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[SLICE] Promote Your Shows

Blair Pope

You know when I go off on rant? WELL YOU’RE ABOUT TO HEAR ONE. And I’ve never been less sorry about it.

WHYYYYYY why why do bands not properly promote their shows? WHY? Why. I can’t stop asking. It sound so ridiculous, but do they actually not care if people come or not? There are missing details, no advance notice, and sometimes wrong information. WHY. I’m going to stop asking and start telling you what to do here:

7 Quick & dirty tips on how to properly promote your shows:

  1. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PROMOTE YOUR SHOW MORE THAN A DAY IN ADVANCE. Too harsh? Seriously. At a bare minimum, you need to start promoting your shows 3-4 weeks in advance. The farthest out we’ve started promoting is 6 months in advance. Every day counts.

  2. Use BandsInTown and SongKick. I’ve mentioned this before, but you have to use both platforms since different social media or streaming sites will pull from either of them when populating your shows (for instance, Spotify uses SongKick; Facebook uses BIT). I would suggest turning OFF the auto-posting feature on BIT. Those posts get low engagement rates and generally look a little spammy.

  3. Figure out your posting schedule. The more time you have leading up to a show, the less you need to bombard people with reminders that you have a tour/show coming up. Get on a regular pattern of posting so that your fans are reminded, but not annoyed. Studies show that potential “customers” (fans in your case) often need to see a message SEVEN times before they act. This is a bit old school, but if you get creative, you can do this without annoying the crap out of people.

  4. Geo-target where you can. Facebook allows you to target people in a certain area in regular posts. While that is free, this is particularly beneficial when buying facebook ads. We’ve found that large tour ads featuring every show don’t perform as well as individual show ads targeting a specific market.

  5. Don’t forget the details. If I see one more post that says “Come to my show tonight!” with zero details about when and where you’re playing, I’m going to scream. At a minimum, you need to tell people the venue, the time for doors, and where they can buy tickets. If there are age restrictions (and that might matter to your fans) you should include that as well.

  6. Take out extra steps. Give direct ticket links. Each step you make a fan do on their own, the less likely they are to make the purchase.

  7. Be a tease. Give your fans a preview of what they’ll see. Let them know if you’ll be playing new songs or old songs; put out a video of what you’ve been working on.

There are plenty of in-depth strategies you can use, but these are the basics that you should adhere to. These are easy. Do them. Seriously.