Three options. Only one actually works for your business.
Three revenue streams (clubs, festivals, corporate MC), one website that does none of them well
Comedians have three structural revenue streams and almost no marketing plan that addresses any of them properly. Stand-up at the clubs (The Comic's Lounge, Comedy Republic, Sydney Comedy Store, The Coopers Comedy Bar) pays $50-$200 a spot and feeds the brand but doesn't pay the rent. Festivals (Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Sydney Comedy Festival, Adelaide Fringe, Just for Laughs Australia, Edinburgh Fringe) are the production-cost-heavy run that builds the headliner profile but loses money in the producing year. Corporate MC and after-dinner speaking is where the money actually is: $1.5K-$5K for a one-hour corporate routine, $3K-$8K for the MC-and-routine combo, $500-$2K for a clean 1hr corporate MC, $1.5K-$5K for a wedding MC. The agencies (Token Artists, A-List Entertainment) take 15-25% of that, and they push the cheapest available comic, regardless of fit. Meanwhile your existing site has one generic 'book me' page that doesn't split the corporate brief from the wedding brief from the festival announcement, and the corporate booker who needed a clean room comic for a financial-services keynote ends up booking through Token because she couldn't find your direct page.
Good comedian marketing is three things, in this order: a page library that splits the website by revenue stream (one page per festival run with the venue, dates, ticket link and a 90-second show clip; one page per corporate-MC format with the clean-room reel, the recent corporate clients list, and the pricing band $500-$2K MC / $1.5K-$5K routine / $3K-$8K MC-plus-routine; one page per wedding-MC tier with the warm-with-the-room reel and a wedding-MC-specific testimonial; one page per venue residency with the dates), so corporate bookers, festival-goers and brides all find the exact page they were looking for; a targeted Google Ads campaign on 'corporate MC [city]', 'wedding MC [city]' and '[city] comedy show this weekend' (each a different ad group, each with the right landing page), pausing during your own tour weeks and ramping in the corporate-Christmas season; and a social cadence built around the green-room-perspective clip and the festival-run announcement, so your Tuesday-night Comic's Lounge spot becomes Wednesday-morning content and your Sunday-night festival headliner becomes Monday-morning posts. Get this right and the corporate-MC bookers stop going through Token Artists.
Six agents, working in your accounts.
Account Lead, Web, SEO, Advertising, Social Media, and Content. One platform, one bill, you approve the work.
Builds your annual plan around the three revenue streams (corporate-MC year-round, festival runs in the Melbourne April / Edinburgh August / Adelaide March windows, club residencies as the brand-build) rather than the agency-rostered jobs that take a quarter off the top. Briefs the other agents so the corporate-MC pages, the festival-run announcements, the green-room social and the Google Business profile all push toward direct bookings via your own site.
Imports your existing site so you stop paying for hosting plus a Squarespace plan plus a ticketing widget, and makes spinning up a new festival-run page or corporate-MC format page a five-minute job. Ships pages for every revenue stream (corporate-MC format, festival run with ticket link, wedding-MC tier, venue residency) with the relevant proof reel and pricing band, to your live site in two taps.
Goes through your live site for the things that actually move comedian rankings: performer schema with the festival-run portfolio and the corporate-client list in the structured data, video schema on every revenue-stream page (so the in-the-room clip shows up in search results), Event schema on every festival run (so the show appears in Google's event-finder rail), internal links from festival pages to the corporate-MC page (so the corporate booker discovering you via a festival run finds the corporate-MC page next). Auto-applies the low-risk fixes.
Runs a year-round corporate-MC campaign on 'corporate MC [city]', 'wedding MC [city]' and 'corporate Christmas party comedian [city]' (each a different ad group, each with the right landing page), pauses during your own tour weeks, and ramps a festival-spike campaign on '[city] comedy show this weekend' the week before each festival run. Drops broad 'comedian [city]' bids because the directories own them and the CPC is wasted on the wrong intent.
Turns every gig into a post in your real accounts: a green-room clip from Sunday's festival headline, a Tuesday-night Comic's Lounge bit that landed, a clean-room reel cut from a corporate keynote (with the client's consent), a behind-the-festival-poster moment. Builds the festival-headliner-meets-corporate-MC trust signal that lets corporate bookers see the festival edge and corporate-style register on the same grid. You upload one clip per gig, the agent drafts the caption in your voice with the venue tag, you approve.
Drafts the long-form pieces corporate bookers and festival-goers Google before they book: 'how much does a corporate MC cost in Sydney in 2026', 'what's the difference between an MC and a comedian for your corporate event', 'how to brief a comedy MC for your Christmas party', 'best Edinburgh Fringe shows for [year]'. Two drafts a month, in your voice, that pull in the corporate booker doing the research a fortnight out and the festival-goer six months out.
Your first 30 days.
- Corporate MC page live with 90-second clean-room reel and recent corporate client list
- Wedding MC tier page live with warm-with-the-room reel and wedding-MC-specific testimonials
- Festival run pages indexed (Melbourne / Sydney / Adelaide Fringe / Edinburgh) with venue, dates, ticket links
- Year-round corporate-MC Google Ads live on 'corporate MC [city]' and 'corporate Christmas party comedian [city]'
- Festival-spike ad campaigns scheduled to ramp the week before each festival run
- Google profile rebuilt with 14-item service list and festival Event posts
- Green-room and clean-room captions queued in your voice for the next fortnight
- Three-stream revenue plan and corporate-MC positioning delivered by Sam
Comedians lose the corporate-MC booking not because the routine is weaker, it's almost always sharper than the agency roster fill, but because the corporate booker who needed a clean-room comic for a financial-services keynote couldn't find your direct page and ended up booking through Token Artists for 25% on top. The work is making sure that when a corporate booker Googles 'corporate MC [city]' or 'wedding MC [city]' or '[your name]', the first thing she sees is your direct site, with the clean-room reel, the recent corporate clients list, the transparent pricing tier, and a fresh weekly post from Sunday's festival headline.
Agencies are too dear to actually run the festival-run page library and the year-round corporate-MC ad campaign for $3.5k a month. Tools are cheap but you write the Edinburgh-Fringe page the week before the festival and reply to the corporate-MC quote-request at midnight on a tour bus. In-House is the third option: for $299 a month the agents ship the pages, launch the corporate-MC ads, post the green-room clips and keep the Google Business profile beating the agency rosters on completeness. You stay in the driver's seat, two taps to approve, minutes a day. Take the 25% back.