- Try and get into a good venue - This is my biggest tip. If you can get into one of the top five venues it will make your life so much easier. Especially Pleasance Courtyard or Summerhall. The reason for this is because they have contained areas of people you can flyer to. If you can avoid the Royal Mile it conserves some much needed energy. When flyering, stop and talk to the people and have a proper chat, don't just shove a flyer in their hand. That's why it helps to have a venue where you can sit down and have a good ten minutes with the people you're flyering. This genuinely gets bums on seats.
- PR - If you can afford a PR person then do it. Normally they cost around £1500, but they are well worth it as they will get you the reviews you need for future marketing.
- Spread your marketing techniques - If you can afford some of the big posters you see outdoors on the boards around the city then these are the best form of marketing. The basic package starts at around £1000 and you book this through a company called Out of Hand. Don't go crazy with printing posters and flyers. You only need between 200-300 posters and up to 3000 flyers. Don't waste paper by getting too many. A good, reliable, quick and cheap online printers is solopress.com. It's worth paying a distribution company to get some of these out around the city, on top of your team going out and putting some up themselves. Out of Hand charge £420 for 3 weeks of poster and flyer distribution.
- Definitely utilise all of the free social media tricks - Follow the other acts at your venue on Twitter and try to find ways to cross promote, set up a Hootsuite account and create a proper campaign of tweets that are scheduled in so you don't have to worry about them anymore, then top these up with regular fun tweets, instagram photos, etc. Make an event on Facebook. Invite theatre bloggers to see your show and link up with them online.
- Order a food shop online for your arrival - When you get there you have to hit the floor running and you can easily find it's suddenly week two and you have spent a fortune and eaten badly. Arrange an online food shop to arrive for when you get there. Then you can make sure you've budgeted properly and have some healthy food available for you to just grab in a hurry. Take tupperware with you so you can make yourself packed lunches.
And don't forget your walking boots/ wellies and raincoat... It often rains.