On The Road Again - Part Three

Every show, no matter how big or small, is an opportunity to leave an impression. It’s always better to be asked to be part of something than to beg for your shot. But no one will ask you to join their events if they don’t have an idea of what you have done or what you plan to do. This is why having a strong footprint in the market that keeps you front of mind whenever you aren’t currently performing is very, very important. 

A Publicity Footprint and Return Strategy

A Publicity Footprint:

There are so many forms of publicity outlets these days, it’s hard to know where to prioritize your efforts. To simplify this for the sake of continuity, let’s consider any third party media format to be a PR source. Press builds your footprint in the market more than any other touch point. It reaches all the other touch points and establishes a foundation for future growth. Having press in a market allows you to grow your partnerships, engage your team, book larger venues, and retarget new fans. Artists hire a publicity team for their album launches all the time but rarely hire publicists for their shows. Established artists always have a tour publicist on staff, but those publicists often hire local freelancers to help with each individual market. Most writers have dabbled in freelance publicity work especially if they are in a large city with a large press footprint.

So before I tell you to dig in and research, which obviously is something that you can do, maybe this is a place to spend a little bit and hire some help? Whether you hire someone for PR work or do it yourself, you still need your press materials ready. This means having an up to date bio that can easily be copied and pasted into a concert calendar of a local newspaper and not need corrections once published. It means having a strong press release and elevator pitch. Providing up to date media and having it easily accessible so the publication doesn’t use old content to promote your new tour.

PR practice is also important. Do you know how to do radio interviews without cursing? Do you know how to pivot a question that is boring or off topic back to the release you're currently promoting? Do you know how to excite the interviewer, by relating to their town through local sports, schools or musicians from the area? These things are invaluable because they endear you to the publication. If you can accomplish this, then they will always prioritize coverage for your events long after this first connection. It’s also very important to remember that a good writer or journalist will move up quickly in their field. The kid doing the interviews for the local school newspaper might be a writer for Rolling Stone in a couple years, think about that before every interview, and you’ll be in the right head space.

Return Strategy:

Lead time for press is tricky. It changes depending on publishing schedules. Newspapers are daily or weekly while magazines are monthly making lead times range from 4 days to 8 weeks. This is why your live performance strategy must stay rhythmic. You can’t go to a market only once, you have to return regularly. If you are able to generate some press in the weekly newspaper and know you’ll be back in the market 8 to 12 weeks later, this is the perfect time to invite a writer from the magazine out to the show to do an interview. The footprint that is possible from strong press in tandem with a strong performance strategy is so large it has to be prioritized but rarely is. Try to change this as you plan the rest of your year.

On The Road Again - Part Two

It truly is a special thing to be able to say, “I was there when they played the local bar down the street from my house” about your favorite band, however that doesn’t matter if that band never leaves the bar. With our goals set on growth, sometimes it’s hard to be okay with where we are, but growth comes in steps not leaps. No matter the size of the venue or crowds you are performing to, you should always be trying to increase your influence with bigger players in your scene or market. It’s always better to earn an opportunity rather than beg for it and to undersell and over deliver whenever possible. Let’s dig in on how to grow your team and increase your partnership viability so you can step your way into the stadium gigs sooner rather than never. 

Team Building in Multiple Markets & Brand Partnerships

Team Building in Multiple Markets:

Booking a venue with a local talent buyer is easy enough. Proper research and lead time will allow artists to effectively book this way. But if you want to grow, you need a team taking on responsibilities for the event so your artist team doesn’t have to. This means having a working relationship with a promoter, talent buyer, street team leader, publicist, and media/creative partner in each market you are targeting.

“Working Relationship” is the key here. In order to create a working relationship, you need to have intimate knowledge of their work, their interests, their goals and objectives. Again, this starts with research, but it extends to conversation just like any other relationship. Starting conversations that don’t end with a booking request can often be really refreshing for folks who work in this field. This needs to be in a low impact format, like a comment on socials, and then perhaps a DM. If they don’t operate a social channel, perhaps reach out for a quick call to learn more about their work and what they have coming in the next year.

But conversation isn’t enough to develop a working relationship. They have to love the music and your performance, which means they have to see it live. You have to create this opportunity for them in some way or another, maybe it’s a live stream, maybe it’s a showcase or maybe it’s a video (although many are suspicious of pre-recorded videos as they are so easily doctored.) Knowing how you’re going to create this opportunity is clutch before you ask to work together. 

Brand Partnerships:

All brands, be it fashion, alcohol, sports, or beauty products, spend thousands of dollars on name recognition and brand trust. You should lean on this for establishing that same trust for your event. Many brands lack the boots-on-the-ground to activate with their customers in real life, so participating in an event is a great way to do that. There is very little formula for creating a strong brand partnership. It starts with conversation like anything else, and revolves around shared objectives. In order to have these conversations, you need to think realistically about how you can have an impact for the brand and go into the conversation ready to present a win-win scenario. If it’s not a win-win from the beginning, the conversation will go cold from the pitch and most likely never warm up again.

