How do you advertise your gigs?

[mrtcat]

Please tell me if I'm wrong about this.

We're a rock covers band and play probs 30 - 50 gigs a year and have a good following of people who come to see us when we're in their local pub. We charge a very reasonable price to the venue for a night of playing and without meaning to sound cocky everyone who sees us really seems to enjoy it and we always get really good feedback. As a result we are selling cd's and T-Shirts which are selling far better than we ever thought they would. We provide all lighting, pa etc and are insured to the max

Some venues are great and advertise well but others seem to think promotion is entirely down to the band and if the turn out is low they look to us for an explanation. Now we advertise all our gigs on Lemonrock, Myspace, Twitter and Facebook. For many places this helps bring back the people that have seen us before and are now following us online but if we play a place where we've not picked up "cyber fans" before then this has a limited effect.

It still amazes me the number of places that will fork out for a band but do absolutely nothing other than write on a chalk board a day or so before and then expect a full pub. We also get regularly asked to provide posters etc, which we do and send them to the venue weeks in advance. They then put one poster in the gents loo, one behind the bar and the rest they lose and blame the band if they don't take £1,000,000 over the bar. We have even been told before "we only book bands if they put adverts in the local papers and charge less than £100" (we don't do either of these).

I must admit I feel that the real responsibility for promoting a night of live music should lie with the venue. As long as the band advertise on their sites then the rest is up to the person booking.

I'd be intrigued to know what other players feel about this?

[pietruszka]

[quote name='mrtcat' post='1056980' date='Dec 13 2010, 09:47 AM']I must admit I feel that the real responsibility for promoting a night of live music should lie with the venue. As long as the band advertise on their sites then the rest is up to the person booking.

I'd be intrigued to know what other players feel about this?[/quote]

I completely agree whole heartedly with you. You are a band that has been asked to play a live set, that's exactly what you should do. The venue/promotor should do the promotion. It's in their best interests to get the money in the tills. And surely you get paid regardless? (I'm not calling you Shirley either. Arf arf!)

My bands make it very clear in as few words as possible what we will be doing;

''We will play X length of set for X amount of money.''

You're a band, not band/promotor/marketing company/advertising company/fair ground ring master (roll up roll up!).

You are right!




Dan

[ogrimark]

I agree. It should really be up to the pub/venue to do the advertising. They are paying us to play to tempt customers onto their premises. I have no problem Doing a faceache/myspace page to tell our friends when and where we are playing but that tends to happen as soon as we get confirmation. One of the pubs we play at started to moan about the turnout. Out of the 30 or so people in the pub 20 had turned up with us. He was not best happy when i pointed out that when i got feedback from one of the locals he was surprised there was a band on as he had not seen anything advertised in the pub. They want the customers they have to put the effort in to getting them.
A mate of mine had a pub up in bradford and started doing live bands on a wed night. He would get a few posters off them and start advertising at least a month (where Poss) before the actual date. oddly he had good turnouts for visiting bands go figure?

[dbass]

I agree and it has always baffled me why venues don't do adequate advertising to try punters in.

We play Rock City twice a year and they have a massive promotion campaign which we don't even have anything to do with. In fact they prefer if we don't put posters up as they've been fined by the local Nottingham Council for littering etc!

We use the same methods as most people over the net etc but people seem to rely on this too much nowadays. To promote anything more than 4 gigs a month is a full time job in its own right if you want to do it properly

Posters inside / around the venue

Posters around local area and even next towns etc

Local radio slot / shout out - BBC Radio Nottingham do quite well for this regarding local acts - if only their main audience were under 60.

Local newspaper ads / fanzines / etc

Flyers around bars / shops.

Word of mouth

Internet - local music forums to that venue, MySpace (that's about had it though) Facebook, BandCamp, Last.Fm etc etc

It's a bloody hard job promoting a gig well in other venues outside your local area and I can see why some smaller venues/pubs don't do it themselves as it can get quite costly but ultimately they should make it back.

[Stan_da_man]

Local muso forums and FB events usually do a good job... if people can be arsed to come.

EDIT: But regarding promotion, its the venues job to get the punters in. A local venue near to me thinks the exact opposite. They allow you to play (its quite a big venue which holds around 250 people) but they put up no posters or such advertising the gig. They give you tickets to sell for £4 each and you have to go out to friends/family/etc and sell these tickets and get the money off the punters. Once you've sold the 50 tickets or whatever the minimum is, you go to the venue the night of the gig, give the promoter the money you made selling the tickets and get £1 back for every ticket you've sold - HOW FAIR IS THAT?! And you get about 5 bottles of beer to split between the band...

Nowadays when I play there I do either two things:

1. Get the tickets, chuck them in the nearest bin and when the promoter asks how many have you sold say 0. I'm not doing free promotion.

2. Get the tickets, sell the tickets, split the money we make from ticket sales between the band and tell the promoter we sold 0 tickets - this guy is never on the door trying to get punters in (so won't check when people arrive with tickets) and spends all day upstairs in his office.

Edited December 13, 2010 by Stan_da_man

[Mykesbass]

I would have thought for regularly gigging pub bands it is a bit of give and take - the band builds up a bit of its own following but the pubs need to build a reputation for themselves as a music venue, not necessarily promoting individual bands but making sure the locals know there will be a good band there EVERY week.

[Lozz196]

Advertising at the venue itself, and in the immediate locality of the venue is the venues responsibility.
How does a shop with a sale on attract people to the sale?
How does a restaurant doing an all you can eat for £10 attract its customers?

In these, and with a band playing at a venue, it is the establishment that wants people through its doors, as such, it is down to them to ensure local advertising.

Advertising on your own website/facebook/myspace is down to the band. As is handing out fliers at each gig you do, advising of the next, say 6 weeks worth of gigs.

In cases like this, where the venue is obviously being awkward, I`d send 10 posters to the venue, then a week later call them, and ask if the posters have been put up, and where. In addition, I`d ask if they have a board that goes outside advertising bands (if I`d not been there before). I`d then also ask for the venues facebook/myspace/lemonrock/website passwords, so that I could update these sites on their behalf. When they refuse, stating security, I`d ask them when they will be updating these, as this advertising is very important.

In all likelyhood, they would then not want the band after all this, but it would illustrate to them that the responsibility is theirs.

[mrtcat]

I'm really encouraged by the responses here. I'm happy to be helpful with any venue but it's reassuring that the common philosophy is that the venue needs to let people know what they're offering.

I guess it'd be like putting on a free buffet but not advertising it - you'll please the people who would have been there anyway but it won't bring you any extra trade as nobody will know there's anything worth coming for.

[Michaelg]

we use local and regional promotion (press and posters) for wherever we are going, we only use one PR company. we know some professional photographers and graphic designers so we usually get good quality advertising material. we are also aquainted with various radio djs so we get a radio mention if its a fairly big gig. we dont charge for small gigs (ie anything up to 400/500 capacity). our band is in the unusual position where our managers have invested a lump sum into us. that money is meant mainly for buying studio time but we do use it for promotion, general expenses for small gigs and so on.

you cant really make decent money through small venues. our usual procedure is to take a cut from the door. the more people we bring, the more money we get. its just the way it works. its not fair (more people does not mean better band) but we accept it to a certain degree. to be honest the only real way to make money through performance is either playing regularily at festivals or consistently going on tours. we have gigged with bad promotion labels so we do have a few names we actively avoid.

the best way of promoting your band is to release an album. thats what gets the most media attention.

Edited December 13, 2010 by Michaelg