Low-Cost, High-Impact Music Promotion Ideas That Work

Recognition! Respect! A legion of loyal fans! Those are the rewards that most working musicians aspire to have. Yet, I’ve lost count of the number of frustrated artists I’ve encountered who work hard at their music but end up playing to empty rooms and accepting low income as a way of life.

Of course, you already know that any musical act must first have great songs, strong vocals, a defined musical identity, and an engaging live show to have half of a chance at making a splash with fans and media people. Therefore, it’s no surprise when bands that lack those elements don’t cut it.

Question: But how many times have you seen (or been in) a killer band and said to yourself, “This group really deserves to have a crowd. People don’t know what they’re missing?” More than a few times right?

The problem with these bands is that they miss the big picture and concentrate almost entirely on the music – which is admirable, but it leaves the marketing aspects of their music to chance. Long ago, I made a decision that I wanted more control over my career. I no longer depend on the whims of fate to steer my life. I suggest you embrace this same attitude.

Bottom line: Getting a grip on the promotional aspects of your music stacks the deck in your favour. Marketing helps you grab the attention of new fans and gets your music into their ears. Spending energy on creative promotional activities cranks your career into overdrive. When you market yourself effectively, you’re able to spend more time making great music and less time rolling the dice and hoping a crowd shows up.

Another thing: Attention-getting tactics don’t have to be complicated or expensive. You just have to think beyond simply pinning up fliers, slapping up a website, and letting some of your friends know about your gigs. Also, it’s important to realise that no one promotional effort is going to work miracles. The low-budget, grass-roots music marketing approach that I advocate is a long-term, ongoing activity – not a one-shot deal.

Important note: Music marketing is a lot like multi-track recording. Each layer you create adds to the layers already put down. That’s why you need to develop and deploy an ongoing series of promotional assaults – with each one reaching more people and making them more familiar with your name, image and sound.

What follows is a list of 13 low-cost ideas you can use to promote your music. Hopefully, reading these methods will inspire you to not only use them, but to come up with even better marketing tactics of your own.

1) Hold a contest related to your band or release

Can you come up with a fresh idea to fire up the competitive spirit of music fans in your area? The band Symon Asher did. This Seattle, WA-based group held a contest to guess the origin of its name. To register, people had to visit local record stores and fill out an entry form. Clues on the band’s name were mailed weekly to radio stations and the music press, creating even more of a buzz about the band.

Why it works: There are five very effective angles to this promotional scheme:

1. Forcing interested fans to register at record stores puts those contestants right smack in the middle of the record-buying environment, where they can easily listen to and buy your CD

2. By bringing more people into their shops, record store owners have more incentive to promote the contest in-house, giving you even more exposure to music customers.

3. Since the contest is about nothing but the band’s name, the publicity benefit is priceless: name recognition!

4. By hanging onto all the entry forms, the band has a hefty batch of fresh names to add to its mailing list.

5. Getting the media involved by sending them clues to give their audiences adds yet another layer of exposure – one that most publicists would die for.

This strategy could work just as well online, only you’d have fans register at your website. Find a way to make the contest idea work for your band. It could just as easily be applied to the title of a song or new release too.

(By the way, if you’re dying to know, the band mentioned above was named after the birth name of former Cream bassist/vocalist Jack Bruce, who was born John Symon Asher.)

2) Publish a free fan email newsletter

When I give live workshops, I always ask how many attendees have a website. Usually, about 80 to 90 per cent of the hands go up. Great. Then I ask how many publish an e-zine to keep in touch with fans. Only about 25 per cent of the hands raise on that one. And that’s too bad, because many of these musicians are missing out on one of the most potent online marketing tools.

To illustrate why that is, I need to explain the difference between passive and active marketing. Passive marketing happens when you run an ad, build a website, or pin up fliers. You put your message out there – then you wait and hope that people see your message, understand it, and act on it. You can do things to improve its chances of being noticed – but for the most part, you sit on the sidelines, keep your fingers crossed, and pray that potential fans will find it and take action.

With active marketing, you don’t wait, hope and pray. Instead, you take your message directly to potential fans, one on one. Active marketing includes meeting fans face to face at live shows, sending postcards and other promotional items by snail mail, and sending announcements and updates by e-mail.

Making it work: To take this more active approach, you must get permission from people to send them more details and special offers. The best places to request that permission are at your live shows and on your website. No secret here. Bands have been asking people to sign up on mailing lists for decades. But you have to take that concept and make it work for you.

That’s why, on every page of your website, you need to make a clear plea for people to sign up on your email list. By signing up, people are in effect saying, “Yeah, I’m interested in what you’re doing. Please tell me more.”

Lession: Once you have their e-mail addresses, you’re in control of the conversation. You determine what message they hear, how often they hear it, the tone of the message, and so on. There’s no sitting back, hoping fans remember you and come back to your site. You actively reach out to these people and repeatedly remind them of all the musical goodies you have waiting for them.

That’s why you need to publish a free fan email newsletter. A website alone is fine. But without an email component to support it, your site is just another billboard passing by the on the side of the road.