#MUSICIANS: 5 tips for planning a successful tour
Planning a tour can be daunting, so this simple guide is just what you need to get on the road with less stress and on the way to more success.
A huge element of touring is building an audience and fan base. This can not only take years, but multiple tours as well. There may be a big audience or a really excited promoter out there that hasn’t met you yet, or other bands similar to yours that have had success in a specific town or region that can keep the wheels spinning on the pavement.
In order to plan a successful tour, you’ll want to address the tough questions first, then get to planning and promoting. Here are five tips for success along the way:
1. Set a goal, ask questions, and look at your data
Travelling is a lot of fun, but a tour is a lot more than just going on vacation – you need a reason to go, and an objective to achieve.
Why tour? It is expensive, so you better have a really good reason for doing it – it’s not just about band bonding and getting your chops up. Do you have a new release coming out? Are you trying to boost your online presence and social media numbers? Does your fan base prefer physical merch over downloads? Does anyone even listen to you in Kamloops? How about the bands you could gig swap with; do they have a fanbase there?
Don’t be afraid to drill down and ask some tough questions to make sure your tour goal makes sense – financial considerations aside, you want to realistically get to the point of knowing what it is you want to achieve by hitting the road.
A good place to help assess this is your own online stats. Spots like the ‘Reports’ tab in your Bandzoogle account and your Google analytics; even your Facebook data: look at fan location information when considering your tour route.
If you have landing pages set up on your site as well, these can be really handy – from list building to music sales to Smart Links, data from landing pages combined with your page stats can really help you to drill down all the reasons that touring is a good idea.
Ask yourself: if you don’t see a lot of traffic for your music in Kamloops, is that okay with you? Is Kamloops a place where you’d like to become well-known or do you have that gut feeling that you could develop a solid fanbase there? Perhaps it’s a location between shows that you know you already have an audience for? Did other bands you talked to have a good turnout there?
2. Take the time to plan, plan, plan
Doing even a small regional tour of half a dozen shows is a ton of work before you even hit the pavement, so it’s really important that you give yourself the time to put it all together.
For just booking shows you should contact venues at a minimum of three months before you plan on playing (some places need at least six months), and the promotion wheel for your tour needs months of time to gain momentum (website, images, socials, posters).
Lots of stuff like flights, accommodations, etc., also need to be booked well in advance. You’d be surprised at how fast six months can go by when planning a tour, so be realistic with the time logistics. Don’t plan things last minute, because this adds a whole new layer of panic and stress that can easily be avoided.
Everyone needs to be on board with the plan, and other bands you’re playing with have their own things going on, so give yourself and them time to make it work properly.Don’t risk what could be a great tour because you didn’t give yourself the space to make it happen the way it should.
3. Get that ‘linchpin’ show for your tour
When contacting venues, never just say “we’re going to be out in your town for all of September, so give me a day to play any time in that month and we’ll play it!”
Your best bet with landing gigs with venues is to be specific with dates that you are available to play. They’re not planning your tour (you are!), so don’t make them work for it. But how can you be specific when you want to book 20 shows in a row across half the country? This is where the ‘linchpin’ show comes into play.
When you start booking, don’t look at every show at first. Instead, look at booking just one show you 100% KNOW you have to play on this tour; this is the pin that holds the wheels on the tour van.
What constitutes a linchpin show is really up to you; maybe it’s the city where you’ve got lots of radio play, or the town where you know you’ll have a great draw, or the city where you’ll be spending the most amount of time. The variables are endless – just be sure to choose a spot that you absolutely have to play there at some point on the tour.
Whatever the reasoning, focus on booking that one show for the tour first. Consider where that show would most likely be on your potential travel schedule (start, middle, or end of tour) and pick 2 or 3 dates max that you could play in that location.
When you reach out to that first venue:
- Do some venue research beforehand – most have websites or social pages with details on how to book a show through their venue. Follow their booking instructions to the letter.
- Check their event calendar – you don’t want to suggest a date the venue has already booked with someone else.
- Keep correspondence short but detailed – mention all the bands playing, style, short bios, and the specific dates you have in mind to play their venue.
Once you have the linchpin show booked, you will find booking all your other shows around it is much much easier.
