Marketing a Band or Business Isn’t What it Used to Be

I can remember it like it was just yesterday. Designing a flyer in Corel Draw, taking it to the local print shop to get hundreds of copies, and then plastering them all over the campus of Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. Who could forget the long trips to Bloomington, Indiana just to hang flyers all over town for our gig the next week at The Bluebird. Or the hour long drive to Indianapolis to hang Cootie Brown flyers for our next show at The Patio. We printed a different flyer for every show, and it had to be unique, colorful and professional. That was the best way to market your band back then, well one of the only ways.

Way back in 1995 we even had a website, but I don’t think many students visited the site unless they were at the computer lab. No one really had computers back then. I was one of the few, and spent late nights designing our site in Notepad, and then Dreamweaver (Version 3.0?) and trying my best to create a good site. Kevin Hood’s first website wasn’t bad considering it was over ten years ago . . .

We even mailed a monthly newsletter to all of the fans that signed up for the mailing list at our shows. I wrote the copy, designed the layout, had them printed, and we all hand folded each one and licked the stamps. I almost forgot about the four page color brochures we had printed and mailed in fancy envelopes with our logo to all of the bars in the Midwest. OK, so I was crazy about marketing even back then, but it was fun and a good experience.

Fast forward to the year 2009 and bands rarely even hang flyers anymore. They definitely don’t mail out a monthly newsletter, and a lot of bands rely on MySpace or Facebook as their only website. Bands didn’t have websites, then they did, and now they don’t again. It’s a lot easier to remind your fans about the next show on a social media site they visit every day.

A lot of these examples can apply to business. No, print advertising and mailers are not dead, but there are more cost effective methods to market a business using the Internet. I believe businesses should still mail newsletters and postcards, but not nearly as often, and print media should always advertise your website. Internet Marketing, Email Marketing, Social Media Marketing and all of the other online avenues are the new way to market your company, and the best way to track your marketing efforts.

Businesses shouldn’t replace their website with a Facebook Page, but they should embrace social media sites to connect with potential clients, market their business and bring traffic back to their website to encourage conversions and new business.

Bands aren’t hanging flyers anymore, but both bands and businesses are hanging flyers on social media sites to alert fans of their latest news update, blog post or learn about their new product. No heavy duty staple gun required.