Last Wednesday, I had the pleasure of attending an educational seminar in St. Paul, MN, called “Music Marketing, Publicity and Promotion”, hosted by the Minnesota Music Academy. I thought I’d share with you some of the advice I picked up at this seminar. You may be able to use some of these ideas to help raise awareness of your new band, upcoming performance, or CD release.

Marketing vs. publicity vs. promotion

Although marketing, publicity and promotion may all seem like the same thing, there are some important differences between these three concepts that you should be aware of.

Marketing is all about getting to know the music industry and networking with other people in your genre. Try to take advantage of every opportunity that comes along to meet people and spread the word about your band. Think about what makes your band unique and who your target market is. One of the expert panelists, Scott LeGere of the Institute of Production and Recording, talked about how important it is to know your audience and market to them directly. If you don’t have a proper focus for your marketing efforts, you could end up wasting a lot of time, effort and money. On the other hand, a properly focused campaign aimed at your target audience can be very effective. He called this concept “narrowcasting” (as opposed to “broadcasting”). The musical artist, Prince, has used this technique with great success through his website.

Publicity involves getting the media to take notice of you. Getting a positive write-up in a magazine or newspaper can be a great way to promote your band. It’s usually much more effective than advertising, since it gives your band credibility (it also won’t cost you nearly as much!). However, competition for getting noticed by publications is fierce. In order to stand out from the crowd, you need to make sure that you have an effective press kit. Try to find a good “hook” for your press kit that will grab people’s attention (this could be a quote from a credible source, for example). Standard elements of a press kit include: press photos, CDs, write-ups and biography. Unless you’re an excellent writer, hiring a professional to design and write your press kit is probably a good idea, as it will help make a good first impression.

Promotion basically boils down to advertising. There are several ways to advertise your band, including radio campaigns, websites, flyers, online news groups, blogs and e-mail lists. It’s best to take a multi-faceted approach, and try to get your message out through as many channels as possible. Also, realize that most people need to be exposed to an ad about a half dozen times before they take much notice of it. This is why the same television commercials are repeated over and over and over again, even during the same television show. Thus, try to repeat your advertising message as many times as possible in order to get maximum exposure.

Elements of a good band website

One of the topics discussed at the seminar was the importance of having an effective website for your band. Although the best way to create fans is through shows and performances, your website is an important tool for keeping those fans.

Content is king

According to the speakers at the seminar, the most important aspect of your website is its content, and I completely agree. Your fans will want to come back to your site regularly if you keep it up-to-date with fresh content. For example, make sure that you post news about your band’s activities and tell your fans about when and where you will be performing. Of course, fresh content doesn’t have to be just in the form of text. You can post photos of your band’s performances and MP3 files of your latest recordings to keep your fans interested. As long as you give your fans a reason to come back to your site, they will.

Avoid high-intensity graphics and multimedia

You may be tempted to add a lot of bells and whistles to your site in the form of animations, splash pages, huge graphics and background sounds. Unfortunately, these things will probably have a negative effect on the people using your site. Keep in mind that content is king. People are visiting your site because they want information about you and your music, not so that they can wait forever for a fancy splash screen or audio file to load in the background. Your visitors should be able to find the information they want about you quickly and easily. High-intensity graphics and other flashy elements are just unnecessary obstacles that will turn people away. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with having audio files or other multimedia content on your site, just make sure that your visitors are in control of downloading these files.

These are just some highlights from the seminar, but I hope some of the ideas presented here will inspire you when you embark on your next promotional campaign. This was an excellent seminar, and I would encourage anyone in the Twin Cities area to attend future events hosted by the Minnesota Music Academy. You can get a list of their upcoming events at their website: www.minnesotamusicacademy.org.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 15th, 2006 at 2:01 pm by Thomas Fowler.

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Author biography: Thomas Fowler is Vice President of Technology and Development at NoteWay Media. He has been involved with music for most of his life and now earns a living building websites.