Want To Sell Out Your Gigs? Here Is How To Effectively Promote Your Music Event

At any one given point, there are thousands of new artists trying to put themselves out there. They are seeking to promote their gigs, and hopefully scale the ladder to the top.

What do you need to highlight to promote your event successfully?

If you are one of the upcoming artists, your top priority should be on what is going to differentiate you from them all or how you are going to rise above the competition.

What, for instance, catapulted Ed Sheeran from performing at open mikes to selling out shows at stadiums is likely to be obvious now- getting signed to the right record label.

Now if you have been performing for a small audience like open mikes and you want to take your music to the next level, you must ensure that you are ready to take up challenges that come with larger audiences. Also on your checklist is to ensure that your music skills are polished.

You want to make great first impressions of the new audience size. The key here is that you should always aim to over-deliver and surpass the expectations. This sets an excellent momentum for you from the very beginning, and that should be your absolute goal. 

Promoting your gig or music event may come easy when you are a world-renowned artist. When you are an upcoming artist, however, it can be a challenging task. When you know what to consider and platforms that you can use to put yourself out there, it shouldn't be challenging.

Once you are ready to take up bigger stages, it is time for you to start booking and promoting your gigs. This here is a guide that will make that simple for you.

Event promotion, and benefits of promoting your event

Event promotion is a creative marketing initiative geared towards raising awareness about your show. The ultimate goal is ensuring you get the maximum audience.

In most cases, when one is preparing for a gig, they focus on delivering exceptional performance and forget to push the event. 

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There are a few secrets to ensure that you get enough audience during your event.

• The key secret is understanding the area you are to hold your event in and ensure that you are in touch with the local audience as well. Ask yourself what type of music does your target audience listen to and about which time of the month or week, are you likely to get the most turnout.

Scheduling the event is something you need to do right as well. When you are deciding when to hold your event, ensure that there are no other significant events that will shadow your event. If this is done right, then you can be sure of a maximum turn up.

• Get to understand local venues as well. You should have a list of local venues that you can hold your music event in and get to understand which of them suits you best in terms of size and audience. Selling out a smaller venue may be much more effective. From here, you can build up your audience to bigger venues.

• The budget is another key thing to have in mind when setting out to promote your music event. Event promotion can cost an arm and a leg but with the right information, it shouldn’t. This guide will enlist a few pocket-friendly ideas for you if you are an upcoming artist.

What are the benefits of event promotion that you stand to gain?

Promoting your event opens up your reach to new audiences you never imagined and getting the numbers that will make business sense in your shows. That said, here are some of the benefits you stand to enjoy.

Reaching the target audience.

Effective event promotion will help you reach your target audience as an artist.  To do this efficiently and effectively, you need to establish your target demographic well in advance before embarking on product promotion. This will help you craft effective promotion strategies that will cover the right audience.

Increased ticket sales.

For an upcoming artist, this should perhaps be your overall goal of event promotion. If you can sell as many tickets to your gigs as you can, then you can be sure your costs are covered. Effective event promotion will help you achieve this goal.

Increased brand awareness.

The more people you get to attend your gig, the more people know about your brand of music and the more likely your chances of getting repeat attendees. The goal of event promotion should not be to get one-time attendees to your gigs but seek to create far-reaching popularity of your brand.

And now, here’s how to go about promoting your event

How to promote your music event and make business sense

When you are a new artist, it is not easy to secure or sell-out gigs because people don't know your sound yet. Here are a few tips you can employ to ensure you secure more gigs more frequently and promote your music event.

Look for “opening act” gigs.

It’s possible that there are more advanced artists with the same style of music like yours. When they perform on their live shows, they will most of the time need accompanying acts to perform before they perform. Seek to secure those gigs. The goal here may not be very much towards financial gain, but you want to ensure you put yourself out there and secure a fan base upon which you can launch your performance career.

Get in touch with local promoters

There are local promoters in either your area or the place you’ve targeted for your show, that works with your style of music. You need to note them down and get in touch with them. These promoters can be a link between you and other artists, and they could list you when budding artists need supporting acts during their live shows. They are a great asset to you at this stage. Don't be afraid to use them.

Mirror budding artists

“…Choose someone you admire and work harder than them.” This was one of Ed Sheeran's comments on his rise to stardom in one of his interviews. You need to pick out an artist higher than you in your music style ladder and take note of what they are doing differently to succeed. This will be a guide for you to follow. This, however, does not mean that you need to compromise on your uniqueness as an artist. Keep doing what makes you unique.

Network at similar events

When promoting your gigs, you are likely to find an audience at similar gigs. There is no harm in attending these events before holding yours for networking purposes. Try as much as possible to link up with the performing musicians and invite them to perform in your next gig.

