Pre-selling Prevents Music Promotion Failure
by Jeronimo Black on Mar.05, 2011, under Music Marketing, Today's Music Biz
What causes music lovers to wait in line to buy records?
This time around, I'll tell you a secret...that secret is what's called a Pre-sell. Successful Musicians (or their team) understand the process of pre-selling music.
Pre-selling music is a a marketing method used by promoters, artists and anyone who refuses to risk their time effort and talent to chance in today's music biz.
Any musician trying to sell music will be doing themselves a favor by using pre-sell strategies. Pre-selling music will give you an edge.
What Is Pre-Selling?
Pre-selling is the process of telling Fan's (or potential fans)... about your music or event - before the sale officially begins.
For example, Justin Bieber's pre-sold his movie Never Say Never at least six weeks before it was to play in theaters. Thousands of teens stood in-line waiting...often in the cold...to see the Musician they love and adored. It is very possible for every Musician in every genre can have fan's lined up outside of their events (sales).
I've seen it locally many times. More importantly, I've been a part of many pre-sell events. Some pre-sell's have been out of this world successful.
For example, the Janet Jackson 4 Jamz pre-sell Promotion. The Janet Jackson pre-sell promotion was an immediate success for the mid-west based concert promoter I helped.
Pre-selling Prevents Music Promotion Failure
More importantly...pre-selling prevents local musicians from loosing mass amounts of money promoting sales that are not going to give a return on investment.
I've seen many musicians waste time and money for concerts that didn't peak any interest during pre-sell. I won't name any names. But the smart ones ended the concert promotion. The not so smart musicians (or their promoters) didn't stop the promotion and the result was failure.
It sucks to lose money... but it really sucks to lose hundreds or thousands of dollars on a promotion that loses money.
The good news is that you can use a pre-sell to help you prevent a poor promotion from ever happening. So here's what you can do before you burn your hard-earned dollars on a promotion that may...or may not succeed.
-
Offer special discounted price (for a limited time):
I'm sure you've heard of someone calling themselves someones number-one Fan? People like getting an advantage. When they can, people will give themselves an advantage. A special price offering gives the Fan the opportunity to take or give that special advantage to themselves. -
Offer special access to Fan's who take advantage of pre-sell offers:
One of the greatest pre-sell methods is to offer additional access to the musician. Backstage, and VIP Access offers a compelling reason to buy that drives sales like very few other methods.
