Music Advertising

Nobody looks in the real yellowpages anymore. Google is the new yellowpages and the first thing to show up on the search engines almost every time is a list of local "businesses". Music Teachers are definately a business, and even if you do not teach, you can still categorize yourself under Musicians or Entertainers. There is an option for a free listing and then there are others you can pay for. It is up to you how much money you want to put into your advertising, but the yellowpages and google local businesses are definately the best places to start.

This is your second MOST IMPORTANT thing you can do for any business, and especially for musicians. If people read about you, but cannot find your website, 50% of the time, they'll find someone else. They want to see clips of what you can do. They want to read reviews, they want a booking schedule, pricing, and contact information. If you do not have all of this readily available, they will find someone else.

Okay, so you have a website, but no traffic. You want to know why people aren't vising your site. Well, what is your site domain? "Band Name".com? If your website is the name of your band, nobody will ever find you that doesn't already know about you. So, if you are looking to expand you're audience, your website won't help you. You need a domain name including the name of the city or area you perform in most often and your genre of music. For instance, www.dallastrumpetplayer.com. I actually built this site, so you are welcome to visit it and see a good example of a musician site. This guy does a lot of local performing in the Dallas/Ft. worth area and wanted more gigs, but his website was formerly named, www.markvansickle.com
www.markvansickle.com with no luck. Well, now he forwarded www.markvansickle.com to his new www.dallastrumpetplayer.com site and how has both domains going to the same, search engine optimized site. This is how you get people to your site. There are also ways to make money strictly from HAVING a site, even if none of those site visits turned into a gig. You can still make money. There is more information on this in the Music Marketing Makeover ebook (Coming Soon).

**Hint: Do NOT pay a website designer to design your site that does not know about search engine optimization. You will not make back the money you invested in the building of your site. Even if the site designer promises a great looking site, it won't make a difference if nobody ever sees it!

There are hundreds of different social networking sites for people and even more strictly for musicians. Join! I know some people don't like having too many accounts, but it is worth it, even if you have to create another e-mail account for all the spam you may receive from them. The more sites you are one, the more your website goes up in the search engine (if you put a link to your site on your profile) and the more your band name gets out there. Also, if you have ways to buy your songs on Itunes, and you have videos linked to your youtube account and everything, all those will go up in ranking also, giving you more exposure. The bigger presence you have on the internet in general, the more exposure that will bring and the more gigs you will have.

Examples:
-Myspace
-Youtube
-Facebook
-Twitter

Five more simple tips to music advertising online!

1. Start a Mailing List: You can do this with a simple contact for on your website, or you can join a site like Icontact which helps you organize people onto a mailing list and helps you send out mass e-mails for upcoming events quickly. You don't want people to come to your site once and then forget about you. Try to get them to sign up so that you can invite them to come back. You can even offer an incentive to join the mailing list like a free download.

2. Create a goole Adwords Campaign: This not only gets you higher in the search engines, but gets you onto other sites than just search engines. Other sites in your area will be advertising for you also.

3. Gig Swapping: Swap gigs with bands in other cities. There are many sites that help you connect with other bands and swap gigs. You can work out an arrangement where you open for them in their city, and they open for you in yours. It helps both bands appeal to a new audience and a new city.

4. Open Mics: I understand that a lot of bands resent open mics because they want to be paid to play. But, if you go even just once every other month and play 3 songs, it gets you out there. You can then hand out flyers to your next gig and get them to come see you. This of it just as a form of advertising.
5. Set up an arrangement with your local music store: This is mostly for music teachers, but can be for bands also. Offer to hold a seminar or a free group music class in their store. This will give you the right to put up advertising in their store for your studio/band and then anybody that shows up is a potential customer for them and for you.