If you want to attract a crowd to your concert, you must promote it properly. This applies to venues and churches, PR firms and bands/talent. Whatever your role in the process, the following concert promotion tips will help you to attract larger audiences.

Concert Promotion Tips For Venue Owners

Venue owners can do many things to enjoy better turnout for their events.

• Strategic scheduling. One of the first issues you should address is scheduling. You should be aware of any competing events that are taking place on any given date. You should also keep in mind things like holidays and anything else that might affect turnout. If you’re booking a popular rock band, don’t schedule it on the same night that an even more popular band is in town. In general, the bigger the act, the further in advance the date is scheduled. This gives you plenty of warning for big name acts that could prevent your own show from being a success.

• Press releases. Make sure you send out press releases to local media well in advance of the date. Don’t overlook the value of sending concert information to free local publications. Most cities have free weeklies that many people read for entertainment news. In addition to event listings, these papers often publish interviews and stories about local concerts.
• Your venue website. Your venue website should have a professional look and be easy to navigate. It should also provide links to performers’ websites. They should provide you with this, but even if they don’t it’s worth it to do a few minutes of research. Nowadays, almost every performer has either a website, a Facebook page or music posted on sites like Bandcamp, SoundCloud or other such sites. This is especially important for acts that are not widely known. You should also use social media to promote concerts. Be sure to remind your followers several times about upcoming performances. Some people purchase concert tickets far in advance while others wait until the last minute.

Concert Promotion Tips for Performers

Today, musicians, comics and other talent must be very proactive about promoting their concerts. Venue owners will, hopefully, do their part in publicizing your event. However, the bulk of the responsibility lies with the artist. You are, after all, seeking to not only have a successful concert but attract more fans and build your brand.

• Send out press releases and CDs. Send out press releases to the media in the city in which you’ll be performing. You should also send out sample CDs to music reviewers and local DJs. This can result in having your music played on local radio stations and perhaps a chance for an interview before your concert. Many bands schedule concerts to coincide with album releases. If you’re doing this, sending out previews of your album is a good way to get press coverage and, hopefully, airtime for your CD.
• Your band’s website. Having a good website for your band can help you reach out to more potential fans. While it’s helpful to have social media pages and music posted on sites such as SoundCloud, you should also have your own website. Here you can post as much information about yourself as you want, including photos, videos and, of course, upcoming concert dates.
• Social media and email. Be sure to remind your followers about upcoming concert dates on a regular basis. In addition to social media pages, a good way to do this is through an email list. If you don’t already have a mailing list or newsletter, it’s not hard to start building one. You can collect email addresses at every live event as well as online.
• Videos. Videos are one of the best promotional tools for musicians. These can either be music videos or footage from prior gigs. While you can post sound files as well, a video gives people a more multifaceted look at your act. Footage from a show where audience members are dancing and having a great time is a powerful ad for future concerts. Another great thing about videos is that people love to share them on social media.
• Posters. Posters are a traditional, pre-internet tactic for promoting concerts that should still be employed. This is an especially effective strategy for concerts held in cities or downtown areas with lots of foot traffic. Posters should be artistic and eye-catching. Most of all, however, they should convey the essential information about the concert venue and date. You should also list your website on posters. If you’re touring and don’t have time to poster far in advance, you could hire someone to do this remotely. One place to find reasonable freelancers to poster for you is on Fiverr.com. You simply send freelancers in different cities the template for the poster and they will post them for you.
• Promote at the concert. Don’t neglect the concert itself as a chance to do more promoting. While it’s too late to promote for that show, you can use this as an opportunity to connect with new fans who may buy your albums and show up at future concerts. Be sure that you have a table with albums and promotional material like t-shirts and bumper stickers.

The Challenges of Promoting a Concert

Promoting a concert today is a challenging task, so the more concert promotion tips you can find the better off your event will be. Not only do you have plenty of competition, but it’s often hard to get people to come out for anything these days. At the same time, plenty of successful events do take place every night of the year. To promote today, you must combine a variety of online and offline tactics. You have to provide fans with plenty of advance notice while also reminding them closer to the concert date. The above tips will help you attract a larger crowd to your next concert.