Performance Marketing / Tour Support

Live shows are often the best way to develop a new artist and expose new music. Seeing a band live can be all it takes to convince their fans to buy a CD, a radio station to play their single, or a publication to review their album/demo. Therefore, tour support should be an integral part of your marketing plan. The term “tour support” is used in the music industry to define either:


The amount of money a record label gives an artist to help cover the costs of touring and keep/send them on the road.


The efforts of members of your business team (record label personnel, marketing reps, your manager, etc.) to promote your shows and take advantage of marketing opportunities surrounding a live performance.


For the purposes of this section, we’re going to focus on the second part of the definition, related to marketing. In this context, tour support isn’t just about marketing a tour as a whole, but also about marketing each individual performance separately, and marketing the artist around their live shows. So even if you are a local act playing a few shows in your hometown, this section is still of critical importance to you. In fact, this section is relevant for any artist, of any stature, anywhere-- as long as they’re playing some live shows. Tour support is definitely not just for those on a formal “tour.” That’s why I prefer to use the term “performance marketing.”

Performance marketing is a very involved process that begins a few weeks before every showdate and continues for about a week after. It also incorporates all the other elements of the music marketing mix (e.g. retail, radio, press, etc.) so you should make sure you have reviewed those StarPolish sections before reading further. You will be busiest surrounding your performances. Therefore, you may want to create a personal checklist to ensure that you cover all your bases in performance marketing.