How to Advertise Your Band's Show for Free

You can advertise your band's next gig virtually for free! Just follow these steps to create a grass roots campaign that will ensure a full crowd at your show!

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

1. Create a poster, which is just an advertisement for your band's show on a piece of standard size paper. This can be as simple as drawing the details on the paper and photocopying it or getting artistic in a program like Photoshop and creating an elaborate work of art.

2. Ask the owner of the business your band is playing at into placing a coupon on your poster. This could be something like a free cup of coffee or a buck off a beer on the date of your gig. People being handed your poster are more likely to keep it if there's something of value on it.

3. Get your poster seen around town! Look for any business that displays posters for local events in their windows or has a public bulletin board on site. Go to any local event that draws a crowd and hand them out to people.

4. Use the Internet! Plaster your show information all over your band's website and if you have a page on a social network, such as MySpace, make sure you are issuing bulletins and event announcements on a daily basis. Closer to the show, email everyone possible with an invitation.

5. Issue a press release. It might seem silly, but it gets attention. Drop off, email, fax or mail a copy to every single media outlet, not only in your town, but within a 25-mile radius.

6. Use the media! Find the entertainment editor of your local paper and request an article on your band. Call your local radio station's program director and make your band available for an interview or even an in-studio performance. Do the same with any television stations in your area.

Tips & Warnings

• If you're printing your poster in black and white, produce copies on as many different colors of paper as possible. In some situations, this will allow you to place the same poster more than once in the same place by using several different colored posters. It also ensures that people who view your poster in different locations are more likely to pay attention to the information.
• Above all else, be sure to include this important information needed for a person seeing your poster to attend: Who (Your band), What (A live show), Where (The show's location) and When (The show's date and starting time).
• Put your fans to work! Obviously, your posters can be distributed more widely if more people are doing the distributing.
• If you produce an elaborate poster, be sure that your masterpiece doesn't overwhelm the date and location information for the show.
• When creating an email advertisement, do not send it to the same person more than once. This will attract a crowd, but it'll be a very angry crowd.