When I think back to the evening and the success that it was, the rewards of it definitely out weigh the time and energy put into it. While we were preparing for the concert, I found myself wondering what the response would be, would people attend or would Shaun be performing for a handful of people. Nothing could have prepared me for the response that we received.
Our journey to the concert date looks as follows:
Early November an email was sent asking if Shaun would be interested in coming to our area for a concert. With a quick response from Micah, and an approval from our pastoral staff, a date was set.
6 WEEKS PRIOR:
Our worship pastor and I sat down in his office and went through the helpful list of suggestions of ways to promote the concert that was included with the contract and rider.
Using graphics and ready made posters from Shaun's marketing material, 100 of these posters were created for distribution:
The posters were set out in our Welcome (Information) Center for people to take to help spread the word.
With our seating capacity at 300, we printed 350 tickets knowing that on the night of the concert, not everyone who picked up a ticket would end up coming to the concert.
4 WEEKS PRIOR:
Concert, information was displayed in the pre and post service message slides as well as printed in the weekly program, all of which continued to the day of the concert.
This video created by our worship pastor was played as part of the announcements:
This video created by our worship pastor was played as part of the announcements:
On our church website, we promoted the concert using the video above on
the homepage as well as a page with more information about with concert
information and Shaun's bio. See page here.
3 WEEKS PRIOR:
Mark and I loaded the kids in the car with the above poster in hand, we drove around town to coffee shops, local restaurants, and any other place featuring a "Community Events" board. We also left four posters at the local Christian Book Store which was displayed in their events/information section.
After a quick Google search of churches in the surrounding area, we gathered a list of 140 email addresses. I emailed this above poster out to churches asking them to inform their congregations of the upcoming concert and to please let me know if they had any questions. Two churches responded asking if I could send them a printed poster, easy enough.
A press release was sent to the local paper, which unfortunately was not published, and local radio stations were contacted about the concert, asking them to promote the concert.
Concert information was also placed on my blog, the church facebook account, personal facebook accounts of any who chose to share the information, and twitter.
1 WEEK PRIOR:
The information was again put out on the facebook accounts and twitter.
The night of the concert, we had four tickets left as the doors opened. We had done everything we could at that point, it was just time to wait and see.
Much to our delight, the auditorium was full. 265 people had come to spend an evening with us listening to Shaun's music.
The advertising cost was simply printing of the posters and tickets, and a couple of extra hours material distribution. Considering the response to the evening and the 24 children that found sponsors that night, it was well worth the little effort and energy that it took to get the word of Shaun's coming out.
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