Marketing for Second Life Venues

Marketing your venue is important to both the venue and the performers you hire. I’m sure you would like to see that the money you are putting out to hire performers, pay tier and staff is being put to its best use. One of the ways to do that is to market your venue shows to get the best possible audience you can. As most of you are aware, I manage and am business partners with musician Seth Regan, also known as Mankind Tracer in Second Life. When we are promoting anything, the following are just a few of the things we do to get the information out there to the SL public.

One of the important ways you can market shows at your venue is to list them in Second Life events. This is a very critical step in marketing as the majority of fans are looking in events to see who is performing. You should list in events as early as possible. If you book the performer a month before they actually play then list it right then because the sooner you can, the closer to the top of the event listing for that time you will be. Make sure to ask the performers if they have any promotional text just for SL Events.

When you are hiring musicians to perform at your venue, consider the time you are booking them and have realistic expectations. In SL the most live shows are starting between 6pm and 8pm. There could be 40 other shows happening at the same time and there are only so many concurrent users to attend those shows. This makes marketing even more important because if people do not know what is happening at your venue then how will they show up?

In SL another great resource is SL event groups. You can join groups and send notices and group messages about your events. There are a plethora of groups out there like Musical Metaverse, Live Music 24, Shooting Star and many more. If you do not have many group spots left, you can create an alt and join the groups and then log into your alt 30 minutes before the show and send notices.

Seth Regan performing at To The Stars live music venue.

Social media is also another great way to market your shows. Facebook has tons of groups specifically for Second Life and SL Events. There are a lot of SLers that have Facebook accounts either as their avatar or under their real life name and they use FB as a way to communicate. There is Google Plus and Twitter as well but with both of those, you need to follow people for them to follow you back, there are few groups on G+ that are SL events related and you cannot have groups on Twitter. There is also Second Friends, an SL only social media website where you can create groups, a profile, blog and list events for free.

Another great marketing tool is booking performers back to back that play similar styles of music. Then you will get carry over from one performer to the next keeping people at your venue longer. Also, keep consistent events, even if it is just once a week for a couple of hours will let people know that they can count on your venue at those times to have performances.

These are just a few ideas on how to market the shows at your venue. You can also take cues from real life and adapt them to Second Life. Think outside of what everyone else is doing or not doing to come up with some fun creative ways to get the word out there and build up a regular crowd who come back week to week. Coming soon, Seth will be posting a follow up to this topic on his blog with even more great marketing tips for SL venues.

Second Life "Tribute" Shows

Today I ran across a group notice in Second Life that said:


Sat10th Nov =DURAN DURAN LIVE= 11.00 AM
.☺/ .: ★Ѡℍ◎:  ♫ DURAN DURAN in CONCERT ♫
./▌ .: ★ѠℍΔT: ♫Show ♪ by XXXXXXXX
./ \ .: ★Ѡℍ∈ᴙ∈: ✩XXXXX✩ 11.00 AM
THE POP ROCK GODS OF THE 80'S!  DURAN DURAN
WILL PERFORM LIVE THEIR BEST TUNES in THE DESERT!
AMAZING STAGE, INCREDIBLE LOOK ALIKE AVATARS!
BEST DURAN DURAN IN SL!

(names removed)

I have seen these sort of notices countless times. No where on this notice says that it is a recording being streamed into SL or that it is a "tribute" show. The way this notice is written is made to look like Duran Duran is actually performing live, when in actuality, it is a recording of a live Duran Duran show and there is nothing connecting this to the real Duran Duran.

I'm not a newb in SL, I get what it is and what they are doing and my question is... do they have the licensing to use the real Duran Duran's music and likeness? When I inquired to the owner of the company I was told that it was none of my concern.

I'm sure these people put a lot of time and effort into making avatars, doing lighting and putting on instruments. I've noticed that these shows do get people there and I think there is an entertainment value to them. However, they still need to be held accountable for their advertising and licensing.

This is not a live music performance, they should not be listed in Live Music in SL Events because there is nothing LIVE about the music, they should be stating that it is a "tribute" show.... saying "Duran Duran WILL perform live their best tunes" is false advertising because Duran Duran is not performing, it is only a recording of a Duran Duran performance.

I'm by no means saying these people should not do these "tribute" shows. What I am saying is advertise them as what they really are, make sure you can use the music, name and likeness legally and don't list them as Live Music when they are not.

I do encourage everyone to check out real live performers. There is a huge live music scene in Second Life and they need your support. Some of my favorites include Seth Regan (naturally), Maximillion Kleene, Tamra Hayden, The Follow (a 3 person live band) and many others. Just search the live music category in SL Events and you will find a wide variety of live performers of many genres and skill level. Check out several so you can get a feel for what is available.

My business partner, Seth Regan, also wrote on the subject of "tribute" shows: Seth's Blog

Musicians and Venues Working Together

In an effort to assist live music venues, many of which pay for their overhead out of their own pockets to provide live entertainment, Seth Regan (Mankind Tracer in SL) and I have recently started offering venues something which we believe to be a reasonable solution.

The first idea Seth had was to only have one tip jar for venue and musician. Since the majority of audiences tip the artists considerably more than the venues, Seth offered to automatically split the tips he receives with the venue and remove the venue tip jar completely. This could work to the venues benefit in several ways.

The first benefit of splitting the tips, using only Seth's tip jar, is that at a concert with 60 people or more in attendance (Seth's average draw) it can get very laggy. This way, people only have to find one tip jar.

Another benefit is that there will be less "tip that, tip this" in local chat. This allows people to socialize more with less interruption.

During the week, we approached the venue, Ground Zero, owned by our friends Thea and GMetal, about this idea. They were both very open to trying a something new. We decided to try it out that coming Saturday.

After the concert, we all got together on Skype, discussed the outcome and worked out the numbers. We found that the venue saw a 33% increase in tips. Also, Thea and GMetal reported that several people expressed to them how they enjoyed the lack of "tip reminders" in local chat and it was a much more fun and relaxed show with greater audience interaction.

With this success, Seth and I didn't want to rest on our laurels, so we decided to revisit something we had discussed in the past: Sponsorship.

We then approached long time live music venue owner Liz Harley at Key West, where Seth's next show was scheduled. We asked if she was open to the idea of not only having paying sponsors to reduce the cost she pays Seth as a booking fee, but to also try the tip split as well. After informing her of the success at Ground Zero, Liz was very receptive to trying a new approach.

Seth and I got to work and found three sponsors for that show.

I'm happy to say that this show was also a success! The venue made good tips from the split. Further, the reduced booking fee kept money in her pocket. Liz was very pleased at the outcome, as were the sponsors and the idea of having sponsors was well received by the people attending the show.

We have decided to continue on with this model of splitting tips and getting businesses to sponsor Seth's shows. We are also continuing our brainstorming to try to come up with new ways to help the venues reduce their out of pocket expenses.

While this model may or may not work for every venue and performer, I felt it was worth mentioning to perhaps encourage more ideas but also to just inform that there are different ways to do things.

If you own a business (SL or RL) and would like to discuss sponsoring Seth's shows, please contact me by email brandy@sethregan.com or message in Second Life (Kalli Birman).