SELL TICKETS AND GET PEOPLE IN THE ROOM. 

So, you’ve budgeted for the Fringe. You’ve written the show. Or at least, you’re writing the show. Now, you’re going to want people to come see it. Partly because your show is great and people should get to enjoy it. But also, because of that budget we did that does rely on people  buying tickets. 

Because let’s preface, having a good show isn’t enough. You can have the best show in the world and still perform to 6 people. You can also have an alright show and sell out every day. 

And a lot of that is down to luck but a lot of it is also down to promotion. 

But like everything at the Fringe, it’s very easy to throw money at the wrong things, copy what other people are doing, and end up overwhelmed and out of pocket. 

So let’s break it down. And this is a long one. I’m sorry. But it’s important. Do read this, but you can also scroll to the end for a cheeky little checklist to make sure you’ve done everything you need to do. 

WHAT ARE YOU ACTUALLY TRYING TO DO?

Before you jump in to booking a photographer, designing a poster and booking advertising, allow me to be a broken record. Let’s remember those goals you set, right? 

If you didn’t do some good old fashioned goal setting with us, may I point you towards our very first article in the series: How To Do The Fringe Without Losing Thousands. Everything goes back to 1) your goals and 2) your budget, especially your promotion. 

So, if you’re:

Building an audience – focus on volume and visibility (flyering, street presence)

Industry attention – focus on PR

A “big debut” – a bit of everything, but making it look and feel cohesive and high quality

Stage time – keep it simple, and ultimately cheap 

MARKETING BUDGETS (AND WHAT TO ACTUALLY SPEND ON)

From the budgeting you did, you should have a rough idea of your marketing budget. 

But there are a lot of things to spend money on here. The main ones to think about are:

Photography, poster design, print, outdoor advertising, PR, street team, social media. 

You do not NEED all of these though. 

A very rough way to think about it (from experience. This isn’t hard facts just my take):

Low budget (approx £150-400): DIY everything, prioritising doing your own flyering and organic socials. 

Mid budget (approx £400-£1000): A good photo, solid poster and decent print run. 

Higher budget (£1k+): add outdoor advertising and street team. 

Lets go through step by step what you might need to think about.

PHOTOGRAPHY (YOUR MOST IMPORTANT ASSET)

At bare minimum you need a good show image, which is likely also your poster image. This image will be on the Fringe website, on your venue website, in the print brochures, on your poster and flyers and all over social media. 

You may then want a handful of photos in a similar recognisable vibe to your lead image for press images and for social media content. Plus, for the back of your flyer. 

This needs to be good quality especially for the printed poster, so if you don’t know any photographers, ask around, ask your pals, ask on socials. Or email us and we’ll recommend some folk. Photographers are really varied. I’d expect to pay a minimum of £150, sometimes up to £600ish. So ask peoples rates, ask around, etc. 

(But, if you don’t plan to have big posters our outdoor advertising, then you can probably get away with an image taken on a decent phone. See why you needed to know your goals and budget etc?)

Worth noting you’ve probably already registered your show before thinking about this, but, usually you get until around the 22nd April to update the image before brochures go to print, so try to do that or at least remember to update the image online. 

Also people love new photos so here’s your first round of social content – the new image reveal. 

GETTING THE PERFECT POSTER DESIGN

No matter your budget, you likely want a poster. At bare minimum the poster can entirely be a social media graphic, but you probably want around 30 A3s to drop in to your venue at the very least. 

Here’s what your poster should include:

Lead image, your name, show name, venue, subvenue, show time, days off, QR code to ticket link (for print, don’t need that on socials), some quotes and/or accolades. 

And you’ll want an A3 version then a 4:5 or 3:4 social media graphic size. 

Keep it simple. It’s so easy to over complicate posters. 

If you fancy yourself quite artsy, you can do this on Canva or what ever free software you know well. And if it’s just for a social graphic and some venue print that’s probably okay. 

If you’re planning a big old print run of flyers, and/or some outdoor advertising, I’d probably use a designer. Again designers can range from around £150 to £6-700ish so ask people their rates, look at previous work etc. 

