Tonite I went to a Darryl Worley concert – for free. In fact, when my wife told me this morning that we had to go to the kids’ Vacation Bible School evening mixer, I was less than enthused. But when she told me the real Darryl Worley was going to be performing a live concert there – my eyes perked up. How could that be?
(The answer is simple – this is Tennessee) :)
So there we are in the parking lot of the church and Darryl Worley is playing under a tent. Following him are a few other acts – otherwise the entire event was pretty family focused and centered on food and kids games. But that’s not the point. (Although the idea of a huge music star playing at a local church “picnic” is pretty cool.)
The point is Darryl Worley and these other two acts had an incredible opportunity to send people to their website to get on their mailing list. Now Darryl Worley is not hurting for fans – so this is probably not something he would do, but for you or me this is Gold.
Whatever you are. . .a musician, magician, poet, speaker or even street performer this is something you should be doing. One thing that’s great about performing live is the visual experience that aids the audio. A song on the radio might not be too catchy, but hear it among hundreds of dancing fans and you’ve got a new experience. Well, that experience likes to be remembered.
People love capturing memories. So in that manner – record your public performance and offer it to the crowd for free if they go to your website and download it. And while they are there, make the give you their name and e-mail to get access to the file. Imagine going to a concert in the park and being given the .mp3 recording of it for free. How cool.
These music artists who performed tonite may have created fans. But without the ability to reach those fans in the future – they’ve built nothing. The hope that people buy your album that comes out next fall is the same whether you gave a live concert or not. It’s still just hope. But get them on a list and you can tease them to death until you’ve built up enough anticipation they absolutely want to buy it.
If live events aren’t for the sole purpose of creating fans – then what are they for? And if you’re going into a live event without a plan to back-up that event – you may as well not go.
Have a moment when you could have used recorded the audio or video but didn’t? I’d love to hear about it. Leave a comment!