With computers becoming more and more a part of our lives it’s easy to completely forget about some of the things we can do off-line to promote ourselves.  How about flyers?  When was the last time you put one up?

Most people tend to get frustrated with flyers at some point when they realize that they aren’t bringing in a great return on investment.  So is that they final word on flyers?  Are they always useless because no one came to your show last month when you posted 47 flyers at every conceivable location in town?  Not necessarily.  Here are some tips that can help you make fliers work 10x better for you:

The first thing you need to do is Decide what you want people to do. Do you want to build awareness for your act or do you want people to take action, like come to a show?

If you want to build awareness then you need your flyers to be seen, be simple and be memorable.  If your flyer doesn’t catch people’s eye then nothing else matters.  Vivid colors, high contrast, simple design and striking imagery can all be used to help your flyer stand out.  One of my favorite images to use is a human face looking straight ahead.  We’re hard-wired to see faces, and faces that are looking right at us have a particularly strong effect.  If the face is especially attractive or unusual then that’s even better.

If your goal is to build awareness then you don’t want to give people too much to have to remember.  A memorable name and a striking image will go a long way.  Simplicity is key.  Here’s a great example from Bangups (see left).  Note that when you type in the word ‘Bangups‘ in google, they come up first.  The flyers stand out a mile and the only thing you need to remember is ‘BANGUPS’.  This leads into my next point…

Don’t expect to get results because you posted a ton of flyers one time.  This is a long-term approach that needs to be combined with other marketing efforts and… good music!  It’s important to realize that people will need to be exposed to you in some way a number of times before they’ll take action to check you out.  This is NOT a push-button strategy that will produce immediate results.  Be patient and expect that you’ll have to sustain your efforts to get enough exposures to make a difference for you.  That being said, the more clear, defined, consistent and striking your imagery is, the more effective this approach will be.

Put flyers up where you don’t have much competition.  Look for new opportunities to promote your music where other people haven’t thought of or wouldn’t dare try.  Sometimes it’s just a matter of asking.  Also, there are some people who are so charming, attractive, well connected, bold and/or relentless that they can get flyers up where others can’t.  If you can find one such person who loves your band then maybe you could find a way to make that work for you.

A few years back, my singer’s Mom used to get our flyers up in places I never would have ever imagined they could be, including prominent locations in corporate stores who surely had policies against them.  She’s a sweet, charming lady with a thick accent.  She’s also bold as all Hell and absolutely relentless.  If you were in Hollywood at the time then chances were good that you saw one of our flyers in some crazy location that she was able to arrange.

How about having a contest amongst fans to see who can get your flyers in the best places?  They take photos and submit them via Facebook.  You give them all a little something and something extra to the winner.  If you’ve got a good flyer then it could be a good return on investment.

If you want people to take immediate action, like come to one of your shows, then here are a couple things to keep in mind:

Sell the show – not your band. If people don’t know who you are then they’re not going to go to your show because of your flyer – no matter how many you put up.  If they know another band, are familiar with the venue, and/or can be enticed by drink specials or any other promo going on that night then you may be able to pull some people in with flyers.  Forget about putting your name all over the flyer in huge print and instead focus on what people already know and want and advertise that instead.

Don’t give people too much to remember and don’t expect them to write anything down.  Have tabs that people can pull off with the important info or a web address where they can get it.

Have you got any tips for posting flyers?  Post your comments below!

Let’s take a quick trip to the past and rewind a few decades. Back then people would go to school, get a job, stay loyal to their employees and slowly but surely progress to a more senior position. In return they would be awarded with a steady stream of income, a pension scheme and a promise of a job for life.

Well, that was back then. Nowadays it’s all a bit different. You go to school, get a job, and do a lot of job-hopping either because you think it’s going to advance your career faster or because you are made redundant every other year. Whatever the case, the whole idea of staying in one place, and having a long-term relationship with your employer is a thing of the past.

