A lot of indie acts spend a lot of money marketing their music. And plenty of companies exist that are more than willing to help separate a band from its marketing budget. But despite what the experts who profit from music marketing will tell you, you don’t always need to spend a lot or hire these companies if you’re an up-and-coming and/or lesser-known act. The DIY approach is by far the most sensible way for an act to promote itself in the early stages of its career. So, instead of throwing away money because others tell you you’re supposed to, here are some cheap and free ways to promote the band.

Network with journalists. The best free way to get the word out is to get press. Real music journalists don’t accept payment for reviews. Find out who the music journalists and bloggers in the area are who cover your style of music and send a personal email asking where to send a press kit. If you see them out at a bar, offer to buy them a beer and give them a CD. Be politely persistent in follow ups, not overbearing.

Do you really need to go to a printing company and hire a graphic designer for flyers and posters? With home computing and software templates what they are today, you’ll spend a lot less designing and printing promo materials yourself, until you get to the stage where hundreds of copies or more of one project are needed.

A short questionnaire on if you need to hire a booking agent: When was the last time you packed out two different clubs of a hundred seats or more in two different towns? If the answer is “Never,” stick to doing your own booking, for now, and use that money for things like ink, paper and software.
If the answer is “just recently” then it’s time to start asking the people who booked you at these clubs for recommendations on booking agents and PR folks.

Barter with writer friends to help draft your bio and other promo materials. Professional writers will charge you anywhere between $75 and $250 just to write a bio. Of course, you can do it yourself for free, but it helps to have a fresh, trained set of objective eyes on it, preferably someone who knows you as well as they know the English language.

Utilize all your free social-networking tools. Update your Facebook page (it changed a few months ago, in case you haven’t checked it out in a while) and learn about all their new analytical and marketing tools. Join and use Pinterest, as it’s not just for girls anymore (remember when Facebook was only for college kids?).

Get your ground game going. If there’s one lesson that indie bands and musicians can learn from the latest presidential election, it’s this: spending big money doesn’t always get big results. To be certain, big money was spent by both sides, but one of the main reasons experts cite for Obama’s victory over Romney is that his grass roots organization was much better than Romney’s. The takeaway here is to organize the people who already support you and get them to put their feet on the ground by doing street team work, and by spreading the word through their social media pages.