Gig success tip #9 - Give your gig ‘lip service’

Are there any less compatible bedfellows than the disciplines of ‘Sales’ and the Arts?

Because by its nature, the Arts is the very antithesis of a commercial sales environment.  Sales or the notion of selling is heathen territory for anyone who is in the least bit artistic.

To them, art is the ultimate in expressing oneself creatively while sales is a nasty byproduct of a crass commercial world.

To put it in the words of one famous Australian artist ‘I’d rather drink bleach than flog my own show’.

Yet the moment a single dollar is exchanged in the arts world, the artist becomes a commercial entity that is part of a commercial machine.

And the less dollars exchanged, the harder it is for the artist to eat, pay rent and all those other means of survival in our modern society.

There is no greater evidence of this at work than with punk pioneers the Sex Pistols.  On the one hand they ridiculed the capitalist system and its ‘filthy lucre’ while on the other thoroughly enjoying the spoils of their commercial success.

Luckily there are ways of selling and embracing its umbrella, marketing, without compromising your artistic integrity.

Hard sell VS Soft sell

Truth be known, art is one of the easiest things in the world to sell because of two key factors – It’s uniqueness and its potential to provide joy not just to the owner, but to whoever beholds it.

For example, compare ‘selling’ your gig or even a painting to selling an insurance policy.

One is what can be a wonderful means of enjoying your leisure time while the other is a ‘grudge purchase’ necessary to protect our ways of life against accidents and mishaps.

I know what I’d rather sell!

This fundamental difference between ‘products’ means that works of art naturally attract people who want to find out many times more about the ‘product’ and its provider than the bulk of non-arts products and services. 

The other massive advantage works of art enjoy is that because they are a form of self-expression, those who know the creator actively want to hear about what’s been created.

People who expect to be ‘sold’ to

Friends, family and followers all actually want to hear about what you’ve created or are about to create and in most cases, want to know how they can enjoy it.

In most cases they also want to support you in your endeavours because they want you to do well in your chosen art.

These attributes are something the insurance salesperson would die to have for their product.  Instead, theirs is a relatively hard and joyless sell that its customers would love to avoid if they could.

Conversely, people overtly selling a grudge purchase like Insurance to their friends and family are likely to make themselves pretty unpopular.

These factors mean that the notion of ‘selling’ your gig needn’t be the painful grind that many make it out to be.

Once you get your head around that notion, your contacts actually want to know about your gig, it then becomes a matter of sensitively letting them know about it.

There are two ways of doing this: reactively and proactively.

Reactive VS Proactive promotion

A reactive way of engaging in word of mouth is to simply respond to your contact asking after your progress.  This is the easier way of the two methods because all you are doing is answering their query with something like:

“Yeah we’ve got a show at XXX venue on XXX date.  Love to see you there if you can.”

If they ask more questions, simply answer them.  If they express interest, be sure to send them a link to the show promo page or post either on the spot or immediately after the conversation.

The pro-active approach is a little more challenging.

It means actively letting them know about your gig even if they don’t give you that opening.

A good way to do this is at the end of the conversation and you can do it without the sense of ‘selling’ them anything.  Just something like:

“Oh by the way, we have a gig on XXX at XXX.  Why not come on down if you can?”

Again send them that link to reinforce it.

Selling outside your comfort zone

Sales professionals would go much harder than these suggestions.  Amongst other things they might suggest that each band member if there is one call a handful of their contacts to tell them about the gig.

If you are comfortable with this, then by all means go for it.

At the end of the day it’s a personal choice that determines what marketing takes you out of your ‘comfort zone’.

But realistically, if you want your gig to be a success, harvesting good word of mouth is an important part of the promotional puzzle.
Need professional, yet affordable help with your marketing? Reach out to Craig today.