LIVE PERFORMANCE, CONCERT / FESTIVAL

Listening to your favorite band or artist while traveling is way different than experiencing them live in action at a music concert. Planning a successful music concert is an exhilarating experience in itself and everyone involved would not want to miss it.

Music has a magical way of connecting people from different communities and age groups. If you're an event presenter or hospitality venue looking to bring the good vibes, here is your 10- step guide to organize a successful concert.

1. Plan Your Budget

It all starts with the event budgeting and the scale at which you want to organize your concerts. Stick to an event budget template that can be used for all your upcoming concert events. Set up a realistic budget to cover all expenses related to the infrastructure, venue booking, talent buying, and logistics including any contingency.

Ascertain at this point, if you need to generate sponsorship exposure for your event, especially if it's a fundraiser event or concert for charity. Track your budget to ensure you don't overspend.

2. TALENT BUYING

Depending on the type of concert you're organizing and your budget, build an artist line-up that your attendees will enjoy and appreciate. Do an analysis of what works best for your audience. For example, if you're organizing a concert in Accra Ghana for people aged between 21-50, who enjoy afro hip hop music, then book an artist like Shatta wale or Black Sheriff. Also, if you're going for a star-studded line-up, make sure they are comfortable performing with the other artists.

3. FINALIZE YOUR VENUE

Once your artists are decided, finalize the venue. Is it an indoor or an outdoor concert? If you already have a casino or a pub, the venue won't be a big concern. But if you're hosting the concert outdoors, you can choose a stadium or an open space to accommodate everyone.

Depending on your budget and how many attendees your venue can accommodate, finalize your venue. Consider the traffic, transit time, and parking facilities while booking the venue. Geotag the event location on social media and your Online Ticket Store so your attendees can locate the venue easily.

4. FINALIZE THE CONCERT DATE

Based on the availability of your artists, lock on to your concert event date. Create the buzz around the event and also while launching the concert, send out email campaigns and reminders to the stakeholders and your audience.

With the holiday season arriving soon, there will be several events during the time. Make sure your event dates don't clash with other popular events. Once you finalize the concert date, kickstart your targeted event marketing strategy.

5. TAKE CARE OF LOGISTICS

Be it a small gig or a big concert, book a super sound system needed for that amazing experience. If it's an outdoor space, set up the big stage for your artists, rent the stage equipment including light and sound. Set up a backstage, dressing room and take care of the event catering at the concert. While you take care of logistics, don't miss out on procuring permits for noise and alcohol consumption.

6. PRICE YOUR TICKETS

Ticket pricing is one of the crucial factors for growing your event revenue. Once you know your event expenses and the no of attendees expected at the concert, add an extra margin to cover up additional expenses and set up your ticket price accordingly. Create multiple ticket types and seating combos to give your attendees the ultimate flexibility of choosing what's best for them and their group.

Pro-Tip: Choose to deploy early-bird discounts or surge pricing to sell out concert tickets online.

7. PICK YOUR EVENT TICKETING PARTNER:

Ticketing may seem like a small part of your event planning, but that's what facilitates your revenue stream generation. From the event management, revenue generation, branding, event ticketing features are the most preferred in the concert industry.

8. PROMOTE YOUR CONCERT

Online marketing channels have made event promotion simple and straightforward. You can post your events on social media, roll out contests, offer group discounts, create your event on Facebook and check how many will turn up for your concert easily. Apart from social media campaigns, use our email marketing integration to send out invites and access codes to VIP attendees weeks before the event.

9. POST CONCERT HIGHLIGHTS

Whether it's your first event or you're an expert at it, always capture memories or key highlights of your concert. It'll help you in two ways – you can see the results of your hard work and second, you can share it on social media to let people know about the success of the concert. So, if anyone missed your concert, they'll make it a point to attend your next concert for sure.

10. POST-CONCERT FOLLOW-UP

Build and maintain your relationship with your attendees even after the concert. Event presenters on board.

use our Email Marketing Integration to personalize their emailers as a post-event follow-up practice. A simple post-event survey or feedback form gives you an idea of what they thought about your event. With our Questionnaire & Surveys feature, concert managers asked their attendees all the right questions through logic-based questionnaires.

