Performing live is one of the most crucial aspects of having a successful career in music. It’s also one of the best ways to earn an income as an artist. Booking shows takes a lot of work, especially in the beginning of your career, however packing out each show is an even bigger task.
Here are 10 promotion ideas to help bring more people to your next show:
1. Talk to the venue about ways to promote the event. Can they post a flyer at the venue? Add a digital flyer to their website? Post the flyer on their social media pages?
2. Offer pre-sale tickets at a discounted rate using eventbrite.com or splashthat.com. You can take it a step further by making it required for someone to sign up to your mailing list in order to have access to the discounted pre-sale.
3. Get social. Attend a lot of events around the date of your event. Support other artists in your city. Mingle at the events, and maybe even have tickets on you and give out free tickets to a few special people.
4. Create a Facebook event 1 month before your event and post on the page daily (Facebook sends everyone notifications every time you update your event).
5. Create a Facebook Ad the week of the event and target the area immediately surrounding the venue.
6. Put up big flyers in your area and the area surrounding the venue. Nothing looks more like a big deal than seeing someones face plastered really big all over every street corner. You can use clubflyers.com to print your flyers at a reasonable price.
7. Text people and let them know about your show. Do not send a group text! Send individual texts with special invites to those that you feel would be interested in going.
8. Promote your show regularly (daily) on all of your social networks. You can even give an incentive for others to share/post by telling them whoever shares the flyer with a certain hashtag gets in the show for free (or for a discounted price, or they get to attend the pre-show meet and greet).
9. Add a few other upcoming artists in your area to the bill or add a headliner. If you don’t think you can pack out the venue on your own, you might want to think about inviting a local artist with a decent buzz to headline the show for you. Make sure that it’s in your budget and also make sure that they agree to promote the show and that their fan base would enjoy your music.
10. Send a special invite out to your mailing list to announce the show and the pre-sale tickets (a few weeks before the show) and then send another email the night before reminding them of the show.