How to Sell Out Your First Show - Pt. 2

Welcome back! This article series is giving you all of the tips and steps you need to book and sell out your first show ever!

With thoughtful planning, care for others, and creativity, you can have this show be a rock-solid launch pad for your career.

In the last article we went really deep into cultivating a vision for the show, as well as how to land your ideal first venue.

We’ll continue the series with:

Marketing Strategy - How to Connect Effectively
Stellar Arrangement - Orchestrating a Killer Set and Show
Make It Count - Tips to Make Your First Night a Springboard
Make It Profitable - Pointers for Recouping Some of the Investment
Night Of - Show Up Well, Enjoy Your Show

Here we are going to look at the next steps for you to make your first show a success. We’ll give you the tools for targeted marketing in this article. With a plan to maximize your reach, you can really make this a fruitful night for introducing people to your art.

Let’s go!

Targeted Marketing - A Plan to Maximize Your Reach

Congratulations! Your venue agreed! Perhaps your show is a month from them saying “yes”, maybe it is six months away. Regardless of the time period, you will have your best show if you have a focused, multi-pronged marketing plan.

You do not need a background in this! We are going to give you an easy, step-by-step guide with examples for you to implement.

But first, a quick, high-level view: you will be making a list of people you want to invite, and then a plan to use multiple mediums of communication to create interest and opportunity for them to buy a ticket.

At this point in your journey, it is totally normal and expected that the majority of people coming to your show will be your friends and family.

We'll give tools you to reach out to them effectively (nothing's more deflating than friends forgetting your show is happening and then not showing up—but if you don't remind them, don't expect them to remember!), as well as generate hype among friends of friends.

Before we dive in - a perspective pause. Back to mindset, it is critical that you care about every single ticket sale. It may not feel glamorous to go from 23 tickets sold to 24 tickets sold.

But every ticket sold is someone who will be touched by your music.

Every ticket sold represents a soul who will receive what you have made.

And if someone is willing to take the risk to come to your first show, you may be inspiring a lifelong fan who will enjoy and share your music for the rest of their life.

Now, let’s get practical:

1. MAKE A LIST

Everyone you know. Everyone you know would want to come, you think would want to come, and you are skeptical about if they’d want to come.

At this stage since you don't have music out you shouldn't expect to fill your venue with "fans" that you've never met. Your fans are their friends right now!

If you’re fortunate, you might pick up some interested locals because of being at a familiar venue, but this is exception, not rule.

You can't expect a venue to generate a crowd for you, so you have to put in the legwork yourself.

Good music doesn't get you fans. Getting good music in front of people gets you fans.

You are at a transition point - this is not a party just for inviting friends, this is the starting point of fans. And you don’t know who your music will connect with!

Some of our closest friends support us as friends, but probably are not listening to our music on repeat. Other folks who we don’t know very well came up to us days later saying they had a hook caught in their mind.

Complete step 1 by putting all of these names down in a spreadsheet like so:

2. DEFINE YOUR OPPORTUNITIES

Band marketing is all about getting in front of people consistently while not being annoying. It is up to you to be “creative”. Pop up in different ways, while always providing the call-to-action of “come join the concert!”

The ones we used were:

Email (both directly addressed and group emails) - great way to give detailed information and encourage direct ticket sales
Instagram - map out content that will engage interest and build awareness
Facebook - create an event and then directly invite friends to the page
Text message - personal, low-key way to follow up with folks
News media - create a press release for the local paper/newsite. Get your event on the local paper’s online calendar of “what’s happening in town”
Promoters - who among your circles has other circles that can magnify your reach and credibility?
Events - we had a garage concert for friends 3 weeks before the show. Good hype, and the posting encouraged other people to buy tickets. We also did an interview at our church, which got people excited about our “why” for being a band

Also, adopt the mindset of, whenever someone asks you, “hey, so what’s going on lately?” to share about the event!

Be thoughtful in how you do it, but remember . . . if you don’t tell anyone about your show, they are missing out on an awesome chance to receive your art!

2.1 MAKE A FACEBOOK EVENT

All of the opportunities outlined above could have more detail, but we’ll suffice it to say that creating a Facebook event, at the time of this post, is a matter of due diligence.

