How to Promote a Music Festival

Music festivals, small and large, attract audiences worldwide. Becoming a successful promoter of music festivals allows you to combine your business skills with your love for the arts and the talented artists that produce music. To enter this lucrative market, read on to look at how it's done by the major players and follow their lead.

Difficulty:

Moderate

Instructions

1. Define the audience that your music festival will target. Look at the various music genres and the groups that they appeal to most. Review the schedules, venues and lineups of existing successful, festivals. Know your competitors and their productions.

2. Select a possible festival venue (and alternates) and 2 to 3 potential dates, based on your marketing research. Get price information and availability from the owners.

3. Identify talent that you want to include in your festival lineup. Use talent agencies and booking agencies, if necessary, to make initial contacts with performers.

4. Create a project planning schedule of tasks, milestones, resources, and funding needs. Review literature from professional meeting and event planners associations to get tips and ideas.

5. Develop a budget for all festival production costs. The main categories must include the venue, entertainment, coordination and management, advertising and promotion. Include legal advice, insurance, staff, printing, equipment, travel (local and destination) and your profit.

6. Identify and contact corporate and business sponsors whose advertising is targeted to the festival's audience. Food and beverage vendors, hotels and airlines (if applicable), music label producers and numerous retail outlets are likely sponsors. Tailor this list based on your audience niche. Prepare proposals for sponsorship of festival production costs. Include targeted audience, benefits, budget, promotion methods, market exposure and anticipated number of attendees.

7. Consider joint venture partnerships with tourist promotion agencies and potential venues in your target area. Investigate the potential for promotion of music festivals as a way to increase the use of their underutilized space during slow periods. Act as their agent. Spread the risk and share the costs, or simply take a percentage of the profit that you generate.

Tips & Warnings

• Contact corporate event planners who organize successful events. Ask them about themes, concepts and groups that may interest businesses and corporate sponsors. You may also get valuable sponsorship contacts from them.

• Without significant experience or a brand name, finding festival sponsors may be difficult. Network to get contacts that can help you market your skills to potential sponsors.

Resources

• View the eventplannersassociation professional links.
• Get tips on event planning business basics at work.
• Learn about entertainment contracts and venues at munseyentertainment.