The Dos and Don'ts of DIYing Your Own Music PR Campaign

Not every artist has the budget to hire an experienced publicist to take on PR campaigns for their releases, but that doesn’t mean they can’t get media coverage on their own. That being said, any artist who has run their own PR campaign for a release knows just how difficult it can be - especially when you’re just starting out. There are a ton of tricks that publicists use daily to optimize not only their workload, but also the results of their pitches. Here are some tips straight for our Director of Artist Development, Liam Grocki:

The Do’s

Take advantage of pre-release prep

Build mailing lists earlier than 3 weeks prior to release. Don’t rush your release timeline, pushing back dates to include solid lead time often leads to better results.

Be intentional with the publications you’re pitching. Does their area of coverage fit your music? Do they have a specific type of feature you’d be a great fit for? It can be time-consuming to research every publication you pitch, but if you make notes along the way, you really only need to do this one time!

Hone in on what the message, meaning, and overall vibe of your project is. What does it sound like and why should people care about listening to it? Ask your friends for feedback. What are some words they’d use to describe this project? Be sure to include those phrases in your pitch.

Make a pitching schedule to include pre-release and post-release pitching, and stick to it! Making sure all of these things are planned out before you have to start promoting the heck out of the project will make your life SO much easier.

Build a pitch template

There are a lot of templates that you can see or purchase online to guide you through building your own. Editors want to have a clean, straightforward pitch that clearly emphasizes why they should pay attention to it.

This is key for being able to optimize your workload and get through pitching everyone on your list(s) as fast as you can. All you will have to do before sending each pitch is update the name values on your pre-made template, maybe pop in a personal note, and then you’re good to go!

Write a professional press release

Get familiar with what a good press release consists of, and write one for your release. Sometimes, a great way to get coverage of your project is to provide media outlets with a pre-written article that they can repost. While this isn’t always as personal as a review or interview, having a publication repost your press release allows you to tap into their follower base and build more SEO for you and your release. At the end of the day, having more online visibility is always a plus as a rising artist, and sometimes having a decent press release can be the difference between landing a feature and getting overlooked.

The Don’ts

Don’t annoy publications

Don’t follow up with a publication earlier than 7 days from your initial pitch. It does not help you to come off as pushy, and clogging people’s inboxes is going to incentivize them to block you. Be gracious, diligent, and get familiar with blog’s submission guidelines if they have them posted. It is a great idea to follow up and remind editors/writers that you’d love to get their thoughts on your project, but understand that they are dedicating a lot of time to listening to 100’s of other artists’ projects every week, and you’re not entitled to their time or interest.

Don’t send a pitch unless you know it is high-quality

Include all necessary links, assets, and info. Hyperlink as much as possible - nothing is worse than opening an email full of long, confusing links. Oh, and make sure your links actually work.

Proofread for typos. You’d be shocked at the amount of pitches we receive that have very obvious typos. Simply writing your pitch out in a Google Doc - or using a tool like Grammarly - can seriously make or break your chances at being taken seriously by editors. Like we said earlier, these people spend a lot of time sifting through emails, so the least you can do is make sure your email reads smoothly.

Never pitch after 5pm, if you can’t work on sending emails until the evening, schedule them for early the next day! Gmail (and other email sites) has a button to easily scheduled emails ahead of time - just click the arrow by the “send” button.

Don’t skimp on visuals

We’ve seen artists land great placements for (somewhat) mediocre music that was supplemented with gorgeous visuals. Conversely, if you have an awesome project and underdeveloped visuals, that can unfortunately hurt your chances of getting featured in a publication. Having a solid visual brand and intentionally designed visual assets is invaluable in an industry that highly values aesthetics.  

There’s a lot for an indie artist to get familiar with before you would be able to effectively DIY a PR campaign for a release, but it is 100% doable if you set your mind to it. Set aside time before releases to make sure you not only have a game-plan, but that you also have all of the tools to successfully execute a PR campaign. Sometimes the best thing you can do is ask for help, in which case scheduling a consultation with an experienced publicist or PR agency might prove invaluable.

For more info about working with Evergreen, please email us at info@evergreenent.com.