When you run a PR company you tend to get a lot of bands asking if you’d like to check out their music and potentially work with them. We can’t really listen to them all so here are 5 pieces of advice for getting our attention and approaching a PR company.
Method of Approaching
If you’re going to get in touch then email is probably the simplest and most accepted way you can get in touch with a press company about your band. Up until a few years ago I would have said sending in a CD was a good option too but a lot of computers now don’t come with CD drives anymore so any that turn up in the post to our office get put in box and are left to gather dust. Email also allows you to politely follow up if you’ve not had a response with-in a week or two. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with chasing someone up once or even twice. Any more I’d just take it as a sign that they aren’t interested. Though personally I’ll try and reply when I can if someone has taken the time to send a follow up email so don’t be afraid to it.
When you do send that email, make sure it’s actually tailored and personalised to the individual you are contacting. It’s worrying how many bands will send out a blanket email and bcc or even cc a ton of different PR companies in saying that they are wanting to work with them.
Randomly messaging someone on Facebook or tweeting a link to a track to them out of the blue is probably the most irritating. There’s nothing worse than seeing a band tweet about 100 different people at once asking them to ‘check out’ their track. Please don’t do it I beg of you. It doesn’t work and everyone will hate you.
Research
Make sure you do your research before you get in touch with a PR company about your band and see which other artists and the sort of music they cover. If you’re an indie rock band then contacting a PR company that specialises in heavy metal is just a waste of your time and the person who gets your email will straight away know you’ve not bothered to do your research. When you do find the PR that you think might be right for you then make sure you reference some of the artists they’ve worked with, especially if your band has some things in common with them. We always like to engage with people who are fans of the artists we work with so this will usually get our attention and it also shows you’ve put some thought into things before reaching out.
Planning
There’s a minimum period of time we usually work from on an album campaign. For example there’s normally a 2 to 3 month lead-in for a print campaign and around 6 to 8 weeks for online. So immediately if you get in touch and say your album is out next week then your’e already way too late for us to consider working with you. In some cases we’ve had people get in touch saying their album is already out. Again there’s nothing that can be done for you here.
When it comes to getting in touch try and keep these timeframes in mind and outline a rough plan of when you think your potential single/EP/album is coming out, when you might tour and also any other assets you could have for the campaign and when they’ll be ready, such as a music video. The more of this you can put together the more interesting you become to the person you are approaching.
Music
As obvious as this may sound, often bands will get in touch and not include a link to their music. Please include a link to your music and while you are at it try and make sure it’s a good quality recording. If you’ve done a lot of the hard work and convinced someone to take a listen to your track then you really want to impress them. A low quality demo or live video shot on a camera phone won’t have the same sort of impact as a decent recorded track. It’s our job to send your music to other people so if it doesn’t sound good we’re really not going to want to share it. Try and show us the final version or as close to it as you can.
Feedback
If the answer is a no then it’s always worth asking for feedback from the PR company you just approached. You won’t necessarily always get it but if you’ve caught them on a good day or maybe you were just really polite over email then they could offer some of their thoughts which you may want to take onboard. It also potentially leaves the door for you to contact them again in the near future.
I’ve had a couple of bands in the past where I suggested that hiring a PR company at this current time wasn’t right as their profile was too small and that they should try and create some initial coverage themselves. A while later the band did just that and came back showing some of the great coverage they’d secured so we’re now working with them on their next single.
Simon Glacken is the Director at I Like Press.
Since founding in 2009 as enthusiastic champions of the emergent British left-field rock scene, Leeds-based publicists I Like Press have evolved upon their ability to birth new artists into the public consciousness, to create fresh impetus for established musicians worldwide.
Read Full Article Here: http://www.helpforbands.co.uk/how-to-approach-a-pr-company/
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