Some of these ideas will be new to
you, some will be obvious and some will not be relevant to your
situation. However, you should be aware of all the different angles
available to promote your music:
1. Never leave promotion to
the other person. Don't count on the label, band or publicist to do
their jobs. Do it yourself or it may not get done. More is better than
none.
2. Make sure all important
information is on the front page of your website: shows, news, latest
photos,songs,videos,contents etc. Make it as easy as possible for fans
to get what they want quickly.
3. Always think of the fans first
before making decisions.
4. Start early and pre-promote. It
allows time for viral buzz and free promotion to build.
5. Take the time, and spend the
money, to get a great publicist who can get free media. They will know
the market better than you.
6. Produce great promotional
material and send it out early. Don’t wait until they need it.
7. Email lists must be your new
religion. Make sign up simple and easy to find. Put it visibly on
the top half of your front page and watch it grow. Give incentives to
sign up.
8. Segment your email lists (genre,
location) to make them more useful to use.
9. Make sure everywhere you are
mentioned links back to your website.
10. Make your web site an exciting
destination by keeping it updated, including news, giveaways, polls
and free downloads to make it worth visiting.
11. Put your promotional video
online in downloadable form for easy access by the media and your
fans.
12. Enable and encourage others to
do your promotion for you. Ask fans to put up flyers and send out
emails. Put a full size poster online for fans to download. True fans
will be more than happy to help.
13. Create, utilize and reward a
street team. Read this
article on the subject.
14. Talk to people and take informal
polls. Have they seen your adverts? Where? Did they provide useful
information? Survey your audience via email, on the web and at shows.
15. Add a free poll to your web site
or blog. There are various free sites including
yourfreepoll.com.
16. Get free listing everywhere you
can no matter how obscure or far away. Maintain an extensive “media
listings” email list.
17. Enhance the value of press
releases by always attaching a photograph or a link to one on your
website.
18. Know your niche market or
hire/befriend someone who does.
19. Always think of yourself as a
brand that needs to be defined, marketed, and protected.
20. In the US try local cable TV.
Some small local spots on Fuse or other targeted channels go for as
little as $7 each. Check out
Spotrunner or
Dmarc or your local
cable company.
21.
Try local internet advertising via
Google
AdSsense or local web sites.
22.
Advertise on internet radio and blogs that serve your market. Some
websites will give you free advertising if you put an affiliation link
back to them on your website.
23.
Create consistency by creating ad mats and radio spot beds. It should
all look the same or very similar with one main message.
24.
Sponsor non-commercial radio and get mentions. In the US NPR (National
Public Radio) is great, but don’t forget college and University radio.
25.
Think out of the box with radio tie-ins. Make yourself a story worth
talking about. Be creative. Invent a story. Try talk radio. Radio
stations also want to expand their audience.
26.
Co-brand. Celtic Music with an Irish bar or Rock/Metal with a tattoo
parlour. Worry less about money and think more about exposure.
27.
Sponsor somebody else’s event. Consider trading sponsorships.
28.
Create your own affordable internet radio station. There are various
sites including Live
365.
29.
Add a blog to your website to keep content fresh.
Blogger.com has
free tools.
30.
Go viral and post on related list-servers and discussion
groups.
31.
Start your own discussion group for free at
Yahoo
Groups or
Google Groups.
32.
Get on both
MySpace.com and
Facebook.com. Regularly update and promote the profiles, don’t
just set them up and forget about them. Make them worth repeat
visiting.
33.
Make everything you do an event. What holiday is near? Is it a band
member birthday? An anniversary?
34.
Consider the internet your new best friend. Study it,
learn from it, explore it and use it.
35.
Run competitions for best poster design or homemade video. Share all
the entries on the web.
36.
Produce weekly or monthly podcasts. Consider having it produced by a
third party, for example, cheaply by a local college DJ.
37.
Do anything you can think of to enhance the consumer experience.
38.
Give offers away – backstage passes, seat upgrades, seats on stage,
tickets to the sound check, MP3’s of demo or live songs.
39.
In the entertainment business perception can be reality. Is
your show the biggest, best, loudest, “most talked about”? Then be
sure to tell the world.
40.
Enhance and monetize the hardcore fan experience with a Platinum level
fan club that offers exclusive downloads, pre-orders, insider news,
preferred seating at shows, cheap merchandise etc.
41.
Use "traditional" media. Cut through email overload by also faxing
tour dates and press releases. Use a free computer based fax broadcast
service, see
faxing.
42.
Don't just send announcements to the press but include bloggers,
record stores and colleges.
43.
Make your faxes look like mini-posters that are worth hanging up.
44.
As Tip #7 stated, email lists should be your new religion. Sites like
Scriggleit.com offer free mailing list and text messaging
solutions. There should be no excuse.
45.
Park a van or truck with a banner on a main street or across from a
show by a similar act.
46.
Buy a billboard for an event or series of shows. Place it
strategically near a competitor or across from a college/University
campus.
47.
Use one of the cheap automated phone answering services advertised in
the classifieds to set up a special phone line for your schedule.
48.
Pass a clipboard around before a show to capture emails or do a
survey. Collect email addresses on the door.
49.
Meet your fans face to face and ask them for feedback.
50.
Try the old fashioned mail occasionally. It actually gets
peoples attention.
51.
Promote “After Show Parties” that are cheap or free with a concert
ticket. Fans will want to meet the musicians and it gives a further
opportunity to sell merchandise.
52.
Hand out flyers on the way out of the live shows. Include your
website and email address.
53.
Capture information from anyone who makes a purchase, particularly
ticket buyers.
54.
