so i got a shot at my first “break” if i ever had one. i have a demo gig at Vinyl in atl, they want to basically see how many people i can bring out. the place can hold ~300, and that’s a damn lot of people for me. i really need to pack this place out to have a shot at the residency, but even with me and a few loyal friends recruiting hard i think the max we could turn out for sure would be something around 100. i’m not getting paid for this and there aren’t a lot of funds available, so i don’t know if i can offer any kind of incentive other than trying to build hype around the music. so i’m wondering if anyone that has been through this before has any good methods of promoting they’d like to share. i’m going to flood the local colleges in the area with flyers and get some people there to hype it, i just don’t know how effective it will be. any help you guys can give would be greatly appreciated!
best thing I can think of is try to set up a deal with owner like dollar beers and advertise that… see if you can get a dancer aswell… also you are the livest dj around let them no that you can be modest… you are going to tear the roof off that mother… you the best there is so why not come see you spin laptops
also see if you can get some vip passes to hand out like hottest girl gets a vip pass for the next event, or best dancer or both ect make it fun with a lot of ish to do
when your putting your flyers up, don’t just hang em up on walls. that won’t be enough to bring people out to an unknown event with unknown djs.
go up to people who look fun and mingle with them so you can hype up your party to them on a more personal level. You need to create a fanbase and the best way to do that is by making lots of friends even if you don’t intend on hanging out with these people outside your event. Burn some joints, pass around a couple beers, hand out some free demo cds, shoot the shit, have some laughs, get those little fishies to wanna come see you again!
You said that out of people you already know you can get about 100 people. thats a great start.
so what you need to do is go make friendly with about 20+ different small groups of people to get that last couple hundred out. You’ll be able to do this easily if you go to colleges, bars, clubs, parties etc. It just takes manpower and time but it’s not impossible.
another tip is try to get as many people involved on the “behind-the-scenes” process as possible. you’d be surprised that a lot of people are willing to volounteer their time just to be a part of things like this, it makes them feel important and valued. If you get them on board they’ll go out of their way to help in anyway they can, like telling all their friends to come etc. A lot of people are intrigued by the music/entertainment business, so you need to sell this to them that you are their ticket to have a chance at having this experience.
If you’re charging at the door then I’d say give away a deal like “Free entry for you and a friend with flyer”. That would give an instant incentive for people to bring more people, and hold onto the flyers.
You can also run invite deals on the facebooks and myspaces, where if you respond you get in for free.
What duerr said is pretty on, though. Make friends with as many of those small groups in that 100 people as you can and get the word out. Make people excited about an underground party. And make yourself out to be excited. Give people discounts and deals at first, and if you can get them having a good time they won’t really notice those little perks slowly being taken away so you can make more money
Drink specials are a must. If you can get open bar for two hours, or cheap beer or something, you’ll definitely get people in the room. And if they are drunk after the deals are over they’ll probably keep drinking.
Facebook free entry before 11 is nice.
Offer a free keg if possible, bar owners are usually receptive to this if you of course buy the keg, but it really gets people in the door.
What nights you lookin at for residency?
and you playing dubstep and dnb or gonna mix it up?
thanks everyone, you’re really giving me some great ideas.
i feel the networking thing, it’s just i have 2 weeks to frantically promote this thing, the worst part is it’s not even definite yet, just around 90% sure, so i don’t know cover charge, time, anything. but with the time crunch i’m trying to get started as early as possible to make sure i use the little time i have to the fullest. i’m definitely going to have to talk to the promoter/staff/bar about drink deals and discounted/free entry.
not sure about the residency, it was just mentioned in the email i got that if i did well on this night, it would definitely “open the door” to me getting the residency position they’re looking to fill soon. at the demo night i’m planning out an electro/dubstep set, i hope to make that the only genre i’ll be playing. since there are a couple new dubstep nights popping up here and there i think the promoters for vinyl would be keen to capitalize on it
