Key Points:
- Use all avenues of promotion available to promote your show
- Engage music loving street teams to support your publicity drive
- Make strong contacts in the media and always keep them informed
Understand your target audience - young people enjoy taking ownership of space whether it is the back of a bus, or a corner booth at Starbucks.
Once you start to create a cool little hub for gigs and young people like your acts and like what you are trying to do, they will tell their friends and come in greater numbers. Once they see people they know from school, college or around town greeting them at the door and being asked for their tickets, and selling them merchandise, they themselves will want to get involved. Ultimately you have, believe it or not, created a scene.
That is when you need to start taking notice of them, and learning to understand their needs and tastes as the client. Give them what they want and they will continue to attend the shows. This will allow you to preserve and then develop your audience over time.
Beyond your local hardcore audience, a strong mix of local and national publicity and marketing is the best policy to reach your wider potential audience, many of whom won't have used libraries in years.
To give yourself the best chance of successful promotion, please ensure that the following media streams are covered one or two months before the show and those sites and streams are visited again two weeks before the show:
Reaching the media
- Press releases - Create winning press releases for each event that drive home the uniqueness and cool nature of what you are doing. Lancaster Library has an audience attuned to library gigs, but in each new venue and area we are starting over afresh - ram home the pioneering angle and be confident in your approach
- Contact gigs@pa-entertainment.co.uk with your GILIL listings. This listing device allows national exposure in Daily Mirror, Guardian, Independent etc and is a hugely valuable tool for ensuring mass media coverage
- Local radio - telephone in person and introduce the project and the show - make a contact that "gets" what you do and ensure that they are always fully informed with the correct information
- Local newspapers, including free newspapers - again telephone in person to make contact and engage journalists positively and allow open access to you, the library and the project - it makes them remember to preview, run competitions, take photos and review your gigs regularly
- Local TV news - you are pioneering something fun, quirky and newsworthy and local TV enjoy a positive story. Again ensure the principles of the project are understood by the programmer's editing team
- Social media - Facebook, Myspace and Twitter it! Create a page for your library's events; www.myspace.com/getitloudinlibraries already does this for you - add friends to your personal Myspace pages and plug the gigs! Make it cool and snappy and up to the minute and let a young person take complete ownership. Make it for them by them and watch your audience numbers grow. In Lancashire there are already two Facebook groups set up to promote the shows
- Websites - Use your county library and county council website to publicise listings. Local BBC pages are useful in allowing a platform for local listings
- www.seetickets.com - online tickets selling allows other websites to pick up on your show and provide viral marketing. It also allows fans to snap up tickets out of regular library opening hours, and means the person on the end of their email or enquiry is an expert!
Target youth
- Local schools, colleges and universities - identify the marketing or publicity individuals and make contact. Present the project at school assemblies. Young people are often keen to volunteer and get involved - encourage this wherever possible. Advertise for a street team in schools and colleges to help you "front" the shows on gig nights; collect emails and mobile numbers to help create a database to help publicise events in the future. A successful GILIL project in your library needs a keen and committed volunteer team of graphic artists, photographers, film makers, ticket sellers, merchandise sellers, general helpers, tea makers to assist in advance of the shows and also on the night, and create a warm youthful welcome to new library visitors. Allow young people to be the GILIL gigs' ambassadors - let them drive it, and you will succeed
- Local youth groups - formally identify local youth leaders with influence. They will only be too happy to engage their young people into the project and help form this important new audience.
- Local shops, cafes, restaurants, bus stops, taxi ranks, bars and pubs - excellent for flyers and small posters: again make friends with these people; offer free tickets in return for the platform of publicity
In-house marketing
- Publicity - encourage talented art and design volunteers to create eye-catching branded posters, flyers, bookmarks and loads of them; when they run out produce some more. Distribute in ALL your local libraries, shops, pubs and schools.
- Database - collect emails at the door early and you will fast create a database of young people who have volunteered their details to contact in future. They are begging you to keep them informed of new shows. If this is your first gig, two months prior invite all young (and old) people who love music to fill in their email details into your database. Explain your intentions and create a buzz.
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Photo credit: Frances Ross