Of course, if done well, there is a chance that they will invite you to perform at their gigs as well. Also, enquire on other venues that host artists with your music style.

Retargeting

When you advertise, you set out to sell tickets to your music event. But, it’s like that you may not meet your target sales at the initial site you set out to sell the tickets from. Let this not weigh you down. You can target another site to capture fans whose attention you hadn’t reached and other people who did not buy tickets the first time they saw the ads and are seeing it for a second time.

For the sake of your event, here are successful event promotion strategies that will guarantee you triumph

Now that you’ve secured the venue, set the date, and have your performers’ line up in place, it’s time to prove successful event promotion methods you can employ to sell out this music event.

Event promotion strategies can be boldly classified into two categories

1. Physical promotion

In this digital era, it is easy to ignore the good old fashion methods of events promotion. They may be old school, but they can work wonders for you in getting you the much-needed crowd for your event. They include posters, flyers, and billboards, among others.

Posters. Posters are a great way of getting the message to your potential area. What's more, is that posters will only cost you the printing price. You, however, will need to be careful in placing out the posters as displaying them in areas where they are not allowed will cost you a lot in legal fines. When designing your banner, ensure it is a catchy one while still being informative.

Billboards. Billboards may be an ideal strategy for you to promote your event if you are holding the event in a high traffic area. Make sure it has great visuals for your event and it is eye-catching, as well as informative.

Fliers. You can also make use of fliers to promote your event. Because fliers, provide a closer look at the details by your potential audience, make sure you use the small space to include all the important information about your event

Press releases. Take note of the magazines and publications that are read in your local area. Send press releases to them. This can be an excellent method of reaching several potential attendees. Make use of those free publications that place ads as well.

2. Digital promotion

In this era, it is hard to talk about product promotion without including the digital space. There are different digital marketing tools at your disposal.

Research has named social media as the most effective digital marketing tool available in the market, especially if your style of music has an audience with the younger generation.

Well established musicians have taken note of this too and are collaborating with digital marketing companies to give their music a competitive edge.

Here are a few digital events promotion strategies you can employ.

Event listing websites

These are websites that list events on to-do lists for the residents of an area. Many urban gig attendees get information on concerts to attend from these websites, which makes them a strategy worth having in mind.

You need to know if there are any in the area you plan to hold your music gig and list your event. Make sure you include as much information as possible.

Take advantage of digital magazines

Digital magazines are another digital tool guaranteed to get you coverage when promoting your event. There is a myriad of digital music magazines like TMZ, we rave, Relix music magazine, rock sound among many others. Choose the ones that cover your music style and request them to publish your promotion.

Use music influencers

Music influencers are another trendy way of getting the word out about your gig that you shouldn't ignore. If you follow fans with a significant following on their social media platforms, make sure to approach them and use them to spread the event's information. This can significantly help you push your event.

Get yourself a music website

You may not have control over the content you post on the social media networks when it comes to events promotion. This is because the number of people who see your content is determined by some algorithm.

In this case, you need a space that is yours; where you have control over the content and one you can always rely on. This is where a music website for your music comes in handy. Make it easy and convenient for fans to buy tickets to your gigs from your website.

Connect your event to your Spotify account

Spotify is not only a great streaming tool for your music but also an important tool in your digital marketing strategies. It also has an events tab that you can use to reach out to the fans streaming your music.

Email list

One major advantage of making use of an email list is that emails sent to your fans can filter all the noise and unnecessary information that is on social media platforms and communicate directly to your fans.

You can be sure that emails sent will get to your fans' inboxes hence a guaranteed method of spreading the information about your gig. Make it easy for your fans to leave a contact email when they visit your site.

Also sort out emails to have different lists like event promoters, potential audience, and other important people you need to contact when you need to push an event.

Resident Advisor as a platform for events boosting

If you have been on the music scene for some time now, you must have heard of resident advisor music promotion services. If you haven't come across this information yet, and don’t know what it can do to your music, don't panic, just click here.

Resident Advisor is a big digital platform which promoting events, artists, music projects. One of the major advantages of using Resident Advisor in your event promotion is that in the promo push service, you can get a welcome package for any kind of promotion platform you want to employ.

These packages include Spotify promotion, YouTube promotion, among other packages. Whichever platform you choose, there is a favorable package available perfect for your music event promotion. 

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And obviously, the best thing about using Resident Advisor to sell tickets to your gig has is that you can tell in real-time how many tickets you have sold and that RA listings prioritize ticketed events giving you a bigger coverage.

How to push event with music blog placements

In the current artistic era where many artists are competing for attention, it is imperative to pitch your content to every platform that will market and help publicize your work.

Music Blog is a robust promotion tool, especially for artists who are new to the music scene seeking to be 'discovered'. You need to know which blogs post about your style of music.

