INNOVATIVE ADVERTISING

Oh advertising! Is it really worth it as a musician? Well, it depends. Where are you advertings? What are you advertising? And do you have money? Of course you want to try to get as much free publicity as possible. If you can do it for free, definitely go for that option!

When you do get the funds, check into these ideas. The great thing about the following options is that you can advertise at whatever price is affordable for you.

And in continuation to Monday’s blog, Finding Your Niche, the below suggestions allow you to advertise directly to your niche.

StumbleUpon
Its a great source for people who wanna find good things online. StumbleUpon doesn’t just focus on music. It exposes surfers to every type of website in the world. How does it work? Lets say you wanna get your myspace out to a unique type of listener (See yesterday’s post: Finding Your Niche). Click on StumbleUpon Advertising and create a campaign. As you create your campaign, you’ll see that you can choose what types of people you want to visit your website – everything from people who are history buffs to people who are vegetarian, to people who like kayaking. Tons of random categories.

So what if your music appeals most to men, maybe you’d want to pick people who fall into the following categories: home improvement, mens issues, video games. Or if you think your music has ambience that best fits the spiritual guru/yoga type crowd; you might want to pick people who fall in the following categories: yoga, self improvement, ambient music.

You’re also given the option of choosing age range, geographic location and other demographics. StumbleUpon only costs .05 cents per view. So you could spend $20 on advertising and that would expose your website to 400 people. Check out their short video tutorial.

Facebook (and Myspace)
Its much the same concept as Stumble Upon: i.e. target audiences, demographics and all that jazz. One thing I’ve noticed and like about Facebook ads is that it allows you to pay for impressions by the thousands. So that means, if you set your ad price as 20 cents per 1000 impressions, your ad will show up on the side panel of 1000 facebook pages. Whether 5 people or 500 people click the impression, you still only pay 20 cents per 1000. I’ve found that Facebook isn’t as straighforward as StumbleUpon and takes a little time to understand.

I haven’t tried Myspace advertising, so if you have experience, please comment below.

The Pizza Boy (ya, for real!)
During the week of his CD Release, Pittsburgh artist T. Mitchell Bell stopped into his local pizza store, and asked them if they would be able to distribute flyers for his CD release everytime they had to make a delivery. AWESOME idea! They let him do it for free b/c he was a very regular customer!

Stop into your local restaurant, whether it be a pizza store, or something else. Ask them if they’d be willing to do the same. You might have to pay a little something but its a great idea ( they’ll treat you better if they know you). It’s one of the best ideas I’ve heard lately and I think its probably effective.