Essential Guide To Promoting And Music Marketing For Your Band

​I was on the verge of collapsing. I had played 3 shows with my band that week and I had an audition the next day for a reality TV show. We were also recording music that week for our new album and all that work had brought me to the point of exhaustion.
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Being a rockstar is a unique and exciting experience. Respect, love and admiration follow you around wherever you go, but what people don’t see is all the work put into non-music matters like business and marketing.

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When you play an instrument, your job is to make music with that instrument. But sometimes, you end up being the person the band turns to when it comes to affairs that involve money, scheduling practice dates, setting up tours, getting shows and promoting the album. This often detracts you from the very reason you got into music, making it, and might even cut down on your creative time which is time you really need to spend.

The intent of this guide is to help new musicians with a starting point and also more experienced musicians with a system to help streamline work. ​

This guide has 6 sections I’m going to cover: 

I Networking With Other Bands
II Getting And Organizing Shows
III Contacting Press, Photographers and Video
IV Graphic Design Tools For Promotions
V Setting Up A Website For Your Band
VI Album Launch
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I Networking With Other Bands​

“It’s not what you know, but who you know.”

Becoming successful is about working well with others, not just with your bandmates but with other bands as well. Knowing who to play with is more important than knowing what venues to play at. Becoming part of a scene is really important especially when starting out. When you form a bond with other bands, they will help you out and even get you gigs. Give value to get value. 

This might sound obvious, but a lot of people don’t seem to value going to shows with bands they don’t know personally know.  I remember playing a show in the middle of nowhere, when 2 members of another band drove an hour and a half just to meet us. Those guys were solid, and I was touched by that, which is why I decided to put these guys on 12 shows with us that year.   
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If you also want to maximize your promotions at shows, bring demo CDs with you and hand them to anyone leaving the show even if you’re not playing that night. Of course, you’ll also go to that show and support the band. 

If you’re starting out, Facebook is going to be your first avenue of communication with other bands in the area. The best way to find bands is to ‘like’ venues on facebook where your scene hangs out. There’s a ‘discover’ option on Facebook that allows you to see what bands are playing in your area. Like their pages, and hit them up, tell them that you were at their last show and you thought you’d reach out to them and play some shows together. Send them a link to some of your music. Get their main member’s contact info and let them know to contact you if they need someone to open for them, start there.

II Getting and Organizing Shows

This is possibly my favorite part of being a part-time band manager, actually walking into a venue, talking my way to the top person, showing them my press-kit and getting a show where I could pick the best local bands. 

Professionalism is very important and you want to show them you know what you are doing. If you did your research, you’ll know what venues similar bands play in. Walk into the venue and ask the bartender if you could speak to the person that usually organizes the shows there. Usually it’s the owner or it could be one of the bartenders. It’s best to meet them in person so there’s no miscommunication later on and you can get their contact information. 

The most important question they will ask you is,“How many people will your band bring?” You want to respond with a solid number like 30-50 if you’re still not known well enough. This is a solid number for a band starting out and is a bit more believable. Believe me, the venues will do research on you. Another good response to this is,”I’m thinking of organizing a show with 3 other bands I know, and together we can probably bring in around 100-200 people.” The reason why this is a good response is that it shows you are willing to do all the heavy lifting by organizing the show yourself and it gives them more reassurance that the show will be successful. Venues make money from the alcohol sales, and if you sell enough alcohol in a venue, they’re sometimes willing to pay you guys extra from the bar. 

In case the owner isn’t at the venue when you visit, at least get their email because you can send them your band’s information. Sometimes the bartender’s will even give you the owner’s direct number. Below is an email template you can use when contacting them.

Hi [owner’s name],

My name is [your name] and I’m the [role] for [band]. I’ve been to a few shows at your venue and I think my band and some of our contemporaries would like to organize an event there. I was wondering what your booking schedule is like in [month] and if you had anything open that time for us. We usually bring 100-200 people at our shows and we’ve played at venues like [venue a] and [venue b] in the past. You can reach me at xxx-xxx-xxxx. Let me know what would be the best time for you to jump on a really quick call. Looking forward to working with you.

Regards,

[your name]

Attached is our press kit and links to music/video.

[facebook page link]
[youtube video link]
[music streaming link]

You want to emphasize that you are willing to do the heavy lifting and organize the events there. You want to show the owner that you’re willing to get results and that you’re dependable. Also telling them you’ve had successful shows in other venues demonstrates higher value and will more likely increase your chances of getting a show there. Having a good impression on the venue is a guarantee that you’ll be getting more shows in the future. 