The same applies to the music industry. Back in the day as a budding musician you would be signed to a label, which would give you an advance, nurture your talents and accept the fact that you’re probably not going to sell that many records before your fifth release or so. In return you would stay loyal to them and take their well-meaning advice to become better at your craft.

Well, that was back then. Nowadays you need to take care of yourself, because you are expected to sell a whole lotta debut albums, and if you don’t then clearly you weren’t ready to get signed. I recently spotted a couple of major label interviews, and the message was very clear: you need to prove that you have a following, that you have done your homework in marketing your stuff.

Now this is not just a rant about how the evil record labels make you do all the work. Not at all. The world has changed permanently from those cosy days of mustard coloured leisure suites and jobs for life. Companies, brands and rockstars alike, are no longer operating in their ivory towers pushing stuff down to the silly consumer, who is willing to buy anything they are told. Nowadays people have access to everything and will only want what is relevant to them. It’s your job to find the ones who you can be relevant to.

Marketing is not about making a sexy website and a cool tune and then expecting people to come running to you. It’s about having a relationship with people, talking to them, sharing your thoughts with them and listening to what they have to say. It’s your scene, your people. This two-way relationship will make your life much easier too. You know where you should be if you know where your audience is.

If you’re still not convinced here are my top-3 reasons why every rockstar should learn marketing:

Save Time and Sweat

First of all define who you are and where you belong. Then find the people who you fit with. Knowing who and where your audience is will save you a lot of time and effort, because you know where they hang and who with. There is no point in touring all the rock clubs in Canada with supporting a grunge band when you play electro metal and most of your audience prefers industrial clubs in New York.

Own Your Audience

If you don’t take care of your own website, collect a list of emails or befriend people in Social Media, then your audience is gone as soon as your label/manager/friends uncle (or whoever takes care of these things for you) decides they don’t want to do the job anymore. Keeping control over the basic online tools yourself will ensure that you can reach your audience regardless of what happens to your business arrangements. Things don’t always go peachy with your business partners. Make sure you don’t lose your audience on the same go.

Give And Get in Social Media

Nothing keeps things more alive than getting close and personal with people. If you manage to touch someone with your art, their feedback is sure to touch you back. You are passionate about your music, and it’s an amazing feeling when someone else is passionate about it too. It’s so 1999 to think a rockstar needs to be an isolated genius hiding behind the façade of coolness and have the PR people take care of fan communication. Exchanging thoughts and feelings with others is the best source of inspiration for anyone. It’s a privilege to have that connection. Nurture it.

This is an audio recording of a teleconference I did with my friend Hagop Tchaparian on Thursday, May 13th.

Hagop is a music industry consultant who’s managed and consulted numerous acts including the band Hot Chip.  He got his start as the guitarist for the band Symposium who went from playing to virtually no one (scroll down the page to see the photo!) to playing huge shows and opening up for bands like Metallica and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. On the call we talk about Hagop’s Niche Music System which is a method that he developed on his way to success with his own band and which he’s updated and refined in his experience as a manager and consultant for other successful acts.

Hagop gives some great practical and actionable tips on the call which you can use right away. So just click the ‘PLAY AUDIO’ link below to hear the call.  All of the links that we refer to on the call are posted at the bottom of the page.

PLAY AUDIO

Links from the call:

google.com/alerts

hypem.com

siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com

independentrockstar.com/worksheet.pdf

As the founder of CD Baby, Derek Sivers has witnessed more CD releases than just about anyone else on the planet.  His intelligent and fundamental, yet progressive approach to music and marketing paired with his extensive experience, knowledge and hard work, have made him one of the most respected thinkers in the world of independent music and beyond.

I recently had the chance to ask him about what his approach would be to releasing a CD in 2010.  Here’s what he had to say:

Derek, how would you coordinate the launch of a record today if you were a modestly successful independent artist (a couple hundred true fans)?   What are the principles that guide your thought process on this?

Wait, stop, back up. Don’t launch a record until people are already freaking out over you.

