 Everyone is concentrating on Instagram and Facebook promotion, and despite where every con artist with a YouTube channel or Facebook ad-fueled website will tell you no one is actually building a real fanbase off of fucking Facebook ads. Those people will tell you that are just saying it because they have no idea on how to actually build a fanbase. But the fact is, a big ingredient how most people build up a fanbase is with a bit of real-world strategy. The advantage now is that since everyone just focuses on online promotion, those who work on real-world promotion or IRL promotion as I now call it, have a huge advantage. So starting to do IRL promotion in your local area can be an insanely effective way to build up a fanbase. In this video I'm going to give you some inspiration on some of the real-world promotion strategies I've used over the years to build up fanbases in the real world. Hi, I'm Jesse Cannon and this is Museformation. So the first way to think of an IRL promotion strategy is as a seed to converting potential fans who've never heard of you into tipping past the point of curiosity and actually decide to give you a listen. This is not the first step in a promotion strategy but instead wanted to do as you have some traction. Let's call this after you have around 3,000 or more monthly listeners on Spotify. It's definitely not something to be done when you only have two songs on Spotify. The reason being when people decide to listen to your music from IRL promotions it's because they have now seen your name enough that they feel like they should know who you are. But if they see that you only have two songs they're going to know that all this promotion was just astroturfing. If they see you have two songs and 100 monthly listeners. So let's talk about what this strategy looks like for an artist who has less than 10,000 monthly listeners though and is building on up to something big like that because that's what this playlist is all about. We have to remember what huge artists do for merch is way different than you. They're trying to sell the most merch possible or reinforce their bread whereas you need to signal you are part of something that potential fans may be interested in joining so that you can get that initial traction before you can do something more artful and reinforcing. The first example I'm going to use of this is what we did with the bandman overboard I used to manage. We had a thing called Defend Pop Punk. Now obviously this is about as overt as possible of what we're signaling. We're saying that they are the band that's bringing Pop Punk back and defending it. You obviously see this shirt and you know what type of music the band plays but this was also effective when we saturated the market with these shirts that everyone who enjoyed Pop Punk felt like they needed to know who this band was because there was such strong signaling here. But for the less overt marketing people who want something a hair more subtle this often means that you're what you're going to try to do for imagery for your music for the real world is to make it genre identifiable or so striking that it makes people want to know what's going on. This is a long subject we'll take on in a future video but I want you to think about not betraying the barriers of genre so much and doing something that's going to show fans that you're a part of a movement that they probably identify with and that they should know about you. So let's talk practical IRL strategies. The first one I don't see utilized enough is tour posters. There's literally no cheaper way to get free advertising for your name and music than these posters. If you plan on playing more than 20 shows this year or even in your next album cycle of two years let's say pretty up 50 of these and getting two to the venue and two to the local record store or coffee shop or town center is the best most effective cheap advertiser you can do. If you have a fan in a town where you're playing soon send them a few strips of tape and ask them to hang up to at the town center and then have them Instagram it for you to post it and encourage other fans to ask about doing this. Going to the town before you play the oldest school method for show promotion was to go to a big show of the genre and just hand out fires to people on the way in especially if you're known to that show anyway getting inside when doors open with ten dollars worth of flyers can be insanely effective by getting people out to your next show if you make sure to do it effectively. I can't think of how many bands I saw doing this before blowing up but there's a way to do this. Use this space to put a record review that says your sound or why people need to hear you. Remember you're up against a million other things people can do with their time so make sure it's a review that says something that really calls them to needing to know who you are and why they need to check you out. Find something effective to say that makes people feel like they have to pay attention to you and listen to you when you get home and then come out to that show. Remember these posters are free ad space that often stay up for weeks after your show giving you ad space people normally pay tons of money for. You know what doesn't do any of that fucking Facebook event invites obviously IRL promotion involves the merch you sell at shows but there's a way to make it more effective if you have NPR listening indie nerd fans having some ultra cheap and by that I mean selling them at cost tote bags with your