Ask your website users questions. Polls are free and easy to
set up with sites like
PollDaddy.
55.
Sell merchandise at affordable prices. It furthers the branding and
someone else pays for it.
56.
Get creative with your merchandise – don’t just sell
shirts.
57.
You can add variety to your merchandise with no upfront
costs. See sites such as
Spreadshirt
and CafePress.
58. Work
to make yourself a trusted gatekeeper for your genre of music. Use
newsletters, blogs, tips, links, internet radio, and more. Don't just
write about yourself. Write about subjects that will also be of
interest to your fans.
59.
Carry a camcoder everywhere and post short videos on
YouTube and
elsewhere of live shows, interviews, backstage, etc. Most mobile
phones can now record to an acceptable standard.
60.
Create your own related niche-music blogs or websites (for example
MidWestmetal.com
or
NightlifeDetroit.com). You can make yourself the primary
advertiser but keep the sites real with information and news from
others.
61.
Send thank you notes. No one ever says thank you anymore. It will be
remembered.
62.
Ask directly for the purchase. Never forget that you are in sales -
selling yourself.
63.
Market to the niches. Try tattoo parlours, coffee shops, book stores,
niche clothing shops.
64.
Make your emails and website useful to the reader. Add extra
information and links to other subjects your audience may find
interesting or useful.
65.
Share your best promotional ideas with other bands, promoters, labels,
publicists, and sponsors. They will share their ideas with you.
66.
Share media lists with others highlighting subjects you think will
work best for each project.
67.
Sell a series or combo. This works for recorded music, live tickets
and merchandise.
68.
Surprise people. Give them something for free that they did not
expect.
69.
Create and use banners on websites and emails. Free examples include
BannerBreak.
70.
Use
targeted email lists, but don’t overuse them. Professionals will
ignore spam.
71.
Hire or befriend a geek(!) who will help you keep up to date on new
technologies and internet promotional opportunities.
72.
Partner with an appropriate charity. Build goodwill and get more free
media. Maybe a small percentage of sales or maybe auctioning off the
seats on stage or tickets to the sound check.
73.
Consider
craigslist, eBay
and StubHub as
promotional tools. Try auctioning tickets and other merchandise.
74.
It may be a cliché but musicians want to be actors, actors and
athletes want to be musicians. Think about how you can cross promote
so everyone wins. Get creative.
75.
Always make a hi-resolution colour photograph available for easy
download and you’ll get much better placement on websites, in Sunday
print editions and tour sections.
76.
Fans travel so try cross–promoting with another show (by the same or a
similar band) in another city 50 or 100 miles away.
77.
Create a special “Insider” email list for pre-announcements and
include key media and tastemakers who want to know things first, and
then tell others.
78.
If the artist will agree to do a meet and greet after show make sure
that it's advertised. Fans always want a chance to meet the musicians.
79.
Consider offering a student discount or senior discount.
80.
List all your tour dates online at
Pollstar,
celebrityaccess.com,
musictoday.com,
Live Nation
and elsewhere. You never know where people will go looking for a show.
81.
Venues and promoters should work to make it easier and cheaper for
fans to buy tickets online. There are always going to be booking fees,
but can be set up for free at services like
In Ticketing.
82.
Find ways to reward regular ticket buyers.
83.
Enhance your websites by creating your own free radio
station, see Pandora,
Last.FM,
iacmusic.com and
others..
84.
Create custom radio broadcasts for each concert event, for example
”Get in the mood for the Motorhead concert with these classic Metal
tracks”.
85.
Start a free short term blog for every show or tour. Post when tickets
go on sale, when a support is added, when the front rows are
sold out, news about the bands, etc.
86.
Produce and sponsor a cable access show (US).
87.
Utilize free college interns, but make sure they get college credit so
they are motivated to work.
88.
Use mobile phone text messaging to communicate instantly. See
nightlifetexting.com and others.
89.
Flyer - It’s the cheapest form of advertising. Internet
printers offer free deals each month, see
Clubflyers.com
and try local printers.
90.
A good flyer promotes more than one show and can also be hung as a
mini poster.
91.
Flyer someone else’s show in a related genre with links back to your
website.
92.
Aggressively seek sponsorships. Big sponsorships are
preferable but no sponsorship is too small to consider even if it is
just cross promotion in adverts or free give aways. Once you have
reached a certain level of media exposure then musical instrument
companies will be falling over themselves to give you free
instruments!
93.
Produce and send e-cards. The best ones get forwarded to friends.
There are various free sites including
Buzzle.
94.
Encourage fans to "tag" you and your content on other sites like
Flickr, blogs, etc.
then aggregate that data on your site.
95.
Do the same using recommendation sites like
Digg and
StumbleUpon.
96.
Fly a plane with a banner over someone else’s event! (applicable to
larger operations!!)
97.
Finding the time to keep up with all of this is hard but essential.
Take advantage of free services that offer the ability to manage
content across platforms:
-
Nimbit
enables MP3, CD, ticket and merchandise sales on
MySpace,
Facebook and
elsewhere from a single integrated widget.
-
ReverbNation provides email
sign-up, street teams and web promotion tools. A new addition allows
multi-artist tracking.
-
iLike has made it's fan
communication and community building tools instantly compatible on
both its site and
Facebook and provides tracking tools and stats.
98.
If you hear about a good promotional idea then go online and research
it immediately. Try it before it becomes over used. You can stop any
time if it doesn't work.
99.
If you try an idea and it works then tell others. They will be more
likely to share ideas with you. Share your best ideas
with us and we'll tell others.
100. Look at the
Kerascene Music
website regularly. We'll help you keep on top of what's hot in music
marketing.
