As many of you know, there’s a great piece on the CIYH website that will help you fill seats. It’s called “8 Ways to Always Fill the Room.” Here’s “Way” #4, which covers how to create demand for seating by developing beneficial relationships with worthy local organizations.
#4. Create an “all seats have been reserved” status to build demand
Connect with a few worthy local organizations. Tell them about your concert series. Either offer a pair of free seats, or ask them if they'd like to be on a waiting list for a pair of free seats if you don't get RSVP's for all your seats.
Upsides:
1. you fill the room
2. increase merch sales
3. boost your invitation list for future shows
4. your guests talk up your series to their friends
5. the organization might talk you up to their nice patrons.
Here's how it works.
If you have enough seating capacity to offer free seats well before the event, go ahead and reach out to a couple of worthy organizations. Be sincere in your desire to learn about their mission.
Perhaps offer these available free seats to a couple of different organizations for each concert.
If you’d prefer instead to offer free seats only as your show approaches when it’s clear whether you’ll have unfilled seats, then develop a waiting list of worthy organizations who can line up some of their folks on standby to accept your free seating at the last minute.
For this approach, take a count of unreserved seats one week before the concert. Then confirm that you’ve got ready takers from among the organizations. And then send an email to your invitation list, and your tribe can do the same.
Your email can say, “All of our seats have been reserved. If you'd like to be first on our waiting list in the event of a cancellation, let us know right away."
You'll sometimes flush out some folks who were on the fence and you can place them on your RSVP waiting list.
Three days before the concert, work from your RSVP waiting list and your organization waiting list to fill the room, and contact the fortunate recipients. It’s a relatively easy way to forever eliminate empty seats if you’re willing to roll up your sleeves and connect with local worthy organizations.
Whenever you can say to your invitation list that you have reserved all your seats, you'll create credibility for future shows. And more importantly, you will always fill the room with either paying concert goers or guest-listed folks from the worthy organizations. Each time you fill the room, it's a huge boost to the energy level for both the artist and concert goer.
So use guest listing as an effective tool to fill the room and create future demand. (Important -- disclose your guest listing measures with the artist as part of the booking offer, and don’t unnecessarily offer free seating at the expense of the artist’s pocketbook.)
Lastly, avoid having actual empty chairs at your concerts due to cancellations. Set up fewer chairs than the number of people you expect to attend. If everyone shows, have extra chairs nearby that someone can quickly set up in a good viewing spot that you already planned for those chairs.
[Click here to read the full “8 Ways” piece.]
Next post: Post-concert reachouts to guests
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