Promotion 101

Because it came up, here's -


How to Throw a Successful Event - the MINIMUMS:

The goals:
- Make everyone feel like everyone *else* is going.
- Make everyone feel like everyone else *went*.
- Make everyone who is going like they want to bring their friends.
- Make everyone who went feel like they want to come next time.

The Basics:

1. FILL A NEED. If there's a million [genre] nights already, don't bother. Don't throw an event for the sake of throwing an event!
2. VENUE, VENUE, VENUE. If your venue is amateurish, your crowd will feel the same about your night. If your sound system sucks, you do not have a product. Venue is part of your creative vision, and it MATTERS.
3. DON'T COMPETE. If there's a [genre] night on that night, don't bother. Even if you can out-do them quickly enough, it's bad business.
4. It's 2011 - PROMOTION IS ONLINE. If you have a flyer design, you have a website. GoDaddy is cheap. HTML is taught in highschool. Figure it out.

How to promote:
1. Set up email account for the night.
2. Collect a spam list. Rape, pillage, and plunder your own inbox if you must. See spam suggestions, below.
3. Set up a google calendar for the event, and promote/share the hell out of it.
4. Spam the hell out of your website on online venues - Facebook, and to a lesser degree Myspace are a prerequisite. Have a page for the night AND file calendar events for EACH night.
5. Make friends with other event coordinators & promoters. Allow them to promote to your audience THROUGH YOU (ie, don't give away your spam list, but promote for them in exchange for their promotions to their audience.
6. Seriously, if you can't put a facebook event up, don't bother.
7. PUBLICLY THANK PEOPLE FOR MAKING YOUR FIRST NIGHT A SUCCESS (even if it was an utter failure...)

How to (properly) spam-promote:
1. DO NOT CC: YOUR SPAM LIST - BCC: ONLY. (Basic promotional spam rule #1).
2. Get 3x the number of legitimate email addresses than you hope to have show up for the opening night. If you don't have this, you better have an amazing street team.
3. Include all relevant details. (Seems common sense, right?)
4. Genre and suggested dress code are BOTH relevant details.
5. It's 2011 - link location to google maps.
6. It's 2011 - link to your DJs websites and SoundCloud pages.
7. Allow - and respect! - unsubscribe requests.


Street Team:
1. Street promoters work best with incentives. Have a small bit of whitespace on each flyer. Tell each promoter to write their promoter number (you assign) on each flyer. Give a significant discount to people who bring the flyer in. Count flyers from each promoter - and incentivize your top promoters (free drinks, give them a guest list, etc.).
2. Pound into their heads: WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST. Women bring their boyfriends. Men don't bring their girlfriends. College kids bring their entire clique. BOOBIES SELL.
3. (advanced) Include a promoter ID value on website links to the event. Monitor hit counts to that ID.