Marketing your Music
Promotional materials you'll need to edge out the competition Article written by Ken Knutson Back to Cover
The world is a competitive place, ________
especially in the world of music. That said, other than your great sound, how will you get noticed? As mentioned in another article in this issue “perfecting your image”, a band’s appearance plays a big role. Perhaps equally important, is marketing yourself…..getting the word out in a way that people who have never heard you play, will WANT to come hear you perform. . It’s not enough to set out with you and your music only and start trying to get gigs.
As a Graphic Designer at In Form Inc Media Design for 6 years, www.informarch/mediadesign.html I have played a role in promoting a musician or two and would like to share with you some of the things you will need to give your band that extra edge to get you noticed and to help you start getting gigs or acquiring more gigs.
In the article “Need a Demo?...” in this issue, the writer mentions that one of the first things you will need to be ‘out _
Just a few of the promotional materials you will need to edge out competition.
there’ is a demo. Even if you have an excellent recording on that CD, the packaging needs to be such that, whoever you hand it to will WANT to listen to it. If you hand them a CD with your band name or contact info written on it with a Sharpie, chances are they will stick it somewhere and forget about it. If they have ½ dozen demo disks laying around, they will be inclined to reach for the one that has a professional look to it. You might say that the chances of them actually listening to it are directly proportional to the amount of effort you put into packaging it.
For this and many of the promotion materials recommended in this article, the ideal way to produce them would be through hiring a graphic designer. If it's within your budget, this is the way to go, especially if you don’t have TIME to manage all your marketing materials which include your demo CD, business cards, posters, flyers and a web site. If that is completely out of your budget, perhaps you have a friend who is an aspiring designer and has access to software like Photoshop etc. that can _
lend a hand. If not, congratulations, you are now the designer. You might not be a pro, but the overall idea is present something that says “I care enough about promoting myself than to just hand you a Sharpie inscribed CD”
To help you decide if you will hire a professional, use a friend or do it yourself, here are the key items you will need to get your name not only out there, but remembered.
- Logo
- Demo
- Business cards
- Poster/Flyers
- Web Site
The first step in pounding your identity into the publics head is creating your logo. A logo is often times the first thing a prospective client will see representing your band so it must be eye catching, memorable and be representative of you, your band and your music. A logo can be a symbol, creative text or a combination of both. An example of a symbol logo would be the Rolling Stones mouth with ________
the tongue hanging out. An example of a text logo is the KISS logo
with the modified SS that look like backwards Z’s. When
contemplating an idea for your logo think of what style fits your band
best? Edgy or conservative? Playful or corporate? A logo that
is simple in appearance with only a couple colors is often better than
one that is complex with many colors for a 
Example of a symbol logo.
Example of a Tri-Fold CD Sleeve, front & back. Notice the repition of the logo.
Example of a text logo.
few reasons. People tend to remember simple better and also your logo is going to be stamped everywhere, so it needs to show up and work well on many mediums like faxes, hats, t-shirts, Frisbees and so on. Also, fewer colors will cost you less with certain printing services. If you decide that you are to be the designer, try sketching a few simple ideas on paper first. Then, when you have some potential ideas, you need to refine and ultimately transfer that idea into a computer file. Don’t worry, if you don’t have any image editing programs or can’t afford one like Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop there are actually some pretty good free ones out there such as Splashup. Splashup is cool in that you don’t need to download the program, you just work right from the web interface. ____
There is also Photoshop Elements that you can buy for under $100 which is a scaled down version of Photoshop. I have used both the full Photoshop and Elements and the latter is more than enough to get you on your way to creating your own marketing materials. The only thing about using any of the free programs is that the art you create may not be sufficient if you ever intend on doing any commercial printing. But for our purpose of keeping a low budget, they’re great. Some of you may also have access to Microsoft Publisher, which as a designer, I can’t stand. However, for someone trying to layout projects for the first time, it’s great! It has tons of templates for all the items covered here. I won’t go into detail of how to use the programs to create your logo as that is beyond the scope of this article but one thing I will say before moving on is always make your original art large in scale or high resolution. If your program allows you to set resolution, 300 DPI is a good standard to ensure high quality printing. Once your art is finalized, you can always scale it down without ____
quality loss, but if you start small and scale up…it will look like a jaggy, pixilated mess.
Once you have a logo established, and your music ready to go on CD, now its time to package your demo. You have 2 main choices here. One is a sleeve that holds the CD but folds and unfolds revealing content when unfolded like the song list or band member profiles etc. This route is probably more suited _
for a designer but is an effective way to package your demo.
The other is to use a jewel case and create your own insert. This is a fairly simple, inexpensive way to package your CD. All you need is software to create your layout, an inkjet printer and a heavyweight paper stock to print your insert on. For software, any of the above solutions will be fine. If you do not already have an inkjet _____
printer, they’re pretty cheap these days and still good quality ranging in price from $50 to $2000. For this the $50 to $100 range should be just fine. It would be well worth your time to also check out the local print/copy shops and see how much they would charge to print you materials. In the long run, having your own printer will save money but the copy/print shops will, in most cases, produce better print results. A CD insert for a jewel case is 4.75” x 4.75” so you can use that size when setting up the layout in your program. Or…you can make it 4.75” x 9.5” and fold it in half and have content on both sides. For the cover, you could merely put your logo, with perhaps some light art in the background. On the flipside would be contact info and maybe a brief profile. Once you have it set up in your program, just print it out on a sheet of the heavyweight paper and cut to size. Viola! You now have an appealing package to contain your CD. To top things off, creating a label for the CD will be a nice finishing touch. If you have a desktop printer,all you need is inkjet friendly CD label ________
sheets, which are available at any computer/office supply store. Remember, when putting this together, the designer rule of thumb is “less is more” so if you start getting bogged down in complex layouts, try a more simple approach.
