I don’t have anything really ground-breaking to say today. This is more of a journal entry for what I’ve been up to with my band.
I ordered t-shirts, a vinyl banner backdrop, and stickers for the upcoming show. I expect I won’t recoup any of the money. For the stickers and shirts, I’m planning on basically giving them all away.
I’m going to play around with a pay-what-you-want scheme. Anyone can pay what they want for the shirts, even if they have nothing. Bottom line, I want everyone in the club to walk away with a shirt. So, a $250 investment so far.
More hilariously, I tried a promotion. If someone pays ahead of time for a ticket, I’ll give them a free beer (worth $3). This promo was for the first 30 people that bought tickets.
I thought this promo would be a big pain, handling all of the people signing up, creating a spreadsheet for the club, and making sure the bar gets paid.
Result? Nothing. Not one person took me up on a free beer. The promo is still going, though, so maybe people will sign up this week. I’ll share the results with you next week.
This got me thinking that I might be doing the wrong type of promotion. No one else does the will-call ticket thing through Paypal, so it might just be too weird for people to grasp for a local show. However, people like contests. I saw a used bass guitar at Guitar Center for about $100. Only $10 more than what I was prepared to pay for my free beer promotion.
For future shows, what if I worked with the other bands and split the cost on a cheap guitar? We could raffle it off during the show and use it as something to get people in the door. Split three ways, the bands wouldn’t be spending more than $40 each.
But, that’s probably $40 more than most bands want to invest into a show! Haha!
This is all still experimental, though. I’m thinking $100 investments into having a great show might be worth it. I want more people at the shows to get my band more exposure. Since my band is just doing our first shows, we need to get in front of as many people as possible. If $100 investments decreases the amount of time my band has to work at it to get a fan base, it may be worth it.
Of course, there are limitations. We don’t have enough money to do this for every single show. When we end up playing 3 to 4 days a week, we would break the bank.
So what’s the balance between what a band should invest into their show promotion and the expected return? Maybe money isn’t the solution at all, but more unique campaigns through YouTube and Facebook.
And, it’s not really $100 I’m investing. It’s slightly less because we will hopefully get paid out by the door. If 30 people show up, that’s $150. This will need to be split between bands. On average, 3 bands per show, so the split will be $50 per band. (For this particular venue.) So I’m really only investing $50 into promotion in this particular scenario.
That’s why I like the pre-pay for a ticket idea. The amount you invest is limited to the number of people who take you up on the offer. The contest idea, however, I could be out $100 if the turnout sucks.
The Numbers
Hmmm. I told you this was a rambling post, right? I figure I should tell you why I chose the numbers I did and break down how I’m promoting it.
First, I got specific numbers about the club from the booker. This particular venue has a capacity of 99 people. Originally, the booker told me at least 30 people need to show up to cover the house costs. However, that has now changed so that the door gets split evenly between bands and no overhead.
I still kept this 30 number, though. How many people does each band on a typical 3 band bill need to get through the door to SELL OUT THE SHOW? My goal is to sell places out. If each band brought 33 people, it would sell out.
So, I’ve designed a promotion to give the first 30 people who pre-pay for a ticket a free beer. The drink special that night is for a $3 beer, so it would cost me $90.
By the way, to do this, you need to set up a PayPal Merchant account. It’s easy to do, and I highly recommend it.
How am I promoting this?
Currently, I’ve only been promoting this on Facebook. This is where we have the most active fans and friends. I created a landing page on my WordPress site that I set up a couple of PayPal buttons.
I’ve set up some tweets to go out along with this. On Tuesday night, I will *hopefully* make a little promotional video to run over the weekend. (I should have done this much sooner. Ah well…)
Future Improvements
Our guitarist created the fliers that we hung up around town. However, I didn’t have this promotion set up at that time. What better flier for a group of unknown bands than “FREE BEER” plastered everywhere? So, in the future, this promo will be added to the fliers along with a QR code.
Also, I’d make a YouTube video way earlier explaining how the promotion works in a really fun way. I think a video might go a long way towards explaining something that people aren’t used to seeing.
Back to the rambling nature of this post, I highly recommend a poncho and water-proof boots when hanging up fliers in Seattle. After a few hours of fliering, I was drenched, freezing, and miserable!
Back on point. To really help out with online promotion, I think a series of premade and automated promotion messages would be extremely helpful. Using a tool like HootSuite, you could create a set of messages and tweets to go out without you having to manually promote your show at all. Sit back and let HootSuite do the promotion for you!
But, beyond any promotional strategy, I think the best thing is to align yourself with great bands that fit your genre of music. My band is metal, but we’re booked with extreme death metal bands. We’re the only ones with any distinguishable vocals. Much of my promotional effort would be better spent if I set up really awesome shows myself with bands that are more similar to my band.
