How to Promote a Drag Show

I am continually surprised by how poorly LGBT events (and drag shows in particular) are promoted.

However, instead of reading people to filth complaining on Facebook, I realized that the marketing basics may not be common knowledge to everyone.

So, in the interest of helping all LGBT events succeed, here are the the basics of promoting a local drag show, according to me:

Overview — there are the three main components of promoting most drag shows:

1. Communicating basic show information.
2. Making sure that the venue acknowledges that the show is happening.
3. Having the entire drag cast actually tell people about their gig.

1. Show information

Before promoting a drag show, figure out these five things:

1. Venue: Where are we showing up? What is the full address of the venue?
2. Price: Is there a cover charge? What about drink specials? If there’s no cover, then say so.
3. Host: You don’t need a full cast list, but it’s hard to promote a show without a host. They are the anchor for the event.
4. Door time: When is the earliest that people can show up for the event? If the venue opens up long before showtime, pick either the start time of a drink special (if any) or one hour before showtime.
5. Show time: Respect your audience and tell people when the show actually starts.

Why advertising a show’s start time matters: Show start time is often missed in promotions, but really important.

There’s nothing more irritating than showing up for a 10 p.m. drag show that actually starts at midnight (or a 10 a.m. brunch that starts at 1 p.m.) If your cast is running late, at least get on the mic and start warming up the crowd at the advertised time.

Also, if people get used to a reoccurring show starting 2 hours late, then you can’t actually start on time without your regulars missing out.

Consider asking the venue to promote a drink special that ends right before showtime — that’s a great way to get people to the bar earlier.

Also, the list above seems super-basic, but you’d be surprised how many flyers fail to list a venue, don’t mention any performers, or omit show start time.

Make it easy for people to show up and pay you money.

Money woes: If there’s something unusual about your venue, like no ATM nearby, then mention this as part of the social media posts.

There’s one particular drag brunch venue in Baltimore that doesn’t have an ATM anywhere within walking distance. To make things worse, they don’t carry singles so you have to wait for the drag queens to cash their singles at the bar before getting change for tips.

This is unprofessional and unnecessarily prevents the cast from maximizing their tips. If we need to bring cash to the venue, let us know.

More about the flyer: Your full show information needs to be on a Facebook event page and a show flyer for every event. If you don’t have Photoshop, then use PowerPoint to create your flyer and save it as a .jpeg file. Ask your performers to provide you with a professional photo as part of the signup process.

Also, tag your performers in your social posts. Most people aren’t going to hunt down people’s names to tag them in show photos — help others promote your cast and show.

2. Venue promotion

When a venue agrees to host a show, it should also agree to promote the event (or acknowledge its existence!)

At least one week before the event, the venue should:

1. Post the show information on the venue website.
2. Create a Facebook event for the show or reshare the Facebook event created by the show host.
3. Post a flyer with the show information on its social media accounts (Instagram/Facebook) and repost the day before the event.

Why this matters: If someone hears about a reoccurring drag show, the first thing they typically do is check the venue website and social media accounts. If there’s no mention of the event, people will assume that the show information is wrong or outdated.

You would be shocked by the amount of long-running weekly drag shows and brunches where the venue has zero mention of the event online. It’s a common, and yet extremely unprofessional issue that reflects poorly on both the venue and the show host.

3. Performer promotion

Finally, all of the drag performers (including the show host) need to do a bare minimum amount of promotion on social media:

• Post a flyer with the show information to Facebook and Instagram.
• Even if the performer has an “artistic” or highly-curated Instagram feed, they still need to at least post the flyer to their Instagram and Facebook stories every day during the week of the event.

It is very hard for me to understand why performers who work for tips do not do everything in their power to increase the number of people at the event. Even Beyonce promotes her shows, so it is inexcusable for a local performer to skip this step.

Show hosts should require cast members to promote their events or dock pay.

Also, remember that people who hear that so-and-so is performing at a show will go to that queen’s social media profiles to get details. If there’s nothing there, we’ll assume that there’s no show going on.

Bonus: Use a template to create your show flyers and give each performer a flyer where they have the large “featured” image (here’s an example). Queens are more likely to share an image where they are the featured performer.

Specific Tips for Drag Brunch

All of the items above apply for drag brunch — I recently went to a drag brunch show where the event was not posted on the venue website or social media. Even drag brunch host did not mention her own show on social media. I literally had to message the host to confirm that the show was going on!

99% of people will not go through that effort, so don’t be that lazy queen.

In addition to the basics, here are other tips for drag brunch:

1. Give it a web presence

People who go to drag brunch are often tourists or straight women who won’t necessarily know the performers or follow them on social media. That is why it is very important to have your event on the venue website, ideally at its own subdomain (restaurant.com/dragbrunch).

2. Create social media profiles

Give your drag brunch its own Facebook page, event page, and Instagram account. Update these accounts with the most recent flyers for your event every week. Don’t worry about not getting a ton of followers — the purpose of these pages is for people to confirm the basic event info and get directed to the ticket page.

Be sure to ask your audience to tag your event in their photos and ask permission to repost the best shots. Then tag the performer, event account, and the photographer. This creates more buzz and links back to your page.

Also, the title of your event page needs to include the words “drag brunch” — that’s what people search for. Oh, and tag your performers in every flyer (I can’t stress this enough).

3. Sell tickets

You need to sell tickets for your drag brunch and have people pay some type of deposit via Eventbrite or another booking platform. If you don’t want to charge a cover, then allow people to apply the reservation fee toward their tabs.

There are many benefits to charging a cover or deposit:

• Paying for tickets makes it much more likely that people will actually show up, and not skip brunch to sleep off a hangover (or use your event as a back-up for something else).
• Ticket sales allow you to see whether you need to do a heavy promotional push in the days leading up to the event.
• Tickets allow larger parties (birthdays/bridal showers) to plan.

Bonus: Consider selling “packages” where people celebrating events can pay extra for “shout-outs” or special on-stage attention for their group. People planning for birthday parties and birthdays will actually pay $100’s of dollars for that.

Finally, consider giving each drag queen a unique promotional code that gives customers a small discount.

This will allow you to gauge which one of your cast members is actually getting people in the house — booking that “boring” girl may be worth it if she can actually fill seats. You can also offer bonuses to cast members that bring in a certain amount of people.

Try things out, and reward those who help promote the event successfully.

There are many other things that you can do to promote a brunch — like reaching out to publications or bloggers (hi!) but these are the basics. If you do everything covered in this post, you’ll be ahead of 95% of events. Good luck, and let me know if any of this helps! 💃