Music Business For Dummies
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Print ads can be a scary investment in the music business. They can cost a great deal of money to get the exposure you need and are read less and less each day. Although online advertising has a much better chance at conversions, some print can work to your favor; however, choose wisely and realize that those most affordable print options usually mean that your advertisement will appear small on the page and bunched up with other ads, too.

Smaller, local, and read rags over big magazines

Instead of spending a fortune to buy an ad in Rolling Stone, diversify! Look at some key college papers, local entertainment magazines, and more centralized print that is likely far more affordable than even your area’s major papers, and shows up that much bigger both in conversions and the actual size of the ad.

Running campaigns separately

Try one advertisement for a week in a San Diego college paper and then a week later in a Portland, Maine, entertainment magazine. Running the same ad in two totally different publications gives you a chance to see if you’re being seen and what the conversion actually is. Switching up and not staying with comparable cities also helps make some weeks more affordable and allows you to test that many more markets to find trends that work for you.

When you spread out your print campaigns as well as zero them into more direct areas when you go to print, you can get a much better sense of your growth and conversions. If you’re contacted by clubs to perform, if you see a number of adds from your ads on social media, you get that much clearer a sense of how you are being seen, where and when.

Customize the print ad for the printed publication

Draw the attention by drawing from local interests and expanding those interests to wherever you are or to popular events in that area. Making a joke about coffee in the headline of an ad in Seattle could garner a lot more attention over another small ad that’s promoting a band.

What to promote in a print ad

When designing an ad about a specific show, be sure to include information that’s pertinent even to those who can’t attend your concert. In other words, give people more information about you, your music, your tagline, and where they can connect with you online. Lead in with a headline that grabs the reader’s attention. For example, if a school is in midterms (which is easy to find out by looking online at that school), create your ad geared to that event.

Music To Study By! Take a Break With Kitty Likes Avocado!

It applies and implies humors, consideration, and connection, which gets you seen that much more.

About This Article

This article is from the book:

About the book author:

Loren Weisman is a music business consultant, speaker, and author who has been a part of over 700 albums. He also maintains TV production credits for three major networks and has served as a media consultant for many businesses in and out of the arts and entertainment fields. Loren is an executive producer and co-creator of Leveraging Smart, a new reality business TV show airing in 2016.

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