By: Michael Downing
As an intern at Olivia Management, I have learned many different skills. One skill that I have found incredibly useful is how to market shows. While most people think getting the show date is the hardest part about live music, it is filling out the venue that comes with the most challenges. So, when you finally get your first booking, what next? Over the semester, I have learned a few best practices that prove effective that I would like to share.
While the internet can be filled with a lot of useless nonsense, some tools are incredibly effective when it comes to marketing shows. It may seem that in today's media climate, the only way you could promote a show is through Tiktok, Instagram, or X. Some things that I have been doing to help bring awareness to shows is by submitting events to event listing websites. Some of these websites have been Bandsintown and Allevent.in. All you have to do is upload the information of your event and then it is listed for people to see! Another effective thing is utilizing artists' email lists. You can send emails to the fans who are close to the show to let them know you are coming. Once we list our events, as well as shout out the event through social media and email, we start tracking our ticket sales.
As the concert gets closer, we will monitor which locations are not selling tickets and start marketing those shows heavily. An easy and effective way to market in a specific city (especially smaller cities) is to start looking at local event listing websites. These can be anything from city-sponsored websites, travel websites, or “what to do in ___ city” blogs. It really can be anything. Important tip – you should not have to pay to access these sites! There are a lot of event listening websites that want you to pay to submit events. While those might be effective, we stay away from those! Our reasoning for staying away from those paid marketing websites is that we think that marketing money should be spent in other areas such as ads and guerilla marketing ideas!
In the end, there are many ways that you can go about marketing a show, but after interning here this summer, these are just a FEW of the best practices I have learned at Olivia Management.