The worst thing you can do is to take your first 12 songs, call it a record and spend a bunch of time promoting it.

Instead you should aim to write, re-write, and improve your first 100 songs, then throw 90 of them away. Save only the 10 that people are freaking out over.

And by “freaking out” I mean that friends and strangers are telling their friends about you not because you asked them to, but because what they’re hearing is blowing them away so much that they have to tell their friends, “Wow. This is amazing. Check this out.”

(You said “a couple hundred true fans”, but I wanted to make sure we had the same definition of true fans.)

Until you get to that point, don’t release a record or launch anything. Just keep improving and writing.

Leak MP3s to core fans for feedback. Ask people for critique, not praise. Ask them for improvement suggestions. How could your site be improved? How could your show be improved? How could this song be improved?

Eventually try selling MP3s directly from your site using PayPal. This will test your commercial viability. People say they like you, but do they like you enough to open their wallet? Better to test that with MP3s and PayPal before pressing 1000 CDs. Perhaps email your fans to let them know you’re doing this as a test, and if they really love you enough to pay, please go buy their favorite song of yours on MP3.

After this whole constantly-building process, the real answer to most of your questions is “Whatever the fans want.”

You’ll be in such close communication with these hundreds of true fans, that they’ll be telling you all about where they like to buy music, whether they wish you had a physical CD or not, whether they think a free single would help them tell their friends, or what the best timing is.

With the drastic changes in technology and the music business, how does that change what an independent artist needs to do to be successful? Is it much different, or are the principles basically the same?

As you can see by the above process, this is something that was almost impossible before 1995. Communication is so easy now, that you can really build a career on feedback from fans. Let the fans define your strategy. Do what your fans are requesting, instead of guessing what they might want.

For more from Derek Sivers visit his blog here: sivers.org

Follow on Twitter here: @sivers

I recently had someone on the Disc Makers blog ask me about a promotion that they were thinking of doing for their upcoming CD. The idea was to give out 50-100 CDs to fans who were willing to recruit a certain number of their friends to join the band’s Facebook fan page. I thought it brought up some things that are worth thinking about.  Here was my response:

My first thought is that you might get a better return on investment with facebook advertising. You can advertise your fan page on a pay-per-click basis. It’s pretty easy to set up. Right under your photo on your fan page you’ll see ‘Edit Page’ and then right under that ‘Promote with an Ad’. Just click on that and follow the instructions. Chances are that if these fans are going to give a good recommendation to other people, then they’d buy the CD themselves. Sell them the CD for $10 instead and then invest that money to gain 50 fans per CD via facebook advertising.

I do like the idea of encouraging fans to spread the word though. You might also consider doing a promotion for people who tweet about you. I’d suggest creating some specific content just for that kind of promotion. Your superfans are the ones who will make the best evangelists and give the most passionate testimonials for your band. They’re also the ones who would want your b-sides/ live tracks/ bonus videos etc.

If you don’t ask your 50-100 best fans to buy your CD then you might be giving up the money that would have paid for a new website, a professional photo shoot or new video. Your true fans want you to succeed and in most cases, would feel good about their $10 going towards a brighter future for your band.

Also, I would hesitate to advertise free CDs unless you ask for something of high value in return and/or you have a great plan to leverage the free CDs into something profitable. I’ve seen artists who think that the way to go is to indiscriminately give everything away for free or very cheap. I think this is usually because a) they have their own ‘issues’ with money and b) because they think that if they spend enough of their own money to give things away for free then they’ll get so many fans that they’ll somehow become successful. Instead they end up broke, burned out and disillusioned. It doesn’t sound like that’s what you’re doing, but it’s a scenario that you want to be aware of.

You really need to believe in the value of what you’re offering. If you have any doubts about the value of your CDs or anything else then you’re going to have a hard time selling those things. If, on the other had, you know in your heart that your latest CD is priceless, that it will be the soundtrack to amazing memories for those who buy it and that you, yourself would walk 10 miles to a record store to pay $15 for it then you’ll do a much better job of conveying that value to your fans. Anything less and you’re doomed from the start.

