There’s a temptation when promoting a show — whether you’re the artist, the venue, or an agency running the ads — to aim narrow. “We need to reach people who already love this band.” That feels efficient. It is also, almost always, how rooms end up half-full.

The instinct is wrong because the audience for a typical show isn’t actually made up of fans. Or rather: it is, but only partly. After watching this play out across thousands of events, the breakdown for most shows looks something like this:

  • 25% — Fans of the act. The diehards. They were going to come whether you ran ads or not.
  • 25% — Fans of the fans. The friend who got dragged along. The partner. The romantically hopeful. The “I’m in town and you said let’s do something” plus-one.
  • 25% — Fans of the genre, not this act. People who like jazz, like indie rock, like comedy, and trust the venue or the genre enough to roll the dice on a name they don’t know yet.
  • 25% — Seemed like a good time. Friday night, a drink in hand, a poster they walked past, a recommendation from a barman. They’re not here for this; they’re here for something, and this looked alright.

This applies to most shows. The exceptions are obvious — a sold-out arena tour by a household name skews much more toward quarter one, a charity gala skews toward “supports the cause” — but for the bread-and-butter live music, comedy, and cultural events that fill mid-size venues every weekend, this breakdown is roughly what you’re working with.

And it has a clear, immediate consequence for how you market the show.

Each quarter wants a different message

If you target only the first 25%, you reach people who were already coming. The ROI on those impressions is essentially zero — they were a sure thing. You spent budget reminding them of something they already knew.

The other 75% require different messaging:

  • The fans of fans don’t care about the band. They care about the night out. They want to know it’ll be fun, that the venue is decent, that there’s somewhere to grab a drink, that they won’t feel like the only person who doesn’t know the lyrics. Sell them the experience, not the artist.
  • The genre fans want to know this is credible in the genre. Where else has the act played. Who they’ve shared a bill with. What the sound is like. They’re not committed — they’re sampling — and they want a reason to think it’s worth the gamble.
  • The “good time” quarter doesn’t care who’s playing at all. They want to know the date, the location, the vibe, and roughly what it costs. They’re shopping for a Friday night, and you’re a candidate.

Run an ad campaign that only speaks to quarter one and you’ve effectively cut your potential audience by 75%. Run a campaign that speaks to all four, and the math changes completely.

What this means if you’re a promoter

You almost certainly have lookalike audiences and interest targeting set up around the artist and similar artists. That’s fine. It’s just the floor, not the ceiling.

The campaigns that move the needle on a half-empty room are usually the ones aimed at the bottom three quarters:

  • Geo-targeted “things to do this weekend” placements that don’t lead with the artist name
  • Genre-fan retargeting from your own past audiences (the people who came to the last similar show, regardless of who was playing)
  • Venue-trust campaigns — “you’ve had a good time at our place before, here’s what’s on Friday”
  • Plus-one bait — content that gives the diehards something shareable to send their friend, partner, or maybe-date

The diehards will hear about the show through their own channels. They almost always do. Spend disproportionately on the people for whom your show is one option among many.

What this means if you’re an artist

The instinct to scream into your existing fanbase is comforting, because it works — they reply, they buy tickets, they make you feel loved. But they’re already coming. The hard work is reaching the other three quarters, and that’s harder for you to do directly than it is for the venue or the promoter, because your existing audience trusts you on you, and the other three quarters don’t yet know who you are.

A few specific moves that help:

  • Make sure the venue has assets they can use to sell to their audience, not just yours. A clean horizontal poster. A 15-second video clip that works without sound. A two-line description that doesn’t assume the reader has heard of you.
  • Lean on the openers and the bill. The other acts on the night each bring their own quarter-one. A well-curated bill effectively triples the diehard pool.
  • Write copy that works for someone who doesn’t know your music yet. “Headlining artist So-and-So, with support from X and Y” is meaningless to a stranger. “An evening of [genre], starting at 8pm, with three acts” is something a stranger can decide about.

You’re not trying to convert quarter four into quarter one. You’re trying to get them in the room. Once they’re there, the show converts them — or it doesn’t — but that’s a problem for the live experience to solve, not the ad campaign.

The wider point

Targeting feels like efficiency. “I’m not wasting impressions on people who won’t convert.” But for live events specifically, the people who won’t obviously convert are most of your room. The audience for a typical show is built out of overlapping circles, not a single bullseye, and the campaign that treats it as a bullseye reaches a quarter of the audience and leaves the rest to chance.

Aim wider than feels comfortable. Trust that the diehards will turn up regardless. Spend most of the budget on the people who need a reason — and give them one.