You can get a list of relevant music blogs with the highest traffic and set out to get music blog placement for your event. This one here is a great place to start if you have an upcoming event.

And because music blog placement is such a useful tip to implement, it can noisy trying to get a placement on a blog. Here’s your sure out- just click here and leave the rest to the team.

Social media networks as promotion tools

Social media platforms have been ranked as the most effective when promoting events.  In this digital era, you don't want to be left behind as others are making strides in events promotion that you’ve just been dreaming about.

Social media events promotion is an easy task, and that is why millions of users are using these platforms to promote their brands. Here are the three most used social media platforms and how to effectively use them as a product promotion tool for your gigs

Facebook

Facebook is one of the biggest social media platforms that both new artists and established should be used to push their events. As of 31st March 2019, Facebook had 2.38 billion monthly active users. This tells you without much explanation the potential waiting to be tapped in terms of events promotion on this platform.

Make use of the Facebook Event’s inbuilt feature to promote your event. For best results on this platform, it is advisable to use Facebook sponsored ads because Facebook’s algorithms currently favor sponsored content.

However, you will have to pay for this service, but it’s a good way of spending your money if you’ve set your eyes on the price. Plus, the prices are pocket-friendly and reasonable in comparison to the reachable audience.

You can customize your audience to cover a specific area, gender or any other specific group of people you intend to reach according to how you customize your target audience.

Twitter

Just like Facebook, Twitter offers you a great platform to reach out to your fans. On twitter, you can comment on trending topics that your fans are interested in. This makes it a great platform to engage your fans, create as well as grow your online community.

For your event promotion purposes, you can pay to have your music event advertised in the form of sponsored tweets permitting you to reach out to millions of users online.

Instagram

Instagram also offers you a great opportunity to promote your event using pictures and videos. Since Instagram is great for visuals, it is vital to ensure you have quality photos and videos.

If you don't have good pictures, you can enlist the help of a professional photographer as you want to win your audience with these photos. Poor and unprofessional pictures will reflect badly on your event, and this is the last thing you want to do.

Another added advantage when it comes to Instagram is that it is owned by Facebook, which makes linking your promotion content from both platforms even easier and convenient for you.

Tips to help you stand out in your social media promotion

As already mentioned, a lot of people are nowadays using social media to promote their brands. What is it that will make you stand out from the other myriad of users doing the same thing? Here are a few tips you can employ to help you stand out.

Create a catchy hashtag

Come up with a creative, appealing, short, yet relevant hashtag for your campaign to use on your social media platforms. Getting the hashtag right will help you create a buzz in the social media platforms. Encourage your followers to use the hashtag to create awareness.

Use challenges

Create fun, exciting challenges for your followers to participate in with simple rewards to be won. This will have a great effect on keeping the conversation about your gig on the move as well as building the excitement ahead of your events.

Start the promotion early enough

Time is essential when promoting an event. If you aim to sell out an event, stat the promotion process as early as possible.

Make contact by using local sources

Finally, in your product event promotion, make contact with local sources. They could be magazines that are read in the city you intend to hold your gigs. This will ensure that you are grounded in your promotion. It might be a loss to you if you only manage to reach people who are far away from the venue and can’t make it to your gig. 

Other than local sources, there are also other resources that locals use around the area you are hoping to host your event. Things like local websites, portals, etc. are a good source of contacts. Whatever you can do with these local means, do it, for the success of your event depends hugely on it.

Local radio stations

Radio stations offer great coverage when it comes to event promotion to different audiences. It may be an old method of product promotion, but it still works perfectly. When sending ads to the radio stations, you must ensure that you choose stations that cover your chosen demographic. Here’s a list that will help in this regard.

Aside from ads, another great way to create awareness about your gig is by attending interviews on local radio stations during which you can urge your audience to turn up for your event. 

Bonus tips on how to promote your music event

Of course, as a tradition, we must share some bonus tips. So, here we go:

1. Make it easy for your fans to buy your tickets and adopt native checkout systems where ticket buyers don’t have to leave a page to complete the checkout system. This can be on your site or on an event discovery website. This is to minimize interruptions when they are in the buying process.
2. Think of creative means of creating a buzz around your event such as creating ticket giveaways on your social media pages. Fans will be sharing your event with their friends in a bid to win the free tickets and in the process of doing free marketing for you.
3. Think of setting aside an invitation-only session and piggyback it with free entry to the event. VIPs are good for your future events because they may as well sponsor your next live event

Finally,

If you are going to make money with your gig, the best thing to do is implement as many strategies for your music event promotion as possible and measure the results.

It’s probably not going to be your last gig so knowing which strategies bring the numbers will help you refocus your energy next time you are hosting your music event. The strategies shared in this document could be impossible to implement entirely but for the few that you’ll perfect, we wish you all the best.

And if it’s proving too much work at any point, reach out for help!