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Leave-behinds for potential venues


Jakester
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Showing my age now, but back in the day you'd go round speaking to venues and drop off a tape with a phone number on it. 

 

Or, a bit later on, a CD with the band name and phone number/email address on. 

 

Nowadays no-one bothers with that sort of thing, so what do people do? 

 

I'm considering putting a flyer together with a QR code on it linking to our band recording Youtube page - has anyone done anything like that? What was the reaction? 

 

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I left behind a plectrum with the band name and logo on it and a Facebook page link. Two problems there. First up you can't "click" that link, and second it was written so small you could barely see it. A QR code leading to a site with content about the band would be far, far better!

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Third: plectrums are for falsers, only fingers a real! 😉

 

I think anything which involves typing a link is doomed to failure. Get a QR code printed on beermats and leave them all around every venue you want to play in. Flyers are waste, beermats are functional.

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Hmm, beermats might be a good idea...

 

I'm thinking of the sort of thing you handed to the landlord, though, rather than marketed at punters. 

 

You know, you used to go in to try and catch the landlord in a quiet moment and hand him the tape/CD etc. Not sure he/she'd appreciate you spamming their pub with beermats! 

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There’s lots of jam nights mid week where the same pub will have gigs there on a Friday and Saturday. Get the whole band to turn up, play your best three songs and then talk with the manager afterwards. Make sure someone videos your performances in case the manager didn’t catch it. You’ll also build up a big video portfolio pretty quickly. You can also put these up online/website/FB/whatever social media platforms you use.  Also try and get recommendations from the other bands on the local circuit. Goes along way. 

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4 hours ago, pbasspecial said:

There’s lots of jam nights mid week where the same pub will have gigs there on a Friday and Saturday. Get the whole band to turn up, play your best three songs and then talk with the manager afterwards. Make sure someone videos your performances in case the manager didn’t catch it. You’ll also build up a big video portfolio pretty quickly. You can also put these up online/website/FB/whatever social media platforms you use.  Also try and get recommendations from the other bands on the local circuit. Goes along way. 

This ⬆️ 

If the landlord actually has a look at you then you've won the first battle. I would suggest not playing the same old songs that all his other bands play as well. Pick something a bit unusual but sympathetic to the venue (do some research beforehand) 

We find that links to some live videos work really well because we have quite a good lighting setup and it looks a bit better than the average pub band visually. 

 

And word of mouth from their regular punters is priceless 

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First venue after the lockdowns we went to them and asked them what they would like us to play.

 

Armed with a list of treacly pop songs and crowd pleasers, we went away and rejigged them in a hard rock style (our USP - our hard rock version of Jolene is particularly good) and blew the socks off the land lady.

 

Since then shes been chatting to all the landlords and landladies in the area, and its been a cascade of good recommendations and bookings, cluminating in our first wedding booking, all with zero advertising of any kind.

 

So ask what the venue wants to hear rather than make any presumptions, or doing something 'a bit different' (which everyone does, so ends up being no different at all). Then put your spin and signature on it by all means, but the punter is paying the bills so it's dsft not to ask what they would like to hear you playing.

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One tactic I had, not so much a leave behind marketing piece, but something to help keep the gigs coming in, was to find out which other pubs the venue is networked to. So if you get a good lead on a place that has covers bands every Saturday and pays say £250 which brewery chain are they in, where are their other pubs.... That way you can go to their "sister" pub and say Glynnis at the Dirty Swan in the town centre has us for March, do you have an opening for April? A bit like the old home improvements door to door tactic of "you may have noticed our vans down the road nearby"

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