How to advertise your band; Successfully advertising your band

If you’ve ever tried to promote your band yourself then you know how hard it can be to learn exactly how to advertise your band without wasting lots of your time – hours spent contacting people, hours on social networking sites trying to get people to listen to and be interested in your music, MySpace pages and Facebook fan pages that only your friends and family see you on.

                The reality is that band advertising isn’t easy and that getting your music in front of new listeners outside of your social circle is an endless mission of gigs and word of mouth band promotion. With this in mind I thought it would be worth looking at some BETTER ways of advertising your band and so decided to write this brief guide to how to advertise your band and how to promote your music!

How to advertise your band – online

The online world is now the biggest factor in successful music advertising and it’s the most important place where fortunes and deals get made these days. If you look in the news there are always stories of the next biggest thing that has happened online – whether it was Justin Bieber’s meteoric rise to fame or the latest viral song.

                However, in terms of most bands advertising themselves you can’t expect to just throw up some videos on YouTube and end up with a record label – if you are that commercially viable or the best thing since the Beatles then you might just get lucky but it’s much more likely that you’ll just end up with a handful of views and not much in the way of advertising. The same unfortunately applies to Facebook and most other social networks.

                So really in terms of advertising music you need to go further than just throwing up some videos and a profile. You need to actually have some plans and implement them.  Music sharing sites and music networks are a good place to start advertising but you need to make the effort. By this I mean you have to go out there and talk to other bands online and other people and get them to listen to your music – this can be as simple as commenting on their music or more complex – how far you take it largely depends on the time you have to spare!

                What’s a much better plan for music promotion online is to contact directly the many websites that play new music, the many online radio stations and the many sites that run new music competitions and events for unsigned bands. This is how and where you can advertise your band for the most effect as you will end up with music promotion that is actually advertising your band to new fans. To do this you’ll need to put together a decent bio, some good band photos and logos and have a ready collection of songs and or music videos. Once you’ve done this you’ll want to submit a promo package to sites and then let them contact you for more info if they want to. If you’re good then the chances are you’ll get some responses so you can then put your music in front of more people. Always offer some free songs to get people sharing your music and make sure you have a website to send whoever you contact to for more information.

                In terms of competitions you’ll want to enter as many as possible. There are loads of online competitions out there and loads of them will put you in touch with thousands of new fans. Beat 100 is one of the good ones with a monthly cash competition for the best new music video but there are loads out there with some great prizes available like Rock and Roll world’s and the annual genre specific competitions run by loads of companies.

How to advertise your band – to the press and to the labels

In terms of band marketing you are of course eventually going to want and to need to advertise to the press and the labels. Local press is often a good place to start your advertising as they’ll often happily cover a story you send them and this will give you something to brag about when you target the bigger record labels and the big magazines and newspapers.

                Now before you contact record labels it’s a good idea to have a fair bit of press exposure and a good following of loyal fans. But one of the most important tricks to band advertising is to ensure that you understand how your band fits in a specific market and how you can actually market your band. A band needs to have a reasonably unique selling point – whether it’s your sound, your genre or anything else and you want to pin this down for your promotional work. If you send off a demo where you jump from rock to pop to hip-hop between songs you’re not going to achieve much. You need to think about how to advertise your band and then target your releases. When you begin to target music labels and the press you’ll need to use the promo package I mentioned above and give the press something interesting to talk about – your next gig, festival appearance or album release.

                When you’re trying to advertise your music to the big papers and to the record labels you need to bear in mind that they get a lot of press releases and promotional material through their in trays every day. You have to carefully work on the wording and structure of your music and your press material to make sure you convey exactly what you mean to in a very short amount of space. You need to catch the attention of anyone you contact with the opening line of words and the opening 30 seconds of a song so give them your best. When it comes to how to advertise your band remember that the more you do the more results you’ll have and that band advertising is not something that can be achieved overnight!