You want to assign massive value to everything that you offer, whether you give it away or not. If someone gets something from you for free then you want them to feel like they really got hooked up. If you don’t give much value to the things you give away then not many other people will either.

If you’re interested in other ideas about selling CDs then check out some more discussion from that post:

One of my favorite ideas for selling CDs came from Terry McBride of the Nettwerk Music Group. He was managing a band who sold an average of $300 per night in CDs. They would mention from the stage that they had CDs in the back for $15 and on average managed to sell about 20 of them. Terry asked them to change their approach. He came up with the concept of ‘everyone leaves with a CD’.

The band would talk about their CD (build value) and how much it means to them and how much they wanted everyone to leave with a copy. They asked people to pay what they could, but even if they didn’t have any money they asked them to take a CD. They made their pitch twice per show. Before long they were averaging $1,200 in cd sales a night! And the best part was that because so many people had left with a CD they had an enormous increase in attendance for future shows.

Brian Mazzaferri of I Fight Dragons learned about this idea through Derek Sivers. The band was selling a disc for $5. They started with the ‘everyone leaves with a cd’ idea and the results were as follows: The average price that people payed for the cd was $4.98, but the total number of CDs the sold per night doubled!

If you decide to go with this approach then my advice is to practice your pitch. Say things that build value for your CD, connect with fans on a level where you really want them to share the experience of your music, and keep your pitch simple. Don’t say things like “pay what you can, but if you can’t pay then just find Tenise and give her your email address and then Joe will give you a CD.” Make it super simple: “Tara has CDs – right over there – pay what you can, but PLEASE LEAVE WITH A CD.” etc. If you can, then have someone collect email addresses from people in line to get your CD, but don’t mention anything about that during your pitch. Give them one simple call to action at a time.

Click HERE to view the original post “CD Release Tips” on the Disc Makers Blog.

If you can learn how to make your band profitable then you can become unstoppable.  If your band only puts you further in debt then you’re on the track to being broke, burned out and having few options.  I strongly recommend that you make wise business decisions.  Don’t get seduced by the idea of some outside force coming in and making your operation profitable.  Take matters into your own hands.  If you succeed then you’ll have a lot more people who want to give you a break.

Here are 5 cost effective ways to help make your band more profitable:

1) Take Credit Cards at Shows - I don’t know about you, but I don’t carry around a lot of cash, so half the time when I go to a show I’ll forget to stop at an ATM and I’m lucky if I have enough cash on me to get in the door.  I know I’m not the only one.  So don’t limit yourself by not giving knuckleheads like me the opportunity to buy your music.  Take credit cards.  You can do this through CD Baby.  Here’s how:  https://members.cdbaby.com/SellMusicAndMore/CreditCardSales.aspx

2) Get Merch – Without Paying Up-front – Need merch but don’t have the money to invest?  Don’t use that as an excuse.  You can go through companies like Spreadshirt.comand Zazzle who will make shirts for you as they’re ordered.  They get a good commission out of the deal, but as they say – “some of something is better than all of nothing.”  There’s no excuse for not having merch these days – except for laziness.  So get off yer butt and get some merch together.

3) Get Digital Distribution – If you’ve got music that’s been recorded and released then there’s no excuse not to have that music available for digital download through all of the major distributors.  You can sign up through CD Baby and sell your music on iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody and many more.

4) Monetize Your Website - Your website should make it easy for people to spend money.  Have a new CD?  People should learn about it and be able to purchase it right from the home page of your site.  You should also use Google Analytics or a similar setup so you can keep track of your traffic statistics.  If you want to drive traffic to your site then it helps to know how much traffic your getting, where it’s coming from and when you’re doing something that’s working.  Need help?  I happen to know a great web designer…. ScottJamesWebDesign.com.

