Promote your band
Key ways are mp3 music ringtones, Mini dvd discs and postcards.
By Chris Ciabarra
This is a paper on how to promote your band, over the past 12 months I have been in contact with a hundreds of bands looking to become famous in LA. Everyone wants to a hit! Well it all comes down to being discovered! You can be the best band in the world and if you don&;t market yourself right well good luck! Lets analysis fortune 500 companies. Take a look at there budgets They dump 35% to 65 % or more of their profits back into marketing and advertisements every year. Becoming and remaining number one requires a lot of work. Advancing to more and more new customers not only requires more and more marketing but keeping the old ones happy!
Wanting to Promote your band with Live performances and marketing new ideas well you have come to the right spot.
Once people have bought a bands CD and their tee shirt, and seen the band live now what? Note, promoting a band is a lot of more then just t-shirts and cd&;s hell anyone can do that! You need to promote in many ways, just look at fortune 500 companies they email, do giveaways, mini dvd discs promo&;s, cold calling, internet marketing etc. You must do at least 3 forms of promoting to get a response out of your audience. The newsiest one for bands is music mp3 ringtones which we will get into later.
We will go over many ways of promoting your band:
1. Great item that I have seen so far are mini DVD discs called pocketreels. GOTO www.pocketreels.com for more info on how to pick them up. These mini dvds can go a far way just think what people would do if you handed them a mini dvd. They go crazy and they are super impressed! Place a nice video of your band on it and see how many new customers you receive at your next show!
2. Having a photograph or videoagrapher at your shows to help promote your band is a good thing. They can take pictures and or videos and upload the images or videos to your website which can boost mailing lists and a fan club! And then they may be compelled to come to your next show and bring more friends or soak in the opportunities for fame and the live music experience itself. For video or photographer outlets call PR Productions at 310-694-8350 for CALIFORNIA only. They have the best crews around but they are not cheap. Shoots start at $400 + editing.
3. That brings us to a mailing list, each visitor to your website you should be collecting their email address so you can send them useful information like when your next show is going to be.
4. Promoting your band is not easy so do your self a favor and get a good publicist to promote your band. A good one can get you in 3 to 4 magazines and newspapers in one month for free, of course you have to pay the publicist but it will be well worth it. It can range from $400 to $2000. Note you can do this part yourself if you know how to negotiate with editors.
5. Promote your band by creating a really cool website! Check out www.royacom.com to make yourself a website with a CMS system. CMS stands for Content Management system A good website will cost: starting at $1000 but it will have video, email list generators, photo section and best of all easy management. They are a little bit more then a regular website but the ROI
Or return on investment is greater then a plain website. You can change show times just like myspace and it makes it really easy for owners to manage so in the long run you save big!
6. Make a professional music video for your band or gig. This will help with promoting your band. High quality Video can be found at many locations for a crew with experience one west coast call 310-694-8350 for east coast goto the best http://suitespotnyc.com a New york production company
7. Saving the best for last Another great way to promote your band is by making a music ringtone at www.a-free-ringtone.com for example you can download a nickelback ringtone and wow free advertising everytime someone calls that person and bam there is a song on your phone. You need help making your own mp3 or polyphonic ringtone please goto www.a-free-ringtone.com By making a ringtone like nickelback you can have your song ringing all over the world!
Your goal is to continue to reach more and more locals. Develop more ways to attract people’s attention. Always have something on you to promote yourself with.
Just for example. In an area with one million people, if you are getting less than 100 people to every show, perhaps you could be doing much more to reach more of the people in the community?
Its tough out there, and you must be relentless every day to meet new people, shake hands and hand out your mini DVD discs or if you can&;t afford mini DVD discs get free business cards by click here and smile at people who are passing by you on the street and in stores when you are out shopping alone or with friends, in bars carousing. Go out and meet new people. Walk up to people, introduce yourself, Hi, my name is Scott I play at ___ ___ place on blank night. What do you do? Here is my promo disc (mini DVD) with my video or here is my business card with my website on it. You can download my mp3 ringtone (or my polyphonic ringtone) for free at this address. Hand them a card with the information on it. Note always test all information you hand out before hitting the road. Nothing is worse then a fan going home and something you handing them not working!
Have a stack of Mini DVD discs or business cards or flyers in your pocket at all times ready to hand out. Make sure on your Mini DVD, Business card or flyer you have your contact information, website, and the next local performance. You do this 20+ times per hour for 2-3 hours and then youre distributing at least 50 mini DVD discs or business cards or flyers in those 3 hours.
You then go back to your car and re-stock. Grab something refreshing to drink, munch on a a sandwich, or whatever, and move on to the next part of town, or the next gathering of people. Or go to the next live gig, the next bar, the next scene etc. and you keep it going.
Once or twice a week, you hit Kinko’s, or the copier next to your office desk and you photocopy flyers and any designs you have created for promotion of your demos, etc. Better yet think ahead and goto gotprint.com much better deals then Kinko’s. (EXAMPLE 5000 post cards for $99 full color first side!)
Sell yourself. Meet with people and sell yourself. They dont know what youre doing. And unless you sell yourself, they wont care about what youre doing. They want to care, but they depend upon YOU to make that happen. People want so badly to care about something besides there problems. They want something to believe in. Entertainment helps take them there. You can be that entertainer, that leader of willing people of all ages that helps them to believe that there just might be something in this world worth caring about. They want to listen to you, and they want you to tell them about something that really matters to you. So, stay informed and develop interests in topics that may be discussed, even debated. Maybe you are trying to make a difference in the world – one person and one performance at a time. People want to believe in this and they want to believe in you. so, get out there and make it happen.
Remember go armed for battle you would not go into a war forgetting your gun would you? Look at it this way you rather have a tank and machine gun with you when you goto war so do the same with life. Make sure you have mini dvd discs, your own ringtone songs, postcards with info, website and publicist! Good luck and most of all have fun with what you do! BLOG your experience at http://promote-band.blogspot.com Hope all this helps