Marketing. A dirty word in the Arts. However, the reality is that if you are to succeed in this competitive business, marketing yourself as an artist is something you need to think about.
Why should someone come to see you in a gig or a concert rather than another artist. The pace of life for most of us is relentless. To give up an evening, especially after a long day at work, traffic,bad weather and bills to pay is a sacrifice. To bother to actually spend time surfing the internet for the event information, type in payment details, then to have to remember your online banking password adds insult to injury. Why should someone do this to come and see you?
In my experience people do not easily budge from their comfort zone. What can you do to inspire someone to make a small change in their life and add a stressful moment to their day? You need to inspire them. They want to see an artist who confirms and strengthens something they believe in. They want to see an artist who has beliefs and a sense of WHY they are doing what they do. They want to be inspired, taken out of mundane existence, elevated above the ordinary day to day. The greatest artists channel this truth in a way that transcends technique. The greatest artists manage to connect their audience with something bigger than themselves and our ordinary existence.
Why do you want to perform? What is important to you in life? What message do you want people to hear? Who are you? What are you passionate about? What do you want to inspire in people? If you lead by example and let your light shine, it will inspire others to do the same. Do we want to see someone on stage apologising for their existence? No. We want to see someone who has a sense of who they are, what they believe in, and inspires us.
If you want people to give up their precious time to come and see you, you need to be so much more than just another performer who wants to be famous.
It may surprise you to know that the arts sector and the financial sector are equal in that they each make up roughly 20% of our economy.The arts are not to be sniffed at. Why? Because people are passionate about the arts. Marketing is a wonderful thing. If what you have to offer is worth seeing, marketing is the activity which facilitates this. It allows people to find out about you. And if you can work on defining why you do what you do and what the bigger picture is for you as an artist, the process of convincing others that you might be worth seeing will be infinitely quicker.
