So that leaves bands trying to promote their recordings (and everything else) with almost no money. Not ideal as marketing and promotion often take the lions share of the spend with larger more established bands. The trouble is getting over the hump of "no money available".
Meanwhile bands have to make the most of their situation. In this respect the internet is a great leveler. There are a great many cheap ways to promote your music available. Most bands only employ a couple of basic ways to get their music out there. Each takes time, knowledge and patience, and in that way they are not necessarily "cheap".
The trouble is that for all the internet is a great leveler, there are so many bands fighting for attention that somehow your band needs to stand out.
There are five core parts to guerrilla (free) promotion:
- The product being promoted
- Your promotion goal
- Your perspective on that item, know your market!
- The promotion strategy
- The mechanics of that promotion
Setting a promotion goal will ultimately help and is one of the most important facets of a promotion campaign. After all, how will you know a campaign is a success unless you have a goal to measure it by? A clear goal gives you something positive to aim for, and it gives you a direction.
Your perspective on the item being promoted is important too. This is really part of your promotion strategy but I thought it important enough to list on it's own. For example, a product is a product, what makes the difference is the perspective on it when it is presented. think of all those TV advertisements. Some use humor, others use sex appeal etc. they all gain an understanding of who their potential customer base is (by asking, by demographic research etc) and then construct a presentation that will appeal to that market. A common one to appeal to females when pitching household goods is showing how inadequate men are at household tasks with the female "getting one over on" the male, perhaps with a shrug or a laugh. This is because they know that it is a perspective that will appeal to housewives!
Well the same applies to music. Know your market! If you understand your potential buyers, then you can construct something that appeals to them. Not just the end product, it's how you present it!
The promotion strategy itself can encompass a diverse means in order to achieve your campaign goal. For example: You decide on a video as a promotion means, it uses your song, excerpts from your song video mixed with promotion messages of some kind. You choose a humorous perspective with a strong sexual appeal to teenage males (because your homework tells you they are your most likely buyers). You would like to promote this in a viral way. That might involve:
- A street team (virtual and / or real world)
- A few blogs you run
- Social networks
- Forums
- Mailing list
- Internet Radio
- Other means
This requires a plan, and coordination so that you can make the most of your promotion efforts. Fundamentally it involves timing!
Lastly comes the mechanics of achieving all this. This is not simply "How do I post on a forum?" or "How do I use my street team?", it is also the mechanics of coordinating your plan, of launching your product using all the means you plan to use for that specific promotion.
There are of course tools available for many aspects of realizing each step in this process. Were I to specify them all here that would be a very large post. So look out for more as I build upon this post. Meanwhile you might find an article I wrote for Songstuff a while ago a useful reference.
Make The Most of Your Music On The Web