It is a common space that you can control where you can build hype, centralize information, and direct interested friends to purchasing a ticket.

3. CHART OUT YOUR OPPORTUNITIES.

Great. You have your people, you have your brainstorm of all of the must-have ways to promote your event, as well as some off-the-wall whacky methods.

You are in the final stretch!

“What? But I haven’t even sent a text message . . .”

True! But, we found that once you have your masterplan charted out, and all of the hard thought-work is out of the way, then you just grind on each task as you enter different phases of your marketing.

**You will notice that thus far we have barely touched on ANYTHING regarding playing music.** We’ll get into this more in the next section - the baseline assumption is you are setting aside at least one slot of time a week for developing your set.

But we did find that the lionshare of prep work was in laboring to fill the room!

Back to mapping things out. We suggest the following stages:

Groundwork -
- Focus: Build awareness and craft a vision for the show. Begin gaining ticket sales.
- Duration: We began this stage about 2 months before the show up until two weeks before the show.
Blasting -
- Focus: Create clear reasons and opportunities for people to buy a ticket.
- Duration: This phase was during two weeks out from the show.
Final Push -
- Focus: Follow up with all of the folks who said, “Yeah, I’m gonna buy a ticket!” Be really really excited for your show - this is your time to get the people coming to the show EXTRA excited.
- Duration: This phase focused on the week before the show.
Recap -
- Focus: You were really hype before the show - part of completing the loop is thanking people for coming, pointing people to how they can keep engaging with you, and having a “hype afterglow” that helps frame how the event is remembered.
- Duration: This was the week or two after the show.

Into each phase, chart out on your Google Doc what you want to do. When do you want to make Instagram posts? When are you going to send personal emails to people? When are you going to direct friends to the Facebook event? When are you going to do a living room preview? When are you going to shoot out a mass “last-chance” email?

What you should have after this is a roughly chronological list of tasks.

Remember the goal of the tasks - get people excited about the show and convert excitement to ticket sales. So, the final step is connecting your task-list to individual people.

Go back to your spreadsheet - fill in your tasks across the rows. This gives you an incredibly powerful AND simple tracker for how your direct marketing is being channeled to specific people. Note - only fill in tasks directed at people (like emails, FB invites, texts), not your broad actions (like an IG post, or hanging a poster in a coffee shop).

Also add in a row for if you have a confirmed ticket purchase.

This should look roughly like:

There are absolutely more robust ways of doing this, and a plethora of software options to accomplish this concept.

This was what helped us keep a finger on the pulse, and have a visual tracker to gauge how much opportunity we were creating for our community members to learn about the concert and respond.

Caveat: we recognize this is not something that can be done for every show. But experts say, early on, it is better to gig less frequently but do it really well with strong publicity.

The day hopefully will come when you have fans who want to come without being told, but it is always good to put in the work to show others that you care about them experiencing your music with you.

Other Prep Items

It is never too early to envision the night. Put on multiple pairs of glasses:

What will the experience of the audience be? What do you need to think through/bring to make it positive for them?

What will your moment-by-moment look like in the heat of the performance? What thought-work can you do now to reduce anxiety and inconvenience later?

What does the venue need so that they have the smoothest night with you as their best show ever?

And everyone’s favorite question . . . what could go wrong?

So, some things to consider:

Make a running gear list - do this early and check it often. As you practice through your set, make sure that everything you are picking up, adjusting, and using is written down so you can have a smooth show.
Make a wishlist - way more fun than a gear list, dream up what you want people to take away from the show. Do you want people laughing and clapping to the beat? Do you want everyone to go through their own box of tissues? A wishlist can be a whimsical way to think through the night, while sparking ideas.
Make a stage layout - envisage how you are going to stand on the stage. Get yourself mentally comfy. Where will the mic be? Where will your instruments be? Then, when you get up in front of others, your mind will already have visual datums to anchor off of, helping you relax a bit.

On to the fun part

You’ve got your stage and your audience – next we will dive into how to make this the most memorable music night your town has seen!

Keep going to part three (coming soon) for:

Stellar Arrangement - Orchestrating a Killer Set and Show
Make It Count - Tips to Make Your First Night a Springboard
Make It Profitable - Pointers for Recouping Some of the Investment
Night Of - Show Up Well, Enjoy Your Show