5) Get some publicity – Once you’re operation is primed to take in some green then you’ll be able to take advantage of some exposure.  One way you can get some of that exposure is by launching a publicity campaign through musicsubmit.com.  Very cost effective and if you’re ready for it then you should get some good results.  Also, if you’ve got a video to promote then you may be interested in a video submission service that I’ve got in the works (This will blast your video all over the internet and result in traffic and enhanced search engine rankings for your website) .  Send me an email for more information .  Just let me know that you’re an Independent Rockstar reader and I’ll give you a great pre-launch deal.

Remember, your band is a business.  If you run your band as though you have to make it work yourselves and you will never get your big break, then ironically you’ll actually be much closer to getting a break.  So use these tools and make some profit.  Win the game because not only are you damn good – but you’re also a little bit smarter than the average band.

So you’re fortunate enough to have won the privilege of someone’s attention. They clicked on your page or went to your website….

You’d better grab them fast. You’ve got a Hell of a lot of competition! People don’t have time to search through 17 youtube videos, they don’t have time to try to figure out how to find the content they want on your weird website and they don’t have time to listen to 5 songs on your Myspace page before they get to your best song.

Give them your best stuff on a silver platter. Lead them right to your best song, your best photo, your best video etc. Don’t know what your best stuff is? You need to find out. Ask people if you have to, but know what your strongest material is if you want to know how to grow your audience. Don’t randomize the experience of the people who are giving you a chance for the first time. If you’ve got 6 songs on your Myspace page, why randomize your playlist and take the chance that someone who goes to your page will hear your 6th best song?! Give them your best stuff on a silver platter.

Remember the first time you ever put up flyers for a show? I’ll bet you were probably pretty excited.

I know I was. I felt that if we put up enough flyers that even if half of one percent of all the people who saw the flyer went to the show then we’d be pack the venue and be well on our way to being famous within a few months. So we posted flyers everywhere. Big ones. Eye catching flyers that everyone would take notice of. How could it not work?! We were going to be huge.

So what happened? All our friends showed up for the first couple of shows and we had a great time. So we kept putting up flyers. More, bigger, better etc. After a while we realized that we weren’t getting anyone coming to our shows from our flyers, so we started to lose interest in putting them up. There were conflicting opinions as to whether or not they served any purpose. We never really got the whole thing worked out.

So what’s the deal? Do flyers work or not?

No.

How about other methods of promotion? Does Myspace or Facebook promotion work?

Not really.

Does handing out free CD’s work?

Not so much.

So what does work?

Combining all of those and more.

Here’s the key factor. This is the one thing that I wish I had realized when I first started:

According to marketing guru Jay Conrad Levinson, on average, a person needs to be exposed to a business in some capacity, 9 times, before they will take action. 9. Here’s an example of how that might play out in the music world:

1 – someone gets a friend request from you on myspace – they see your name one time, probably don’t give it much thought

2 – you post a comment on your page – they may or may not accept it and generally blow it off

3 – you send a bulletin – they make some kind of quick judgement based on the subject

4 – they see a flyer for a show – “hey, that’s that band”

5 – they hear someone talking about your band – they start to get curious

6 – you post another bulletin – they actually read it and check out some songs

7 – they see another flyer for a show – “hmm I should go check that out”

8 – they get home and go back on the myspace page and check out the website – at this point they start to form actual plans to go to the show

9 – you send them an invitation on facebook to go to the show tomorrow night – they show up

Of course this could play out a million different ways, but the important thing to realize is that people need to be exposed to something in a number of different ways a number of different times before they will act. So remember, when you’re busting your butt by adding people on myspace or facebook, or posting flyers or doing radio promo, or whatever – what you’re doing is only part of a combination of efforts that will, over time produce results. What I didn’t realize when I first started was that I could’ve personally handed out flyers to every single person in town, but this would produce almost 0 results. My band and I could’ve wallpapered the town with flyers and it wouldn’t do a damn thing. If we kept doing it in the same places, and targeted the same people with other marketing methods, over time we could have acheived much better results.

So remember:

9x

and

Combine different methods