Next up is a business card. These can be used in conjunction with other marketing materials such as the Demo package as well as being carried with you at all times. You never know when an opportunity or contact may present themselves and you want to make sure you look professional and established when that time comes. Writing your information down on a bar napkin might work for potential dates but not for a business opportunity. Printing your own business card may be a little more tricky than the CD insert, only because most ink jet printers (especially the cheaper ones) are somewhat limited to how thick of cardstock they can print on. So you might be best served setting up your card and then bringing the digital file to a local printer/copy service. If that’s just not an option, there is definitely ink _
Business cards - a must have.
jet friendly business card stock out there. Most brands even come pre-scored so you can easily punch them out of the sheet once they are printed. The only drawback is that they are typically a lighter, more flimsy stock than a typical professionally printed business card.
Again, if you are not much of an artist, keep the card design simple by using __
just your logo and contact information or use one of the prefabricated templates if your program offers it. You are probably beginning to realize the importance of the logo. It goes on EVERYTHING. It ties your materials together and sets up an identity for your band. The more people see it, the more they will remember it and associate it with your great performances.
Now that you have some gigs lined up and are playing at various clubs, you will need some posters and flyers to promote those gigs. Most clubs that you will be playing at require ½ dozen or so letter sized posters to hang on the wall around the club and 100-300 smaller flyers to hand out to patrons. For the poster layout, one common practice is to simply have a picture of the band on the flyer or yourself if you are a solo artist. Obviously, the text you want to emphasize is the performance date and your band name. The club name isn’t as important on the poster if you are just posting them at the club. By now, I probably don’t have to mention the importance __
of putting your logo on the poster too. In the poster example in this article, the ABOUT FACE band’s text logo is displayed. The band also has a symbol type logo seen in other examples but is absent in this case. When a company has both types of logos, it is ok to sometimes use one without the other depending on the design its used in. The flyers are typically a duplicate of the poster but smaller in size. The posters should be in color but the flyers are ok printed in black and white and roughly ½ the size of the poster. Your inkjet printer will be sufficient for the posters but again, your local print/copy shop may yield better results. Ask them for a print sample.
As for the BW flyers, these I would definitely go to a local self serve copy shop and just run BW copies of the color poster at a reduced size so you can get 2 per sheet. You don’t HAVE to make the flyers smaller than the poster….its just a way to save a couple bucks but also may be a bit more convenient size for people to carry with them.
Finally, the web site. The same previous advice applies here. If you can afford a designer, do it. It will save you much time and hassle and help ensure a professional look. Working with HTML programs is even trickier than working regular graphic design programs because html code is much more limited in its capabilities. If a knowledgeable friend is not available then the first thing I would suggest is to post a site on mySpace. They have a section just for musicians and setting up the page is very easy. You just fill out the required info, choose a theme and you’re done. You can customize it but there are some limitations. You can also easily upload sound bytes of your music.
If you want to take a crack at setting up your own web site there are a plethora of html programs out there. I use Adobe Dreamweaver as that is for the most part, the industry standard. A really cool web building program if you already have Photoshop is a plugin called SiteGrinder. You just layout your site in Photoshop and it converts it into a ____
functional web site. There is also Freeway and Microsoft Frontpage. Dreamweaver definitely has a steeper learning curve than the rest. The web site for the band used in the example here www.theaboutfaceband.com was created using entirely Flash. Flash sites are known for more animation and interactivity than html sites but each medium has its pros and cons. If you are just starting I would suggest creating an html site.
A third option is to use a free web hosting/building company such as Geocities. Just type in “free web sites” in the browser search and several of these will come up such as Tripod, Angelfire and Geocities. With any of these you can host and easily build your own site. The only catch is that part of your web address will include their company name. If you want to host your own site with your very own web address, there are many web hosts available out there. GoDaddy.com is a popular option.
If you don’t have a web site these days, many people won’t take you seriously.Your web site is a great place to tell a bit about yourself, provide contact information, post your schedule and have music samples all in one place. Make sure to include your web address on all your other promotional material, especially your business cards.
If you are serious about getting gigs and maintaining a steady performance schedule, these 5 items are a must to compete with other music acts already out there and to nose out the ones trying to make it. If you believe that time is money, then hiring a graphic designer to help you with these items will save you lots of dollars (and frustration) in the long run. If you have a friend that can help you with the design and printing, then consider yourself lucky. If not, roll up your sleeves and get to work, it will be worth it, and who knows you might just have fun doing it!
Ken Knutson
MEET THE WRITER - KEN KNUTSON
Graphic Designer at In Form, Inc Media design for 6 years, Ken has
helped numerous businesses, not to mention a few musician’s, achieve
their identity and make them a recognizable entity in the marketplace.
In his spare time, Ken likes to mountain bike, catch movies, spend time with
his girlfriend and of course, more graphic design!