You can also increase attendance to your shows by having a +1 guest for every ticket at the venue. When promoting your upcoming shows, you want to mention that 1 ticket lets you bring a friend. Not only does this make you look good in front of the venue, but it also increases alcohol sales which can help your band get paid more at the venue. 

All this is covered and more in 6 Figure Musician by David Hooper.

Get 6 figure musician book

III Contacting Press, Photographers and Video

When you play more shows, you’ll notice that the other bands have access to resources like make-up artists backstage, bloggers/journalists and  photographers. Naturally, you’ll get to meet these people and with enough social proof they’ll start offering their services to you as well. 

In general you want to get their contact information and every time you have a show, contact them and let them know you’ll put their name on the guestlist and let them get into the venue for free. If they blog about you or take photos of your band, post their material on your Facebook band page and give them a shout out. ALWAYS give them credit.  Give them free shirts, backstage access, buy them drinks etc. 

If you want to get in touch via cold email, here is an example text of what to send:

Hi [press/blogger],

My name is [your name] the [role] of [band]. I saw some of your work with our friends at [band] and I was really impressed. I wanted to invite you to one of our future shows at [venue]. We’ll put you on guestlist so you can get in for free. Let me know if you’re bringing anyone else, so we can put them on the guestlist too. Looking forward to seeing you there. 

Regards,


[your name]
xxx-xxx-xxxx
[facebook page link]
[youtube video link]
[music streaming link]

Bloggers and photographers have connections with other big name bands that they do work with and you can get somewhere with the right network.

A prime example is how Tim “The Ripper” Owens got picked for Judas Priest. Someone with connections sent the band a video of him performing. Which takes me to the next important thing in this section: video. 

Having music is great but the best way to boost your reach is through video. If you intend on doing any paid traffic through social media, this is the best way to get cheap engagement. Eventually you want to get a collection of HD videos from a few shows and you can even put them together to make a music video. 

I highly recommend checking out products from Zoom. Here is a video of their Zoom Q2n video recorder in use. You want to have a camera that has a built in mic that is made for loud concerts because most standard video recorders can’t stand high decibels and causes the sound to clip. 

Get Zoom Q2n

IV Graphic Design Tools For Promotions

I’ve seen really good fliers and I’ve seen really, really, really crappy ones. I’ve also seen Facebook posts of events that looked straight out of MS Paint. Do yourself a favor and check out Canva.com

​Canva is intuitive and overall a really good graphic design tool for anyone who has little to no skill in Adobe Photoshop. Simply setup an account and start creating. You can create fliers, Facebook event pics and also press kits. Canva allows you to save in JPEG, PNG and even PDF. 

Here is a quick video tutorial:

You probably want access to FREE royalty-free photos as well. Check out allthefreestock.com for access to thousands of high quality graphics to help with your promotions. ​

​V Setting Up Your Band Website

Having a website for your band takes you to a whole new level of professional. It shows that you’re serious about your music career and makes an overall good impression to everyone.

For easy website creation, Weebly is a good go to website editor that doesn’t require any extensive knowledge in HTML/CSS/Javascript. There are lots of templates to choose from and also has some pre made for musicians/bands. It’s a simple drag and drop editor that allows you to create websites quickly. You can also set up your website to play/download/buy music from your bandcamp as well as setup an online merch store. You can even sell your CDs online through Weebly. 

Weebly is FREE but if you want to get rid of their ads and also want more customization, you’d have to buy their starter subscription which is reasonable at $8/month if you buy the year. You can get 10% off here:

Get 10% Off WEEBLY

If you want a professional to setup your website, you can hire a freelancer on Fiverr. It costs only $5 to hire a professional on Fiverr with incremental costs of $5 depending on how many more tasks you want the freelancer to do. 

LEARN MORE ABOUT HIRING FREELANCERS

​VI Album Launch

The most exciting part of being a musician is promoting your new album and eventually getting to the album release. There’s two approaches to the album release, either you release everything all at once or you can slowly release tracks which have more sustain overtime and could drive more interest to your music. This is mentioned in 6 Figure Musician which is a recommended read. 

GET 6 FIGURE MUSICIAN BOOK

You can start by having promo videos with the album's release date:

You also want to slowly release new tracks months before the album release on a fairly regular and timed basis. Make sure to have special promotions and deals for people that pre-order such as early downloads for certain tracks on the album. 

Another good way of increasing engagement is to release a professional lyrics video of one of the songs or like I mentioned in another section, splice together footage of the band at shows to have a makeshift music video promoting a single off the new album. You can also hire a freelancer on Fiverr to do it for you.

LEARN MORE ABOUT HIRING FREELANCERS

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