With hundreds of festivals now popping up in Britain each summer, we are swamped and no doubt spoilt for choice with our options. From the longstanding Glastonbury and Reading & Leeds festivals, to the young and growing festivals such as The Secret Garden Party, Boomtown Fair and Wilderness – there most definitely is something for everyone. The British Festival industry makes millions each year, and it’s no surprise that more and more people are catching on and hopping on the festival bandwagon by starting up their own.
You may have seen all these new festivals emerging and thought to yourself: “Hang on a minute, if all these Tom Dick and Harries can start up and run a festival, then what is stopping me from doing the same?!”
While there’s a lot to prepare initially – the planning, the licensing, the booking of acts, sorting out your traders and general logistics – the hurdle that festival promoters find most difficult to overcome is the promotion and gaining enough organic interest from the public!
Here are some of our Pete’s top tips for Promoting Your Music Festival.
Social Media Strategy
It is good practice to have a solid plan of how you’re going to keep your audience up to date on all things related to your festival. You should set up an official festival accounts on Facebook and Twitter and start posting content way before you release tickets.
You need to create a buzz and let people know that you’re here!
Schedule in posts for when you know you’re going to be announcing something exciting like a headline act, or when you’re first going to release your tickets.
Having a giveaway competition on social media is a great way to gain followers and interest. You could offer a pair of free tickets as a prize, and to gain an entry all people have to do is follow and share your posts. Just one idea!
What’s The Hook?
Quite Great music PR offer all elements of promotion. Our services range from online to radio, to TV to print, but we always love to stress the creative aspect of what we do: Finding the elements of the subject that will spark the interest of the media!
Your headline acts will be a head turner, your exciting line up will definitely draw folk in but it’s our job to explore what makes your festival exciting and different to everyone else’s.
We will look at strategic focus, aiming creative PR ideas towards the appropriate audience and not pointless ideas that initially look good on paper, but fail to drive sales.
‘Divide & Conquer’ is Key to Successful Festival PR
Divide everything up and find a niche area that will attract media interest. Look at each subject in detail and find a story to develop. This should happen naturally, and fairly easily!
Pay Attention to Detail
We would always take into account arguably most important aspect of any story and that is the presentation. Imagery and branding must be on point, relevant and memorable.
One of our favourite creative ideas involved a boutique festival supplying headphones to sheep in a nearby field so they didn’t get bothered by the loud music from the local dance festival. Nice touch!
Build a Story
Building a story for a festival helps to build a profile… which then allows for more opportunities for gaining vital media listings etc.
Not many festivals have the benefit of being a longstanding festival, such as Cambridge Folk Festival (which sells itself and has no need for PR – apart from selling out the tricky Sunday tickets) through to the likes of Glastonbury – which has been going so long and is a total global institution that the PR is primarily vast media relations.
There are hundreds of festivals and the lesser well-known need strong and constant PR to drive sales and drive the brand.
For more information contact us on Skype –quitegr8 or email –ask@quitegreat.co.uk