If you’re in a local band, chances are you constantly struggle with how to draw fans and friends to your shows. Even if you start out strong, it can be difficult to keep people coming once you’ve been gigging for a few months. Here are some simple tips for effectively promoting your band and building a dependable fan base.
– Don’t rely on mass invitations alone. Facebook, MySpace, e-mail, and texting have made it very easy in recent years to send out mass invitations to anyone and everyone. Unfortunately, they’ve also trained us to ignore mass invitations. Chances are, half the people that you invited to your concert on Facebook don’t even know you invited them by the time the concert rolls around.
– Personally invite people. Use phone calls, or face-to-face conversation to invite people to your concert. This form of promotion is time consuming, but has by far the highest return rate. People can’t ignore it, they’ll remember it, and they might even feel special that you went out of your way to invite them!
– Don’t gig too often. It seems logical to play out as much as possible so that plenty of people will see you perform. But if you gig too often, you’ll have small audiences, and people don’t have a good time when they’re in a small audience. When the house is packed, it’s a party! Fans will remember that great time they had at your concert and want to come to another one. If you play one gig a month to a packed venue, your fan base will begin to grow quickly.
– Put on a show. Make it memorable! When people leave after your show, they should be talking about what they just saw! Two weeks later, when someone brings it up, they should be able to talk about what a great time it was. Get the crowd dancing, cover everyone’s favorite song in a new way, give away some prizes, or just do something creative that will catch everyone’s attention.
– Get other people to help you promote. Put a couple other bands on the bill who can help you draw a crowd. Get friends to help you sell tickets and keep a share of the profit. Get a local radio station to give away tickets. Find as many ways as possible to get other people invested in the success of your show. Not only will they help you bring in more fans, but they will definitely be in attendance themselves.
– Don’t use fliers unless you’re going to do it right. People hate finding a piece of paper under their windshield wipers or on their doorstep. The people who bother to take the time to read them just get mad at whatever product they’re promoting. There is an effective method of handing out fliers. It takes a little longer, but everything worth doing does. Go out to some local shows and approach the people who seem like they’re there to support the music. Start a conversation, tell them about your band, and hand them a flier for the show you have coming up. You’ll be surprised at the results you can get from this.
– Get to know your fans. People go to local shows to hang out with their friends. Make sure you get to know every person you see in the audience at your show. Find something you have in common, get a phone number so you can call them next time you have a show, and follow-up. The more friends you have, the more loyal fans you’ll have.