PRINTING FLYERS AND POSTERS

Now you have your photo and your poster design, you need to print ‘em. 

Check with your venue how many A3s they can take. It’s often around 30. So print them in a cheap local print shop and walk them to your venue. That’s a nice cheap expense we’re talking £30ish quid. 

Flyers, you need to work out quantity and get quotes. And the quantity depends on how many hours of flyering you’re doing, and how good you are at flyering. 

I tend to work on around 1.5 hours a day on average, and I tend to print about 1,500 flyers. I brief flyerers to be relatively sparse on handing out flyers and to focus on chatting. You might need more than this, and the more you buy the cheaper per flyer, but be realistic. 

And again find a local print shop as they’re usually much cheaper. Pace Print in Edinburgh is great. Plus Event Armoury in Edinburgh are really chilled about leaving flyers there so if you can only take 1 box and you’ve ordered 3 boxes you can leave 2 boxes behind til further through the Fringe. 

OUTDOOR ADVERTISING (THE BIG POSTER BOARDS)

So you know when you walk about Edinburgh and there’s massive posters everywhere you look?

They’re typically booked in and installed by out of hand. I’ll be honest, at the time of writing, there’s rumours it could be a different company. So I’ll update this section with more info once I have it!

But generally, this is one of the biggest expenses. If you have room in the budget, then it can be good to have. I do think it makes your show look all big and important. But it’s not essential. And can go wrong quickly. 

Based on the previous years out of hand system, the good spots are like buying glastonbury tickets. You need to be logged on and ready the second they go on sale. 

And picking a specific location is obviously more expensive than picking ‘anywhere in this Zone’. But I dunno… I don’t love the zone ones. It’s too big a risk for me personally. 

An alternative to one big poster board without knowing where it’ll be, is a set of 10 A3s on posters throughout a Zone, which is a less risky option. 

Again personally I often spend about £3-500 per show, usually on 2 big ish boards in specific locations. BUT, the show I’m working on are usually big debuts (often funded debuts), or shows that know they have a track record of selling tickets. 

STREET TEAM AND FLYERING 

Ok so, the dream here, is that you are a really good flyerer, and that you are free for an hour or two before your show starts, and that you don’t get nervous or weird before your show. Because that way, all you need is your flyers and you’ve saved yourself loads of money. 

But… not everyone is good at flyering or good at flyering themselves, or has that spare time. 

So, you can hire a flyerer. There’s a few flyering network Facebook groups, or you can post on Indeed etc. The going rate is around £15 an hour. And you want probably minimum an hour before your show. You’ll also want to look after this person and treat them well and help ‘em out sometimes and bring snacks because a good flyerer truly your best asset for promo. 

SOCIAL MEDIA

Organically posting on social media is, unfortunately, I’m sorry, absolutely necessary these days. You don’t need to have millions of followers or “go viral”, but you do need to post consistently. 

Post clips of your stand up, simple ‘talking to camera’ videos, and clearer calls to action. 

Make sure your sales link is somewhere obvious. 

And start now!

As a starting point, try thinking of 5 reasons why someone should come to see your show. And make that in to five different pieces of content. 

And quantity over quality. Posting often and consistently will always do more than one perfectly edited video. 

NOW WHAT?!

Ok that was a lot, even I see that. 

And that wasn’t even all of it, but it’s the basics. 

But don’t panic. You’ve got months. And promotion is something you can plan. But either way, you simply must start now. At the very least on some social media and thinking about the rest. 

Pre-sales at the Fringe are tough. The vast majority of tickets sold at the Fringe are on the day, often mere hours before the show. 

But pre-sales really do help. And even if not sales, that promo in the months leading up will have people at the very least thinking about your show, meaning that in August they’re much more likely to convert last minute. 

I like to aim for 10% sold before the Fringe starts, if you’re a goal oriented person like myself. 

And to try to summarise this, we’ve created a promo planner. A check box of all the things you may or may not need to think about (with some actual prices included). 

Click below to get the planner, plus the rest of our Fringe Survival freebies (the editable budget, an example press release and the tech rehearsal checklist), tick what you’ve already done, and start planning in the rest. 

And we’ll see you next month for press and reviews…