Once they become your loyal fans, their word of mouth will get you more success compared to any other promotion.

YOU MIGHT ALSO WANT TO ORGANIZE A MUSIC FESTIVAL?

Start with a plan of action!

From April until October the massive stages and multi-color festival tents rise from meadows and other sites throughout Europe. A full year of preparation precedes this process and that's why the first thing you need to do is lock the date and arrange the location for your festival. Take into account which other festivals might be organized in the region, so you won't have fierce competition and scheduling conflicts.

Once this has been arranged you start with your plan of action for the festival. In this festival plan of action you divide the tasks between the people in your organization and you determine the time schedule for the festival. You also record who your partners are and which suppliers you will be working with for the different parts of your festival.

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO ORGANIZE A MUSIC FESTIVAL?

After finishing the plan of action the next step to organize a music festival is to determine the budget. Budget control is one of the key qualities of a good festival organizer and a key part of festival management. The costs of a festival are variable and depend on a lot of factors. That's why a festival budget won't be a fixed document but will be adjusted along the way, moving budget from one cost item to another.

I do recommend to determine a realistic maximum spend in advance to work with. By doing so, you keep the costs of organizing a music festival controllable and make sure that certain cost items won't take a big slice from your total budget. After all, organizing a music festival for the first time often is all about making choices. Requesting quotes and offers from different supplies can give you a good image of the costs you will make per part of your budget.

Also i recommend to make an estimate of the number of expected visitors so you can organize your budget based upon the proceeds from ticket sales, consumption and food tokens, parking, transportation and possibly merchandise. It is most important that the costs and revenues are carefully weighed up so you won't see costs rise unexpectedly when you organize a music festival.

FESTIVAL MARKETING:

Organizing a music festival can't exist without it.

Music Festival Marketing is a key element when you want to organize a music festival. Without a good concept your festival won't stand out from the competition. Without good content you won't appeal your potential visitors. By including marketing in your process from the start you will look at things from another perspective. Distinguishing yourself in this saturated market is extremely hard for most festivals. Next to this, you probably have your hands full already with managing the production of the festival, which means having another task added might be a tad bit too much. That's why it might be a good option to consider working with an online marketing partner that can take the music festival marketing off your hands.

CONCEPT

Festivals that lack a good concept won't stand out from the crowd and have a harder time telling a contiguous story to their audience, making it harder to attract crowds. Thinking about what will be the unique selling points of your festival is essential to distinguish yourself and make your festival into a success. To organize a festival is all about telling a story and the concept is the foundation for it.

CONTENT

Posting content just for the sake of it doesn't cut it, ever. A logical storyline and structure in your content schedule will help you post more relevant content at the right time to your audience. A thorough online strategy, where your content planning is part of, will aid in knowing exactly what you have to post at each exact moment.

When you organize a music festival will transform you into an expert on various disciplines. But of course you don't want to become a Jack of all trades, master of none. Video, images and text are the foundation of your marketing campaign and for these skills also goes that the best results are delivered by employing the right people for the task. For your artwork, it's best to ask for quotations from different designers and explain to them what you want to have in a clear design briefing. All things created are part of the content creation for your festival and it's a lot of work to handle. If your mind starts reeling at the idea of having to add another task to your to-do list, it might be a better option to outsource the music festival marketing altogether so you can do what you do best, and keep your festival production going in full swing.

ADVERTISING

Reaching the right audience is not something that comes naturally. Especially when you organize your festival for the first time, you won't have a huge fan base that's instantly reachable through your channels. You need to build it. That's where festival advertising comes to play. You reach your audiences in different ways and sell your message outside of your own. This makes advertising and essential part of music festival marketing

THE PRODUCTION OF YOUR OWN MUSIC FESTIVAL

To organize a music festival revolves around working with the right partners during the production. The production of your festival mostly is divided into different branches, like the site production and pre-production of the stage design, engineering et cetera. Next to this, we also made a full list of suppliers, partners and other parts of the production to make your festival a success.

