” and “events near me”. This structure meant budget could be allocated show by show, with underperforming ads paused quickly and high-intent searches scaled up in real time.

A granular build also gave us much sharper control over negative keywords, ensuring spend was protected from irrelevant traffic and that each ad group spoke directly to what the user was searching for. Reporting was set up to measure not just clicks and sales, but the quality of the new users coming through paid search compared to other channels — giving Mayflower a clear view of whether the grant was actually delivering commercial value.

The three-month proof of concept delivered against every objective and gave Mayflower the confidence to put digital at the heart of their wider marketing strategy.

Sales from new users grew by 15%, with paid search proving to be a strong source of fresh, high-intent audiences for the theatre. Online ticket sales increased by 5% overall, and online revenue rose by 4%, showing that the new traffic was converting at a healthy rate rather than simply inflating click volume. Comparing the new users from paid search against the previous baseline, the quality of traffic was also notably stronger, reflected in higher conversion rates further down the funnel.

Following this initial campaign, the partnership has continued — now spanning advertising for upcoming shows, remarketing across social platforms, and ongoing support with website tracking and user experience.

• A granular campaign structure built around shows, workshops, venue hire, and local intent terms
• Full use of Google’s $10,000 monthly Ad Grant to fund new customer acquisition
• A proof of concept that turned into a long-term digital partnership across paid media, social, and UX