How to Promote Yourself as a Musician in 2023 with Print Marketing

Being a successful DIY musician in 2023 often means being a savvy marketer. You need to know how best to promote your music, brand, and performances, often on a very limited budget. While a large portion of music marketing occurs online, there is still a wide audience to reach via print marketing materials. Examples of very effective print media are banners, business cards, posters, stickers, tee shirts, and buttons.  

While I am a 123Print® employee, I am also a musician who has worked in various professional settings for over 25 years. The music marketing landscape has certainly changed in that timeframe. Canvassing businesses, streets, light poles, etc. with flyers/posters is generally a thing of the past, as is receiving physical mailers/promotions via the USPS. Musicians now need to be much more targeted and efficient with their advertisements.

Top 5 Print Marketing Materials to Promote Your Talents

Taking full advantage of my employee discount at 123Print®, I’d like to expand on a few ways, in the past ten or so years, I have used print media to promote my own bands, music, and performances.

1. Banners – Even the casual listener must know who is performing when playing in a club or at an event. A great way to make it easy for everyone to learn your name is to have a large banner behind you on the stage. It is a missed opportunity if someone enjoys your music but has no idea how to see you again or recommend you to someone else. Part of the function of a gig is to promote the next gig.

Banners should be simple, easy to read, and eye-catching. Don’t include too much text or visual information outside the band or performer name. I recommend a vector-based design, which ensures crisp lines. A 96” x 24” banner, our largest size on 123Print®, will look a little fuzzy even if you use a 300 dpi raster (JPEG, PNG, etc.) image. Our customer service team can assist you with these details as well.

Lastly, banners are inexpensive, durable, and easy to store. Just roll it up and keep it in your car. You’ll have it ready for every show.

• Business Cards – I don’t recall many shows where at least one potential client didn’t ask for a business card after the performance. It can certainly depend upon the age of your audience and what type of gigs you are playing. Still, I can’t recommend enough to have professionally printed business cards with your contact info at the ready. It makes for a quicker exchange and helps give what you do a sense of professionalism and legitimacy (seriously). At the very least, it helps people remember your name or the name of your band.

For the design, I would keep it simple and not try to cram as much info in as you can. Branding is important. If you have specific colors in your banner, on your social media, or elsewhere, try to echo them on your business cards. A logo can be a huge help. Tip: I wouldn’t put your personal phone number on the card. Usually, email and social media are enough.

• Posters – It can be easy to go overboard with posters. But, as stated earlier, putting them up everywhere is a thing of the past. I find it more targeted and efficient to just put up one or two posters at the venue where you will be performing, maybe a few weeks ahead of time.

It can be a good idea to have a general poster design that can be applied to several gigs. Leaving a blank area at the bottom (maybe two or three inches vertically, on a vertical format poster) is excellent for writing out the time, date, cover, or any other info for a particular show. It’s also much cheaper to print the posters in bulk (100 at a time versus 50 or less).

Personally, I like the 11” x 17” size, though 8.5” x 11” can be enough. We offer both sizes on 123Print®.

• Coasters – It depends upon where you perform, but if many of your gigs are in bars, restaurants, or venues with tables, coasters can be a fun idea to help increase awareness for your brand. Matchbooks used to function similarly, though now they are found less and less in venues. Coasters are relatively cheap and pretty much distribute themselves. If there is a venue where you frequently perform or will be performing soon, print up a stack of branded coasters and ask if you can put them at the bar.

I like to have fun designing coasters. Though, honestly, they don’t even need to have anything more than your name or logo. Contact info can be useful to include, though, in my opinion, coasters are more about name/brand recognition than anything else. People don’t always look at what is under their drinks, though if you give it enough time, your brand identity will gradually spread to the right audience.

Custom napkins can be just as useful, though they have a much shorter shelf life.

• Yard Signs – I’ve seen custom yard signs be very effective advertising for specific gigs. For instance, I’ve worked with clients from different school districts who used yard signs to promote school performances, musicals, benefit concerts, etc. Any event serving a local community or neighborhood can benefit quite a bit from a few well-placed signs in the area. It’s essential to make the design very easy to read and understand, even from across the street. Two-sided yard sides double the chances of being seen as well.

Other Recommendations

These are just a few ways print marketing can help market your music. Of course, there are other recommended options outside of what we can provide at 123Print®. Tee shirts always create good visibility and can be effective money-makers. And I always like to reward good tippers with buttons and stickers. It is important that audience members remember who they saw and how they can contact you for booking, sales, and more!

Save on stylish custom print marketing materials and more at 123Print®!