The upside to playing shows on behalf of Compassion International at no cost to promoters is that I’m busier than ever.  We’re averaging twice as many shows each month than we did wen charging promoters.  But there is a downside.  ANd it’s become a problem.

Some promoters book me now because free gives them a chance to put on a show for their church or city without risking anything.  The thing is that risk is what makes promoters work hard to get butts in the seats, it turns out, and without risk we’re discovering that some first time promoters do a less than stellar job of promoting.

Promoters who’ve been in the concert business for years realize that you can’t over promoter a show.  It’s impossible.  And they know that even huge acts won’t draw a crowd if posters are all that’s getting the word out.  And full-time promoters, who pay thousands of dollars to bring artists, MUST draw a crowd or they don’t eat.

This is the downside of free: Our clientel has become almost entirely first time promoters trying their hand at promoting at no financial risk to themselves and doing, sometimes, a not so good job of getting people there.

We’ve played for less than fifty people on this tour in cities where we usually pack the place out with several hundred.  As we’ve tried to figure out why, I decided to post this list of things promoters may want to do to over-promote our upcoming shows and I want to ask any promoters out there reading this to please share their ideas in the comments of this post.  Here’s a small list of things that can and probably should be done to promote a show:

1. DON’T spend money on radio ads.  They don’t work.  It is very expensive and, in our experience over the last seven years, promoters never get a boost in attendance because of them. DO ask the local radio station to interview the artist during drive time.  This, for some reason, does seem to help.  The best bang from radio is having the station as an official sponsor of the show.  When the radio station’s name is on the show, so to speak, they tend to talk non-stop about the show during every time slot of the day.  Stations usually won’t sponsor a show unless they benefit financially from it, which won’t be the case if the ticket price is FREE.

2. Mail posters and bulletin inserts to churches but call them first to make sure they will use them.  This saves you printing money too.  Then call the churches to make sure they received them and ask how and when they will be used.  Visit the churches to see if they were in fact used the way they were supposed to be.  Doesn’t seem like you’d need to do this but trust me, you do.  There are a million things going on in the life of a church, zillions of activities and promotions going on.  You have to kindly make sure your concert is getting the wall time and announcement time you were told it would get.

3. Ask Christian owned businesses and restaurants to put up posters and stuff bags with flyers about the show.  A fast food place serving a few thousand people a day can get the word out about a concert quickly doing this and by putting a “table talker” on every table.

4. Ask local churches that are helping promote the show to mention the show in their newsletter to members.  If the show is ticketed, offer a discount or a free ticket to people who print out a coupon printed in their bulletin or church newsletter.

5. Get Christian organizations on college campuses to spread the word.  Offer students a discount or a select area of seating (the first five rows, for instance.  Fellowship of CHristian Athletes, Campus Crusade, the Baptist Student Ministries are all organizations that may be willing to tell their students about the show.

6. Call the religion editor for the local paper and ask him/her if they’d like to interview the artist.

7. Talk radio is a powerful tool for promotion that few think about.  Many conservative talk show hosts are Christians and are open about that fact.  Ask them if they’ll mention the show or interview the artist.  Chances are slim since that’s not the point of their show but it’s worth a shot.

8. Ask every blogger you know in your city to blog about the show a month out, then two weeks out, then the week of.  You can find bloggers in your city by searching technorati for your city’s name.  It’s along process but it can pay off.

9. Ask every person in your college and youth groups to promote the concert to their myspace friends.  Most teens have a myspace space now and if each one has a dozen local friends that can add up quickly.

That’s just a few ideas that cost you nothing or very little.  What other ideas do you have?