Club Promotion Background
Everyone who has worked with Karma Ent Oriental Event’s has it’s background going back to early 2006. The launch area for us was Birmingham, selected as the focus point to start organising Oriental clubbing events. This, essentially, was the era before Facebook. A time where Friendster and MySpace had gained a saturation of the social media market.
They method of promoting your club event was to flyer on the street, put posters up in as many shops as you could and as a promoter go to as many club events as you could. Being a club promoter had requirements, almost like a job. The most social and outgoing people were the best club promoters, key members of university societies made great promoters because of their connections within various universities.
As a university promoter you would be expected to turn up to as many social events as you could. The organisers at Karma Ent typically targeted members within Birmingham Universities FECX society. It was important that we made an appearance at many of the social events as possible, even if it was a low number of people. Making as many connections yourself would make you a more successful promoter, allying yourself with anyone and everyone would make you a wanted promoter by many organisers.
Online Change
Mid-2006 the game began to change. Flyer and poster printing became nearly redundant. Halting flyer and poster printing became a useful cost cutting measure. Why spend money printer promotional material when you could republish for free online? The value of using online became a lot clearer. Group messaging became a simpler way of targeting a large amount of people and letting them know about your event a lot faster.
The sheer possibilities of using Facebook became clear. Add lots of people to your profile, create a event group, message as many people on your profile about your event and hope that it goes viral. Costs can be cut by not having to print flyers and posters and no lead times involved. Money can be saved by not having to travel to various events, time saved to focus on other projects and tasks. Facebook could turn anyone into a promoter, a virtual promoter.
The State of Club Promotion 2011
The power that social network Facebook commands now is clearly known, widely publicised for their growing profits and monthly growing active member figures. The question for promoters is “who isn’t on Facebook”. Not many people can reject that question. The appeal for promoters to stick to Facebook only to do all of their promotion has become the base for many.
Promoter strategy has now turned into adding as many people to their promoter account. Fast approaching the 4000 friend limit on Facebook is a job well done and well respecting in the promoter community. Socialising with individual people among 4000 friends has become a forgotten strategy. With the promise of commission per sale and creating events to invite all 4000 friends and spread the message a fast as possible with disregard for who is taking notice.
This can appear to be the “lazy way” of promoting. In the virtual age, should promoters remain virtual. What is the benefit of having a virtual club promoter who does not know the audience, never seeing any face to face, hardly saying more than “hello” to most of their virtual invitees. Why should club promoters be considered successful if they achieve 4000 friends on Facebook and bombard profiles with messages. It has now opened the doors to any faceless person behind a screen to promote a club event and be known as a promoter.
Facebook is the way forward, there is no doubt about that and the figures certainly point in that direction. But should club promoters not be one on the strategy that they should utilise to achieve sales. Combining the old methods of club promoting with new Facebook methods, could this not be more successful than the “lazy way”. If a faceless profile invites you to an invite without explanation, would you buy a book without an authors name or blurb, would you go to a club alone, would you walk into a shop that hid all of its products.
Club promoters need to engage with the customers. Applying standard sales techniques of showing face and confidence is a lost skill with many club promoters. Should this be allowed to carry on and decrease your ability as an events organiser to organise a successful event.