If you’ve made it this far in the blog, I bet you can guess what the first step is for brand partnerships. That’s right, RESEARCH. A close second is forming an identity for your own brand. The only way to form a win-win partnership is for goals and objectives to align, and you can’t align your objectives if you’re unsure what they are. A big part of this is knowing who your demographic is and what reach you already have within it. Additionally, knowing your message for that demographic, why are they going to participate, and lastly showing that you have a visual brand that will engage quickly and doesn’t conflict with the partner’s own demographic, reach, message or visual brand. These will be collected into a brand pitch deck.

The deck will also outline what it looks like for a brand to engage in the partnership. Sometimes you’ll put a financial commitment into the deck, but you might start by leaving it as an outline without hard numbers and leave that part to a conversation after both parties have agreed a partnership would be productive. When you first reach out about doing a brand partnership, the rep will most likely respond with a one sentence answer: “Sound cool, send me your deck, and I’ll take a look.” Nothing moves past this point if the deck isn’t engaging or exciting in some way. So get creative! Try to provide as much data as possible. Lean on data from your partners as well. This includes the operations team we spoke about earlier.

Once you’ve secured a partnership, go above and beyond to make sure you impact their brand in a way they’ll never forget. Make sure this impact is visible across everything you do. This is for two reasons: one, you want them to engage in the partnership every time you ask, and secondly this visibility will increase the value of the partnership for new partners down the road. Eventually this can become a way to fund the majority of your tour and should be a priority in your live performance strategy.

Hustlers Still Need Help

Booking tours and shows is hard work that takes a lot of hustle. Sometimes the hustlers put their head down and forget to look up at what’s going on around them. But trust me, you can’t grow to the levels you desire all on your own. It’s gonna take help. So do your best to try and hustle long enough to build some relationships, and then learn to lean on your team and your partnerships for the growth you desire.

On The Road Again - Part One

As we were planning our programming for the reboot of our blog and panel series, Balancing Art & Industry, our first topic was going to be “How To Book A Tour.”  Maybe the topic is even more needed now in the wake of COVID-19 than when the live performance industry was thriving. We are hoping to help artists return to the road in a better and smarter way than how they left it. We’re going to attempt to cover a lot of ground in a 3 part live performance booking series. So let’s dive in.

Live Performance Touch Points

There are two touch points that artists tend to focus on when launching a live performance strategy: booking and marketing. With these two touch points, an artist can effectively tour as much as they like. But with only these two touch points, they are unlikely to grow. Additionally, an artist should be working on their operations/team building, brand partnerships, and publicity efforts. I’m going to touch on booking and marketing quickly but dig in on these later three more in depth to try and help you elevate your touring overall.

Booking the Gig and Marketing the Show 

Booking the Gig:

Before sending a single booking request, first identify what type of performance you are looking to book. Is it a hard ticket performance or a soft ticket performance? Once you have this answer, identify which venues in your target markets prioritize this type of performance, and are they the right size for your current level of popularity in that market. Your streaming data for the market will help educate this decision.

Thorough research is key here and not putting your eggs in one basket is also very important. Know what you’re looking for from the venue before you start reaching out. Once you’ve connected and have a conversation going, set tentative dates while you negotiate the details. Don’t be afraid to do this with multiple venues at the same time, (just make sure nothing is confirmed while you discuss these details.) If you’re having trouble, ask for referrals and help from the venues you’re talking to, maybe they work with other venues that might be a better fit. Ask local artists for support and trade shows. Here again, researching local artists ahead of time is going to go a long way. This is usually about a sixteen week process from outreach to the day of the show.

In the wake of the pandemic, artists that are wanting to get out on the road again quickly should be looking primarily for soft ticket opportunities and shortening the outreach time to 8 weeks. Venues are going to be anxious to get events back up and running but won’t be able to plan or organize with larger acts until there is a clearance from the CDC. This might open up an opportunity for developing artists who are a little more flexible to jump in as soon as things clear up. Hard ticket offerings aren’t going to rebound as quickly. So at the time of this writing, if you’re hoping to be back out this summer, start your research process now. It’s a great pastime during social distancing.  This soft-ticket-short-outreach strategy is viable for new artists even outside of a pandemic situation. 

Marketing the Show:

Retargeting is the number one missed opportunity for artists. Using pixel tracking, we can effectively track each touch point with your brand and retarget them with very specific advertising for each show. So, while held up in your houses for the next 30 days, brainstorm ways to create the initial touch point with a fan now with the intention to retarget those interactions at a later time. Such as when you’re announcing your next tour. 

Traditional marketing efforts are still as effective as always, so once you have your event in place make sure you’re running ads, putting up posters or fliers, and creating online events with email and social invites. Run contests for tickets or merch through polls or questionnaires on your stories. Do live setlist planning. While we’re locked in our homes until things clear up concerning COVID-19, perhaps consider partnering with other artists for live streams in the markets you’re targeting for a tour. Or live stream again ahead of an actual show with the support acts you booked on it, like a show teaser. All the while directing new fans back to a captured data source like email or pixel tracking.

Live Music Builds Community

Live music has the ability to create a community unlike any other event. Instead of thinking about your booking and marketing in terms of tickets and revenue, start by thinking about connections and experiences. Ask yourself, “Am I engaging and creating a moment with these individuals that will tie them to me and me to them in a lasting way?” If this is the most important question you ask, the rest of your efforts will be much more successful, and the shows will be that much more rewarding.