logo and you may even need silk screen these yourself to keep them cost effective. This is a great way to create walking advertisements even if people weren't that into your music they often just need something to carry stuff around in obviously t-shirts with the distinct and clear logo with your name legible could do wonders for not only making you money but funding your music. We're going to talk a lot more about that some other time. The more you can light up with that Venn diagram of eye catching while making your name legible the more effective a shirt is for spreading the word about you and making people think they need to know you. If your fans are teenagers or early 20 somethings free stickers postcards cheap bracelets patches or whatever are crucial because kids will put them on things. With Man Overboard we gave out postcards that fans can hang on their walls that look great on one side but on the other side I talked all about our free music download page since they would do both jobs of getting people to hear our music and thinking about us continuously and showing up in tons of Tumblr pictures and Instagram pictures. Let's also remember a lot of people want quality t-shirts today which drive out their price but having a basic design printed on cheaper t-shirts can give the slobs who wear band shirts every day a cheap way to get into you and have something to become an advertisement for you. Wait. Somebody suddenly realizes they wear a band shirt in every one of these videos. If you look to really make a big impression you know it's not actually that hard to saturate the markets that really really are effective if you happen to be able to travel to the two cities that matter the most. You know nearly every tastemaker lives in about two parts of the country. Specifically if you go to just these 20 square miles around Williamsburg Brooklyn as the center place including the neighborhoods of Bed-Stuy, Ridgewood Queens, Bushwick, Greenpoint you can saturate just about every music writer and influential person in New York music. As well if you go to Silver Lake Echo Park and Highland Park in LA there's less than 20 square miles there too where you can have just about every influencer and influential person in Los Angeles notice you. If you just get your posters up you will be seen in front of the eyes of every person who potentially could open up doors for you. Now are these people more jaded because they see more than most? Yes, but if you do something eye catching that intrigues them you could be pretty effective if you concentrate your efforts here. College towns are also insanely effective if you have those around you or you can plan tours around playing them. Saturated college towns with shows, posters, stickers and an active merch presence is how countless people have built up their fan base over the years. Making yourself feel like a phenomenon and someone all the students feel like should know when college kids are young and impressionable and finding themselves is how so many fan bases start off. Stickers are insanely effective but we have to remember how to do them right. Remember to put stickers up at the eye level of people when they're sitting down to pee as well as putting stickers up for those who stand up while they pee. Let's also remember to put up stickers at eye level on doors too. If you play lots of shows be sure to give them to other bands you play with. Those stickers on guitar cases are effectively cosigns that you are a part of their crew and this goes for t-shirts as well. It's insane how much giving t-shirts to the bands and sound man can be done when someone else wears them and they become that huge advertisement for you that's in photos and a shirt that people see all the time at a venue when they're impressionable. Yes shirts are expensive but you will sell way more of people see them. There's a lot more to IRL promotion when you can actually afford to do things. We pasting campaigns are insanely good and really effective in those areas we talked about before. There's so much more to this but for bands who are starting to build their fan base I think we've outlined a bunch of ideas that you can use. Let me know in the comments if you have some questions or any ideas about what you can be doing to build up your fan base with these IRL promotions. That's it. Am I missing anything? Is there any way you would have done this? I need to know your questions and what no one else is telling you since I want to answer them so leave them in the comments. I hope you like this video and if you did please like and subscribe and get notified for my future videos since I'm going to be breaking down the concepts in this video along with tons of others on promoting your music and how to make music you're more happy with. As well I have a Facebook group that's linked below that has only helpful information. No one tried to sell you anything, playlist or con artists, only helpful information for musicians looking to be better themselves. If you want to learn more about me, make a record with me or check out any of my books, podcasts or anything else I do, head to jessecanon.com or at jessecanon.com on any of the socials. Thanks for watching. One last thing, if you liked this video there's two playlists here with tons more videos that you'll probably enjoy. One's about how you promote your music and the other's about how you make songs you're happy with. Otherwise you can hit the subscribe button here to see the rest of my videos. Thanks so much for watching.