SITE PRODUCTION

The site production includes everything that has to do with the festival site and terrain. Think of infrastructure, power supplies, fencing, toilets, plumbing, water, tents, road plates, cash registers, wooden decks, trash cans, picnic tables, lockers and so on. In the plans you make for the site production, you take into account everything regarding the regulations from the fire brigade, police and crowd management.

Many parts of the site production plan are key for your festival's permit application and safety analysis. That's why it's very important that this is done thoroughly when you're organizing a music festival. For smaller festival organizers it can be doable to do it yourself, but generally speaking it's best to involve an expert partner to make sure everything runs smoothly during the lead-up to and during your festival.

PRE-PRODUCTION

The transformation from a meadow with some festival tents planted within the site perimeter to a full-blown immersive experience relies heavily on which partners you employ for your production. Throughout the years, a vast network of suppliers emerged specifically for the festival industry, consisting of companies specialising in acoustics, light- and stage engineering. Which companies and partners you hire largely determines how your visitors will experience your music festival. It's safe to say that during pre-production everything is made ready for the final product: The festival that you will be organizing! Think about elements such as the stage design, creating decorative elements, programming the light shows and creating and adjusting the lay out for the sound systems.

SUPPLIERS

To get your full music festival production in order, we have made a list of suppliers to use during organizing your own music festival that you can find below.

SERVICE PROVIDERS AND INTERMEDIARIES

-Website & app developers

-Designers (artwork)

-Marketing agency

-Booking agencies

-Ticketshop provider

-Accreditation and event planning tools

-Photographers, videographers

-Tokens and wristbands supplier

-Security/crowd management/facility management

-Walkie-talkies

-Emergency plan

-Traffic control

-Hospitality

-Artist handling

-Transportation

-Accommodations

-Crew coordination

-First aid

-Festival crew

-Event- & bar staff

-Ticket scanners

-Food & beverages

-Visitor catering/Foodtrucks

-Bars

-Crew catering

-Cleaning company

-Entertainment (dancers, promo girls, fire breathers, stilt walkers, etc.)

ON-SITE TECH & ENGINEERING

-Stage & Theme production

-Decoration

-Light & LED-screens

-Sound system & acoustics

-Light operators/Sound engineers

-VJ

-Pyro & FX

I-nflatables

-Site crew (Build up tents, stage, scaffolding)

-Stages

-Fireworks

-Cables & Cable trays

-WiFi, internet & mobile network

FACILITIES

-Equipment rental companies

-Site accomodations (Central post, dressing rooms, media room)

-Cash registers

-Toilets/Sanitation

-Power generators

-Fencing

-Barriers/crowd control fences

-Vehicles

-Gators

-Platforms/Genies, Telehandlers

-Forklift

-Cars

-Lockers

-PIN terminals

HOW TO ARRANGE THE PERMITS

The permits required when organizing your own music festival may differ per municipality. It's best to inquire with the local government which permits are needed. They can help you forward on which festival permits are needed. As the process of getting a permit differs per city, region and country that's the safest way to go.

Make sure to start all procedures in time, some municipalities have deadlines for applying for permits, which means that applications after the deadline won't be taken into consideration.

FESTIVAL STAFF:

Which people work at your festival?

When you advance with organizing your own music festival, you need to consider which people you wish to employ. Many festivals rely on their volunteers, but you also have to deal with hiring crew like security, first aid, catering staff and so on. These people must all have certain certifications or finished courses, so it is important to inquire about this. There are many suppliers that can aid and support you in finding the right crew and assist with crowd management and security. Also important is managing the crew accreditation, the reception and the coordination of festival staff to keep things running smoothly when you're organizing your own music festival.

-Security guards

-First aiders

-Fire patrol

-Stage managers

-Artist handling

-Ticket scanners

-Cashiers

-Locker handout

-Catering crew

-Sound techs

-Light operators

VJs

-Central post crew

-Merchandise sellers

-Cleaners

-Photographers

-Videographers

-Online content creators and -marketeers

-Infrastructural crew

-Volunteers