When it comes to promoting a performance, repetition is your friend.
(Let me say that again…)
It’s important to realize that you message doesn’t always get through. I had dinner with 4 friends to whom I had mailed postcards and only 2 said they received them. What happened to the other 2? Maybe they got lost in the mail, or maybe their spouse threw them away, or maybe they didn’t recognize my face on the front of the postcard and threw it away themselves, or maybe I didn’t have the right address. Quien sabe?
Even people to whom I’ve hand delivered a postcard have said that they’ve misplaced the card and don’t know where to go to get tickets.
All this to say that it pays to repeat.
So one week after I sent out the mailing I sent out an email re-inviting all my friends to come see the show. It’s fast, easy — and compared to the cost of mailing postcards — it’s really inexpensive.
By the way, if you’re reading this before August 27, 2011 there’s still time to catch the show. This show looks like it will be one of my best. You can go to the Boulder International Fringe Festival site to order tickets for Gregg Tobo’s Magic and Prestidigitation Show. (Repetition, remember?)
These days I’m definitely running Alternating Current. Devoting time to marketing/Devoting time to magic.
I’m taking bits of the show out in front of real audience and testing them. I want everything to go wrong that can go wrong, and I want it to happen now instead of in front of a paying audience.
On Saturday, I performed a piece of magic that I’ve now performed 27 times, and something completely novel went wrong. Good. I figured out how to get back on track and salvage the performance, and more importantly I’ve figured out how to ensure that it won’t happen again. You can be a good magician if you never make the same mistake twice.
Meanwhile I’ve also been leaving little stacks of postcards in coffee shops around Boulder. Coffee shops seem to be where people go to learn about event in their community so most shops have a table or bulletin board where you can post (unless it’s a major corporate entity like Starbucks that likes to keep their shops looking uniform).
I’m surprised that I didn’t see more postcards for other Boulder Fringe performers. We’re less than 2 weeks away from opening and I expected to see lots of promo cards. Maybe everyone is late this year, or maybe they’ve decided to bet the bank on that newfangled Social Media.
Either way, I’m fine with that. It leaves the coffee shops wide open for me. (And I’ll be using Social Media too…)
