How To Pitch Effectively To Land Music Work (Part 1)

What do you do when trying to get gigs? All too often bands are using Facebook messenger or DM’s trying to land a gig, but they aren’t exactly the best mediums to do so. Using social media as a means to land business opportunities isn’t exactly what it was made for, but rather being social and building relationships! This article is all about how to make your pitches more effective.

Photo by Jose Francisco Morales on Unsplash

Communication Tone

Your tone of communication might be the most important part of making a pitch successful. No matter what medium, how you come across is the most important aside from what you offer. Even if you come across as super informal in an email, you may be written off simply from the way you’re writing. I’d much rather receive a Facebook message written very professionally than an email poorly written when considering having your band play at my hypothetical venue!

It is a business interaction, so try treating it as such! It doesn’t have to be super dry, but it’s definitely better to err on the safe side. The manager or whoever is in charge wants to know if you’ll be mature/professional enough to get the job done, and done well!

I try to keep the wording at a 6th or 7th grade level to make sure I come across very clear and understandable; using big words actually work against you as counterintuitive as that sounds. All it does is confuse the reader at best, and makes you look arrogant at the worst!

So, this means proper grammar and punctuation. No slang or “text message” versions of words like “u” for “you” and “r” for are. Again, this all reflects on how you are perceived!

The Best Medium

The most common, most professional means to pitch is through email. Email is the standard for professional communication, and lets you and the person you’re sending the email to keep organized. It saves time on their end to glance through your email in order to see if it's is worth reading or tending to, so this is the preferred way to communicate!

If you want to be in the best light possible, email is the way to go. Sending an instant message on social media may have you perceived as unprofessional, and that you didn’t take much time or effort into it; emails have this unspoken understanding that they are well crafted, well put together pieces of information, at least for the initial email. After the initial email it’s more down to communication and understanding but maintaining the professional perception.

Even if your “brand” is brash and on the nose, it’s best to keep things on a respectful and professional (have I used the word professional enough? 😂) level. While this may be the way you want to be perceived from your audience, the people in charge of events or whatever it is you’re pitching to wants to see that you aren’t going to be a headache to work with.

Add Value

On top of being professional through email, you’ll want to include a few things: what you want, your past work, and how you can add value. On top of that, I like to go above and beyond and make an entire website page dedicated to pitching specific to each client/person it’s going to. I stole this idea from Levi Allen in this video and I can’t think of a better way to pitch other than in person!

This does a few things: it shows how dedicated you are into your craft and the work you’d like to do for your client, very clearly shows everything involved in the project including anything you want to show, and it’s a fun way to take in all of the information.

If you don’t have a website (which you should) and can’t or don’t want to make one, you can make a PDF document instead if you have an eye for graphic design (it’s easier than you think to make a decent looking document!). This would serve the same purpose!

It separates you from all of the others in the same position as you when coming to your potential client. I won’t go and explain all the benefits of doing this when you can simply go watch that video instead!

Although I don’t see many people doing this now, if it does become mainstream, I don’t think it will get cliché; it can be shaped and personalized to each situation, and it’s a much better way of communicating the entire idea through email because it’s customizable.

Don’t get me wrong, it should NOT replace email, but the email can serve as a summary and introduction to what you put on the website page. They can read the email, decide if it’s something they want to look at further, and go from there.

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I like to call that "above and beyond" tactic a secret weapon because not everyone does it, and it’s extremely effective at pitching! So now you can do it too :) Good luck on getting that gig/job you’re pitching for!

-Michael