For my last band, I think that’s something that really held us back. We played shows hoping the bookers would set up shows with similar sounding bands that would build upon each other’s audience. If my band played less shows and put more time into setting up kick ass shows where we opened, I think our fan base would have grown both more rapidly and in higher quality. That’s just a theory, though.
Okay, I’m done with my ranting. Time to go out to a show and network with more bands!
I have thoughts about what you have said – but will address this:
I think the best thing is to align yourself with great bands that fit your genre of music. We’re the only ones with any distinguishable vocals. Much of my promotional effort would be better spent if I set up really awesome shows myself with bands that are more similar to my band.
This is entirely correct imho. Very few big bands book opening acts that conflict with their own genre.. the weirdest I’ve seen was country Brooks and Dunn with rockers ZZ Top. Very odd mix of audience. Those who showed up for ZZ Top left before Brooks and Dunn came on stage. I suppose they made their money but the venue was half empty at all times.
As for the other thoughts – I’ll hit you up on Twitter ;)
The weirdest one (that I didn’t go to) was System of a Down with Gogol Bordello. That one didn’t make sense to me! :)
Cool, we’ll talk! Sorry, things have been a bit hectic on my end!
Why are you selling tickets at a venue that can’t even hold 100 people? Is this a pay-to-play showcase or something? If that’s the case, you’re lucky to get people out to those things if it’s free AND you give them free beer. If I book a show, and between all the bands we don’t even break 100, it’s a bad night. That hardly says we’re awesome. It means each bands brings at least 25-30 people. Even if you’re a 2 or 3 piece, you should at least have a group of friends you can rely on when you’re getting started. How 5 piece bands can’t even draw 10 people is beyond me. Don’t have friends? Baby steps… make friends first. You’ll need them at some point whether you’re in a band or not. While Facebook seems like an awesome way to promote, it’s certainly nothing to bank on. Average people don’t see it in the same regard as bands. Bands will be on FB for extended periods of time, organizing events, uploading content, etc. People jump on for 5 minutes and checking the events to see what bands are inviting them to give them their money probably isn’t on the top of their list of things to do. In fact, as more and more people use the app on their phone instead of using a PC, they won’t even see your posts. I rarely check the “news feed” on mine. The solution? There’s simply no better way than getting out and doing things in real life. Fliers, open mics the week of your show, going to other shows and meeting bands, writing to your local blogs/papers, pestering your local radio station, text your friends a week before and a couple days prior, don’t play more than 2 shows a month so that this behavior doesn’t get crazy annoying, collect e-mails, actually use them, etc. All of these things are WAY more effective than betting that someone who “confirmed” to an event will actually care to show up. In fact, for events that I’ve been involved with, Facebook turn out tends to hover around 50% of the confirmed total. Those “maybes?” they might as well decline. giving out free T’s is a HUGE waste of money. Stickers will be just as affective, and you can get thousands of those for less than $100. Make them cool. Make them something someone would want even if they didn’t like your band. It’ll get them to spend a few minutes on FB looking you up. If you’re good enough they’ll check you out, out of curiosity. If you’re good enough live, they’ll BUY a t-shirt. Aside from the promo thing, it sounds like the lesson you need to learn is that if you want others to value your art, you need to treat it as if it has value. Giving it away for free will only the foster the idea that they should never have to pay for anything. Sell CD’s and shirts together for $10. Get a smartphone and a Square card reader. Paypal selling of tickets actually works, if the event seems legit enough. My band sold a few that way, but the show was at a corporate venue and the tickets were Ticketmaster (not available on the TM site though for some reason). Don’t paypal link to tickets that someone printed on their computer for a show at a venue that can’t hold 100 people yet still wished they could charge production costs. Even people who know nothing about how music stuff works can see right through that. That’s my 2 cents.
Hey, Jon! Thanks for the valuable input!
The ticket thing is an experiment on my part. This my band’s very first show, and the point of this blog is to experiment with different promotional and marketing techniques. One of the experiments is to simply pre-sell will-call tickets to shows with an incentive.
The other difficulty I may not have mentioned is this is a Monday night. It’s pretty difficult to get people out on a week night. I wanted to add an incentive to get bodies through the door.
I’m experimenting with Joe Taylor’s suggestion from his book “Grow Your Band’s Audience”, but on a lesser level. He suggested that a band should not only buy the drink, but also pay for the door cost as well for 50 people.
This is only to seed your first few shows, though. I’m doubtful of this practice, so I’m experimenting with a PayPal pre-sell promotion with a free beer.
I don’t play venues that force me to sell tickets or pay-to-play. Those are crap shows and shitty venues. I’m very vocal against pay-to-play scam companies, and I love reporting them as abusive spammers on any social media they try to hit me up on.
