Promoting your own Event

Guys, how hard is it to put stuff in the right forum? I have moved this from FORUM NEWS where it clearly does NOT belong to where it DOES belong: DJ BOOTH.

It’s not rocket science folks.

1) & 2)
I used to learn how to make flyers from Powerpoint, but then i found this http://graphicriver.net/category/print-templates/flyers, relatively cheap, $6 – $11 ranges, sometimes you can get a bundle promo, all you need is Photoshop and simple edits and voila! a professional flyers!

3)
Its digital age nowadays, social media promotion is more than enough (that is if you have like 200+ followers), thru facebook, Path, Instagram, twitter,
Doing a hand-out flyer its rarely this time of ages, its pretty costly to print the flyer itself, to hired them college kids also, I mean surely you dont want some nerdy dork college dude to hands out YOUR flyer event right ?

4) Advertise, advertise and more advertise…

5) You should do the negotiating with the club owner looong before the event itself, I would go straight up first to asked the club owner to “PAYS” your event instead of negotiating for a cut, why ? cuz its much safer that way you get the “fixed” amount right there at front, with A Cut all you get is “imaginary & dreamy” figures

Arnaldi, I completely disagree with you on 3.

Social media is great for keeping people who are already interested in you informed and involved but it is terrible for promotion itself. Social media tends to be an echo chamber, the only people who can hear you are the people who already know you exist. It important to use social media but its also important to keep pounding the pavement and promote.

Drums and bass is a little niche for the casual crowd and too hardcore for most girls tastes. That is an uphill battle you’re fighting.

It’s tough with niche genres, if it is too eclectic the casual crowd will leave and if its too obscure you won’t have enough people who appreciate it to sustain the event either financially or in crowd energy.

I would either carefully setup the lineup to be a little more mainstream in taste with drums and bass mixed in or you have to give people a reason to stick around in spite of the music. Lighting is one method. Another is to check out events and look for guys or better yet girls who can dance and chat them up. Tell them how impressed you are and invite them to your event and tell them that you’ll put them on the VIP list for free entry. You’ll get a few more bodies at the event and they hype up the crowd.

While you’re at it talk to some pretty girls and put them on the list too, stack the crowd with girls and guys will stick around longer. Crowds feed on themselves, the more people there are, the more girls there are, and the more energy there is the better a time people will have. You need that in order to draw out potential fans from the general populace that otherwise would never have attended your event.

Hi Juan,

Are you offering your services for free?

If not, I will have to ask you to refrain from posting commercial messages and will have to remove this reply.

With a $150 black and white laser printer you can turn out flyers for about $0.04 each, with half-sheets only about $0.02 each, which is $4 for 200. If not go to a 7-11 and use the copier for $0.15 a page, which with half-sheets is $15 for 200.

I’ve done web design, online marketing and social marketing professionally. The conversion ratio is terrible and you get far less impressions than you would get from a conventional promotional campaign. Social media is great for developing an existing fanbase and converting one-time attendees into fans. It is terrible for building your fanbase in the first place.

Yes, in general you get your friends and core fans to like your page, like your posts and say they are attend your events so it turns up on their friends pages giving you visibility. However the conversion rate is about as bad as the click through for banner ads. Realistically if you don’t have a huge following you won’t get enough numbers to make a meaningful bump in attendance.

If attendance and ticket sales are a problem then that implies there isn’t much of a following yet. When you put up flyers you set up as many nodes as you care to put up. A person with 0 followers can always put up 200 flyers. It’s not free and the conversion rate isn’t any better than social media but its still untapped ground.

Social Media is a great way to “trade” events and build a better-close-relationship with other DJ’s (or other DJ’s that you not already know in local areas)

For Example,
DJ A have a following events at Club 123, posted the flyer in his social media, DJ B saw the flyer and re-post it to his follower,
Next time DJ B have event also, posted it again, and DJ A returning the favor, DJ C, DJ D, E,F,G etc saw this flyers also and thus creating a chain dominoes effect

DJ B saw that DJ A returning the favor, next time around he offered him a spot to spin on his next upcoming events, for me in this time of ages, where DJ’s cut-throat other DJ’s, its a beautiful relationship

And it didnt cost me a penny,
Free promotions, free networking, plus a bonus you get an offering gigs, all in one-get-go
I just dont see how you can build this kind of relationship with just handling flyers to random strangers in the street corner