How would YOU market a rock band? (8)
I've taken a little task of marketing my friends band (nothing super serious yet) and I was I find it quite fascinating as I've never tried anything like this before. I would guess that in these types of marketing, trying to get the band viral is important. Do you guys think that like advertising in Facebook with targeting similar bands would work the best? Maybe some website also with some SEO done with the local language for keywords like "(local) gigs"?. Do you think Pinterest/Instagram/Snapchat would be a place for bands to market?
The options are limitless in my opinion but I really think that I should try to get it viral and get people talking about them and sharing their videos/songs via social medias.
If you find the topic interesting then you're more than welcome to give your thoughts : )
I have absolutely zero experience with marketing bands, so you should take what I say with a grain of salt.
However, I think first and foremost you need to define your goals. Are you trying to get people to buy their music? Go to their concerts? Like them on Facebook? Depending on your goal, the amount of money you will spend and the tactics you will want to use are very difference.
My sense is that if they are still a small band doing local gigs, then advertising on facebook targeting better known bands will likely end up losing you and your friends a lot of money. Instead the more SEO and organic endorsements would probably be a better idea.
I've helped market a friends rock band with the goal of increasing their FB likes so their page could have more legitimacy. Basically, we targeted fans of another (world famous) rock band whose genre/sound was very similar to my friends band. It also helped that we are personal friends with the guys of the famous rock band, and the singer from that famous band had recorded vocals on a track with my friends band.
The goal wasn't to stay local necessarily because they were looking to increase FB likes, so we found out what countries the famous band had a solid fan base in, and went with the countries that offered the lowest bids on FB. We ended up targeting Mexico, Brazil, and some other South American countries. I think the FB campaign took them from about 3k likes to 13k within a few months.
We used angles such as "Like (famous band)? You'll love (friends band)!" and also "Check out (famous bands singer) singing on (small bands) new song!"
All in all I would say it was successful. Once their FB likes started going up, it began to grow organically from there. I think they have 30k+ likes on FB now. Keep in mind, a decent amount of this is from playing shows, touring, releasing new songs, etc.
One other thing I wanted to try for them but we never ended up doing was to use PPV to target a list of band names with a similar sound, and have my friends bands YouTube page pop-up with their single playing. As soon as the page would pop-up, I'm guessing you could convert them into a fan if they liked what they heard, or maybe they would just close it. Honestly, I'm not sure if using pops is a good idea to promote a band since it's a bit intrusive and might piss people off and get negative comments on the YouTube page.
Also, for Instagram... maybe you can use Instagress (at your own risk) to follow people with certain hashtags like #metallica #pantera (or whatever your friends band sounds like) and hope they follow back if they like the videos/music on the band's IG page.
What genre is the band in? The tactics I'd use would very much depend on the sub-genre they're in - how I'd market a Doom Metal band is very different to how I'd market something ultra-ironic and indie.
The other key question, as cmdeal says, is what you're aiming to achieve. In particular, are they looking for a worldwide following (which is useless for selling tickets to local gigs) or a local core (which will be more expensive than a worldwide following)?
are you able to gather more information on the top bands around the world, study the way they market?
I used to organize 7000+ edm parties. Know a few things about marketing events..
I'm interested in this aswell. For the band I work with we are now focusing on marketing tour dates as well as any upcoming music releases.
Attila would you mind sharing advice on driving crowds to live shows?
Thanks!
Alex
I think this could be quite an interesting follow along!
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