promotion

If you’re in a band and you want to be popular in the music scene, you have to face countless
others who want to be just as famous as their stars. Your best bet is to have a good marketing
strategy.

Marketing for any type of product continues to evolve with the market, which makes services
step up their game every so often and make marketing a daunting term to those new in the field.
Here are some tips that can get you started on a full-blown marketing campaign for your band:

1. Awareness: Who Is Aware of Your
Music?
Music isn’t your only tool to be known by
your fans. You can also invite people to
attend your gigs and review you as a band, so
they can spread the word.

● You can reach out to local bloggers
and influencers with free tickets to
your gig, or a free EP to give access
to your music. This lets them know
that you really want to engage your fans.
● Snapchat is also a growing tool you could use to post live updates of your gigs to your
fans. It’s becoming a widely used service even by popular news sites, which means a lot
of users are going to look for you here as well if they are your fans.
● Facebook is your friend, but you shouldn’t stick to groups and pages. You can use the
power of live streaming, sharing commentary, and creating the atmosphere of being
engaging by always staying up to date with Facebook’s latest trends and using them to
engage your fans.

2. Responsiveness: Are You Communicating With Fans?
Of course, you can’t exactly form a fan base if you’re not appealing to your prospective fans. It’s
not always about your music, but how you convey it. You should be a group that people want to
follow and check out. You should convey a personality of sorts when you interact with your
fans, even in social media.

● Artists and bands may want to consider how large is their fan base first before releasing
their tracks. If you want to make a partnership with labels, your social media numbers
may be your version of cred for partners and sponsors.
● One way to do this is by making design contests. You can challenge artists to create
posters or shirt designs for your band, and print the winner.

3. Exposure: Where Do You Bring Your Music?
So you have a band, and you want to be known. You have tracks ready, and you may have been
doing gigs of your own as well. However, this shouldn’t count as your overall exposure, as you
may need to do something more to fully expose your fans to your music.

● For instance, you can do unique song covers such as acoustic versions of your favorite
non-acoustic songs, or slow versions of fast music.
● Spotify is growing to be the best alternative option to the radio, and it’s popular on a global
level. It is a good option to share stream links to your fans inside and outside Spotify to
constantly engage with your fans.
● You can team up with popular podcasters to have your music featured in their episodes,
or you and your band can make a podcast as well. This is a handy way to have something
to engage your audiences with that is not always your music.

4. Online Is Not Always the Best
This may seem counterintuitive, but this
is something everyone should always
remember, your offline presence should
be just as strong as your online presence.
Help your fans know that you are
available in the real world to be interacted
with.

● You should try establishing a
home base where you’re always
expected to appear, so fans can go and see you.
● Discmaker suggests you can go to local fests, events, venues, and bars to do gigs so
people can discover your music. This is of course in venues outside your “home base.”
● You can also try out geo-targeting your audience in emails, newsletters, and Facebook
events. This means, with the right guidance, you can attract and focus on potential fans in
areas closer to the place you will have events in. This boosts the chances of people going
to see your events.

Conclusion

You may come up with the best marketing strategy that is fit for your band, but the most
important thing is to come up with something you can do consistently. All efforts you’ve done
for your marketing campaign will fail if you don’t follow through with your plans.
As Undercover.net.au says, always remember to put love and effort to your marketing campaign,
and your love for your band and the craft will come to life. Do you have other tips for marketing
strategies for bands? Comment down below and share it with us!

About the writer

SARA HARRISON
Sara is a music enthusiast who loves to play guitar and the piano. She has a
large selection of music CDs with Rock and Blues being her favourite. In her
spare time, she’s studying to be a music teacher and enjoys visiting music
festivals. She currently writes for Undercover.net.au and enjoys life.

Don’t bring merch. Alison Shaw summed it up perfectly in August for youbloomTV: if a person (likely in a state of inebriation) who has never seen you before decides they like what they hear, they’re going to want to take something home with them that they can listen to again, or a T-shirt they can wear so they have a story to share with their friends (free advertising!). Offer nothing as a follow-up to your show and it doesn’t matter if you just played the most epic set of the tour: you immediately halve your exposure potential.

Patches and buttons can be made very cheaply. Just sayin’.

Don’t introduce yourself. You know that band that are just way too cool to say hello to the audience, and instead plow wordlessly through their set before unplugging and stalking offstage for dramatic effect? Yeah, don’t be that band.

Be rude to the sound guy. A crucial element to the success/enjoyment of every gig is whether or not you piss off – intentionally or inadvertently – the guy/girl in control of what people are going to hear. So a few basic rules to follow:

Arrive to soundcheck on time. Remember that sound check is not band practice. If you think it is, you shouldn’t be on tour.
Follow the engineer’s instructions. He has a lot of mics and levels to organize, and doesn’t want to be there tweaking for two hours. You’re also (probably) not the only band this person needs to cater to. If he asks you to turn down your amp (guitar players, looking at you), just do it already.
Communicate politely and clearly. If you can’t hear something, have a request, or something isn’t working, let him or her know.

Don’t say thanks. To the crowd for coming out, to the support acts or the act you’re supporting, to the sound engineer (see above), the booker, the venue…gratitude gets you a long way in this game. It endears you to the strangers who’ve chosen to spend their evening and money on you, and can get you invited to play more gigs or to come back again in future.

You're too kind, really. — You’re too kind, really.

Don’t promote. You know, you might get really lucky and have a booking agent or a venue that’s willing to promote the show on your behalf. Or you might score a sweet support slot for a band that you know are going to draw a crowd no hassle. But listen up: you still need to promote your show.

Why? Because that’s part of pulling your weight as a touring band. The deal is exposure – for everyone, not just for you. The least you can do is make an effort and throw up an event page on facebook. If just one person from your friend list comes along, you’ve done your job.

Try to adhere to a schedule/routine/backline setup. Life on the road is mayhem. Pure and simple. Vans break down, blizzards shut down roads, venues cancel shows for no reason.

Amps blow, pedals go all ghost function, leads and stands and 9 volt batteries mysteriously vanish.

Absolute arseholes steal bands’ gear. Shit. Happens.

It goes without saying that you should have some level of organization to your plan, and to be responsible at least for your own gear and your person, but if by some crappy twist of luck, something un-ideal happens, the worst thing you can do is freak out; throw a fit; start a fight; get all demanding.

The best touring bands stay positive, remain flexible, expect the unexpected, and roll with the punches. They pitch in to help other bands when something goes wrong, knowing the road to memorable gigs is two-way, and paved with selfless acts.

These are the bands that people travel to other towns to see, that get asked back, that other bands reach out to when they’re thinking of hitting the road again.

Then again, it is entirely possible that touring just does not suit your band. And the only way to find that out is to do it. Just do everyone a favor once you do and stop.

Give up. You already know something unforeseen is likely to happen. So what should you do when it does? Well, if you want to totally suck at touring, take it as a sign that this gig/leg of the tour/entire thing is a sham and shouldn’t be happening at all. Sigh deeply, pull a U-ey, and drive your miserable butts back to Minnesota, or wherever it is you came from. Everyone will thank you later.

Or.

Show up anyway (better late than never), shake a few hands, explain what happened, offer to play and improvise if need be (house parties make great backups for venue cancellations, and often provide a night’s sleep), make friends and rack up another bonkers story for the tour diary.

Do it right, and in a year or so, you’ll be itching to start a new one.

Best Options For Marketing Your Band To A Wider Audience

How to Totally Suck at Touring

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