If you’re a major recording artist you may as well skip reading this. Popular musicians are equipped with teams of people that organize international tours in a blink of an eye; but for the 99.9% of the recording artist out there they don’t have that luxury, organizing an international tour is an absolute bitch. As very few are able to piece together international touring components on their own, even a fewer number can organize a tour that is beneficial. Indie bands aren’t suppose to specialize in these areas so don’t get discouraged. However to separate yourself quickly, to expand your marketing potential and possible sell more records, you have to dig in and set the tour on your own. This is doable but you have to be smart. To actually generate a successful international tour and benefit, start with these 5 tips:
- Get organized. HIGHLY organized!
As an indie group there are two things you have to manage- the music & the business. What separates a majority of indie artists isn’t the music, it is the business. Train yourself to become highly organized and detail oriented. This means graduating from the “hey man, our fans freakin love us” stage, into “our fans are 22-25 year old young professional females living in the Chicagoland area” stage. Let me explain. Know everything there is to know about your fans. Know the demographics, know their age, know their education level, know their purchasing behavior, and know their style. All of these components matter! Often bands can’t recite this information with any accuracy; but you will.
- Think like a businessman, and use business language.
Treat your band like a business. Businesses run effectively when they are specific and focus on the numbers. You should to. The key for international tours as an indie band is teaming up with a business. Businesses, rather than individual investors, can more easily bankroll tours as long as they see benefit. This is not an easy task, as businesses need to see a potential benefit with little to no risk involved. Getting organized as discussed in STEP 1, allows bands to evaluate accurate market information as opposed to guess-statements. Accurate information about your market demographics is speaking business language.
- Generate a hit list.
Based upon your market information generated in STEP 1, brainstorm about current businesses, products, or organizations that capture that same market. Better yet, think of businesses that want to obtain these demographics. For example- a new energy drink that is trying to obtain a certain female demographic, or an upstart shoe company that is looking to expand its product overseas. The key to generating a list is to be overly creative when identifying organizations, and to list as many as possible.
- Find the right sponsor.
As I said earlier, international tours are all about teaming with a business. These potential sponsorship/partnerships can prove beneficial for both parties. I can promise you this, there is ALWAYS a business out there looking to capture the demographic your band possesses; and a rapid growing trend for businesses to acquire this is through concerts. Let me give you an example I was involved with. I helped a group that was wanting to tour in country X, and in order to generate a sponsor to support the tour, I looked no further than the local government. This band was located in a city that had set up a sister city program with a major city in country X. I knew the local government was looking to set up business in country X, and those businesses wanted to capture a certain market demographic. Guess what? The demographic my client captured was the same demo the government wanted to acquire. After an Oscar winning sales pitch the appropriate government personnel, my client was heading to country X on someone else’s dime.
- Bankroll on someone else’s dime.
Having market demographics that parallel a certain business isn’t what gets you overseas, rather it is showing a business the benefit in teaming up with your band. You need to generate a tentative business plan on how your band can benefit a particular business if they invest in your travels. This isn’t complex information as it can be a timeline, tentative venues, promotional plans, or an estimate on how the business (or product) will be exposed. In doing so, an organization is more likely to partner/invest/or create a sponsorship package to help get your group from country A to country B.
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