Live music can be one of the most profitable and rewarding activities for a DIY musician There are LOTS of things you need to do to get people to see you live, here are eleven suggestions to help get more people to your future shows.

Start Your Promo Early

The longer the lead up time to your show the more marketing and promotion you can undertake.  If you can, make that run up months, not weeks.

Use Your Mailing List

Make sure you announce your show on your mailing list and send an individual gig reminder to your list two or three weeks before the show date.  It helps if you can segment your mailing list by location so you can target fans who live near the venue.

Don’t forget message your mailing list about your show.

Posters

Physical promo media such as posters still work if they are displayed in the right places. Have a good design.  Make sure the venue is displaying (you’d be surprised how many times this doesn’t happen!) and display wherever your audience’s eyeballs are in the local area.  Make sure the poster has several iterations for socials (i.e. square for Instagram etc).

Facebook Events

550 million people use Facebook events every month.  Make sure you create a Facebook event or if the venue or the promoter has created one already, import that to your Facebook page.

List The Show On Your Website

Might sound obvious but I see lots of artists who don’t update their site on a regular basis.  If you want people to find your show on Google, get your dates on your website so it can be indexed by Google.

Your website will help you get listed on Google.

Make Sure The Show Is Listed on Bandsintown

Bandsintown is a great free service and helps to list your shows on Spotify too.

Hit Local Media

Create a massive list of press, radio, local blogs, Facebook music groups, local social influencers etc who you can approach with details about the show.  Give them plenty of advance warning (see point 1!).

Make Sure Everyone Is Doing The Work

Make sure all the bands on the bill are doing their bit to promote the show.

Don’t Hard Sell On The Socials

Just posting the jpg of the poster on Facebook isn’t going to be enough to ‘promote’ the show! For a start Facebook doesn’t like text in images so a text laden poster will have poor organic reach.

Post a short (under 30 seconds) video talking about the gig.  Engage your audience in natural conversations on social platforms which mention the show but don’t go in for the hard sell.  For example “We fancy a pre-show drink before our gig at The Noob Club this Saturday, where should we go for the best beer in Manchester?”.

Use A Paid Boost On Facebook To Your Existing Fans

Organic reach can be hard to come by on Facebook so boost all important posts about your shows to your existing followers.  Narrow the location to make sure that followers near the venue will see definitely post.

Use Paid Traffic To Build Awareness To A New Audience

If you have a long lead up time, run two Facebook ad campaigns in the area near the venue. The first introduces yourself to a new audience using one of your best music videos. The second ad tells this new audience about your upcoming show in that area.

Got any questions about this post or how you can better market yourself?

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