I disagree with you about the t-shirts. My focus is on getting my band’s name out there. I want EVERYONE wearing my band’s logo. A t-shirt is way more visible than a sticker.
At this point in my band’s career, our focus is on getting new fans and growing our audience. Not making money. I have a different monetization strategy that will occur once we’ve hit a certain threshold. (Limited edition items, packages, live DVDs/Blu-rays, etc).
Also, to go with the whole experimentation theme, I’m using the pay-what-you-want model that other music marketers have hyped. So I’m not fully giving away my t-shirts, but allowing people to pay what they want for them. Again, I’ll report the results and adjust strategies.
And I love Square! I talked about them in a previous blog post. I have an Android tablet set up to take credit card payments through Square. I’ll definitely have that at the merch booth!
I agree entirely with networking at shows and with friends to get them to the show. And I’m sure I’ll get my friends out to my first show. But how about shows that are out of the city? What does a band do then? I’d like to experiment with different promotions just to see how they might work in different markets. If you don’t experiment, how will you know?
Thank you for the comment, Jon! Much appreciated!
Great ideas all around. My biggest question – how do you convince your bandmates who are more interested in their bottom line for the show and only booking paying gigs that paying and giving away free promotional materials are worth future returns?
When I established my band, I already set expectations on the types of promotions we were going to be doing. I got buy in from everyone.
However, I pay out of my own pocket for these wild ideas. I don’t really ask for permission. I just do it…and measure it.
If you have push-back from band-mates that don’t want to do this type of thing, ask them some questions. How much money are we making from our current shows? How many new fans have we been getting? Are we approaching selling out clubs? How many people know who we are?
If you are doing something that doesn’t work, continuing to do the same thing won’t change anything. Especially your bottom line. You need to try things to see if they will work or not. If you are in a band that doesn’t want to do this, you might be in the wrong band.
If you want a more grand experiment, pick two cities that you play. In one city, you worry about the bottom line and don’t give away free promo. In the other city, you give away free promo. Over the course of a half a year to a year, see what the returns are.
Another experiment, try easing your band mates into the promo idea. Only try something small. Focus on one small promotional thing you can do for each show. Measure the results of that promotion and show your band mates what the net effects are.
I just think it’s funny that a band that isn’t successful is worried about their bottom line! You have no bottom line! In order to be successful, you need a lot of people digging what you do. A TON of people. You need the audience first before you can make the money. With no audience, you have no bottom line.
However, with an audience, you can start negotiating gaurantees from clubs. You can create higher end and limited edition merchandise that people will love to buy from you. You need the audience first.
Hope this helps! Good luck with convincing you band mates. It can be rough at times.
It’s great to see a musician thinking like this! Especially starting out it makes sense to make your goals centered around getting people out to the shows.
Here’s the thing I see about the promotion. It’s nice for those that are going to the show, but is a $3 beer or a chance to win a guitar going to get me off the couch, especially on a Monday? Don’t get me wrong, we all love promotions, but what really gets people to make decisions especially buying decisions is emotion. You have to hit the emotion and give them a reason to come out on a Monday. What that emotion is depends on who your fans are and who you are trying to attract. I’d spend more time defining who you want to come and why they’d be interested in coming to your show and listening to your music. I know I’m not going out on a Monday night for a free beer or even a chance to win a guitar, but to let off Monday stress with friends at a great metal show with a bonus free beer? Hmm now that I might be interested in…it’s the same thing really, but often with promotion it is not what you say as much as it is HOW you say it.
Also another payment option you might want to check out is Dwolla. I love that they don’t charge for transactions under $10 and anything above is a flat rate. I don’t recall the rate off hand, but it is very affordable.
Ahh, appealing to emotion! I like that! Great suggestion, Nikki! That’s something I’ll apply to my next show.
I’ll check out Dwolla. The only thing I would be iffy about that service is that I’ve never heard of it. When it comes to getting people’s money, people are a bit suspicious of something they aren’t familiar with. Everyone is familiar with Paypal, so I went with that.
I’ll experiment with “how” I say things and mix that in with the promotions. This is really good advice!
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Great stuff Seth!
Here’s my input… promotional giveaways are a really cool way to work with Trade Sponsors. Lots of companies are much more willing to give you free gear to use as prize giveaways than they are to send you some cash. Trade usually doesn’t have to go through their complicated budgetary system, and it’s often looked at as a real win/win on the promo/advertising side for them.
Contact some of your industry friends who have expressed support for your band and tell them about your idea for the promotion, and ask them if they can donate a prize or two. You may be surprised at your success.
- Noel
Hey, Noel! I have little experience with Trade Sponsors, but this sounds really interesting. I need to do some more research into this. Thanks for the heads up!