Having a show already booked helps venues to see you’re serious about gigging in their area, and you’ll have a better idea of when you can play other cities and towns, and which directions you’ll need to go in for travel. Just reach out to venues in cities and towns around that location and time, and work your way out.
4. Get organized and be realistic
Boom! You have a map on your wall, with a pin in every town you want to play, you’re ready to reach out to venues, you have a line up ready, this is going to be great!
Of course it is – but remain mindful of the two things that can break your dream tour before it starts: lack of organization, and unrealistic expectations. Manage both these angles to get a handle on the logistics.
This is when you want to start a general budget because you are going to want to get a realistic idea of costs. Your three biggest expenses will be accommodation, travel, and just general life costs, like, well… eating, or band per diems (daily allowances).
Make spreadsheets for potential towns and venues with their contact info, and possible accommodations – Google Drive is great for this as it’s really easy to share and update across far distances.
Look at that map and figure out how far you have to travel between your potential shows – are you flying or renting a vehicle? Billets, hotels, or motels? How long will this take, and how long can you or your band get off work?
You will need insurance – did you think of that? Nothing ends a tour more painfully than broken or stolen gear; insurance will mitigate that risk and reduce anxieties on the road about your precious backline.
Be brutally realistic about the kind of audience draws you can make when you go on tour. If you have never played a town before, and you’re an unsigned indie artist, don’t be shocked if there aren’t as many people as you wanted at some gigs. That’s fine – touring is cumulative, and it’s a sprint, not a marathon.
For show earning estimates aim low – then you won’t be disappointed if the turnout isn’t great, and if it’s better than you anticipated, everyone wins!
5. It ain’t over ‘til it’s over
Aaaand… you’re done! Back home, rentals returned, the dog / cat / python is ecstatic you weren’t gone forever, and you’re still coming down off of that incredible feeling of really having done something to move your music forward.
Definitely take a few days to decompress, but try not to sit for too long; there are a few things you’ll want to do when all is said and done.
The first is, work to secure future tours – you were right about Kamloops, they loved you there! Be sure to send out a quick thank you to the venues and/or promoters that supported you, through email or socials, with a quick thank you note: “we really loved playing your space, thank you for the opportunity, we can’t wait to come back!”
You spent all that time establishing relationships with the venues beforehand, and ,like all relationships, you need to cultivate those connections to make sure that when you do go back, it’ll be even better than the last time.
Second, post-tour is a really great time to reach out to your fans and thank them for showing up and supporting you. Your music is still really fresh in their minds, so strike while the iron is still hot.
I know, I know, we all get all those emails saying “without you we couldn’t have done it” from other bands we ourselves are fans of, and yes, it’s a tired cliché. But just because it’s a cliché doesn’t make it less true: touring is about that connection with new and long-term fans of your music. Without fan support, you’re not even dragging your gear to the flight gate.
Fans are a huge part of your journey, so don’t leave them out at the very end. Consider targeted email campaigns to the locations you played, with a message about why playing their city or town was so special, and let them know you’ll be back.
Third, use all your newly found organization skills to make sure that you have crossed your t’s and dotted your i’s with rentals and your financials. Assess your show and merch earnings, review your expenses, and if you didn’t pay the gig swap artists or openers at the venues, calculate balances owed and pay out ASAP.
Tour margins are often really tight, so accounting is often the most uncomfortable aspect of this, but don’t procrastinate; nothing is worse for future tours than leaving other artists hanging. Just like you, they have bills to pay and you could very well be depending on them to pay out for shows you play with them down the road.
Finally, well… What’s next? Think about doing a little post-mortem chat with yourself, with your band, or anyone else who was on the road with you.
Again, be honest: where did it work, and where could it be better next time? Could you be tighter with your travel times or in the ways you traveled? What places or expenses were more expensive than they needed to be? Where will you aim next in terms of touring, and where would you go back to in a heartbeat? Could you use a roadie?
Every tour is a step into the next one. Cherish the good things and do them again, but make a point to correct as many pain points as possible for the next round.
No one ever gets touring 100% right, even touring veterans. There are always too many variables to make any tour the ‘perfect’ tour. But experience and dedication can make the next tour better, or at least make you more prepared for all the wild ups and downs of life on your musical road.
