If you’ve been fortunate to score a show all on your own or where you’re at least one of the leading acts, you also know you’ve been hit with a stack of tickets that you had to sell. And probably you ended up giving away half for free because you couldn’t push them in time. So how do you convince people to pay to come see you when you’re starting out? Read below the 5 powerful ways to sell more tickets for your shows.
5. Change your pitch based on who you talk to.
If you’re talking to your 21-year old cousin, tell him about the booze that will be sold at discount. If you’re talking to your grandma, tell her about the acoustic acts that will sound like Elvis. If you talk to your photographer friend, tell him about the networking opportunities with other artists and industry people. You got the idea. Figure out what could your show offer to the people you’re selling your tickets to. Don’t lie. Just leverage whatever possible to get people invested for their own self-interest. It works.
4. Run local cheap ads on social media.
If you got a show in Houston and you got a couple hundred local fans, use a couple of dollars to target those supporters on social media so that they find out there will be a show where they can actually meet and greet you. Don’t be afraid to spend $50 to make $500. Also, make sure the visuals advertising the show are on par with how worthy you are of watching in person.
3. Leverage famous names and events to trigger curiosity.
If you did 4 and 5 and still have tickets left over, it’s time you started playing dirty. Dig up the history of the place and see if there had been any famous names, events, scandals, anything newsworthy associated with that very venue in the past, and talk about it on your social media. If you say “I will perform at Red Meat on January 5th,” that’s nowhere near as cool as saying “I will perform at the legendary Red Meat spot where in the early 2000s pop star Justin Timberlake used to come sing every Saturday. Don’t miss out!” Obviously, this is a made-up example but all venues have a really cool history behind them. You just gotta point out how special that place is.
2. Make it an exclusive promise.
Whether you announce you’ll have new limited edition merch, printed Polaroid selfies with the fans, signed posters, vinyl formats of your songs, whatever it is that you can pull off, do it to incentivize exclusivity thus increasing the appeal of the event. Talk loud and clear and post both static and moving images of the cool features your show will entail. People won’t know to appreciate the uniqueness you bring to the table if you don’t talk about it.
1. Leverage past footage.
Nothing makes people want to pull out their wallets more than the guarantee of a good time. So how do you deliver that? You show them how great of a time your past shows provided to the attendees. It is your sole responsibility to record and keep archival footage for various reasons of all your live shows. Everyone you could possibly think of that’s successful in the music business does it. Why aren’t you??? Compile past footage into a sleek trailer and advertise it everywhere possible.
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