The Fine Art of Hip Hop Street Promotions by Mello Melanin

Okay so you've finished your album so now its time to let the streets know about you. How do you do this? What is it? Well let me break it down for you.

First of all, before you do anything you should have identified your target market. These would be, in so many words, the people most likely to buy your music. You need to know as much about this market as you can.

Once you've found these people and finished your album you should let them know about your album. This will take some footwork and its not a short term plan. You need to have some flyers made. A flyer with some fancy graphics is great but a flyer with text on it is good enough to get the job done. Get as many flyers made that your budget calls for (yes, you need a budget). Then go to the places where your target market hangs out. This could be clubs, restaurant, obviously record stores, health food store, etc.

What most street promoters do is put flyers under the windshield wipers or in the door jams of the cars in the parking lots of clubs. Sometimes you might get chased away by a property owner so if they tell you there's no soliciting, just leave. Most of the time you won't have that problem, but if you do, just go to the next venue. On any promotional material, always make sure you put your contact information on it so that people can connect with you. You'll miss out on some opportunities if you don't.

And make sure you put on there where they can buy your music and have some samples of it on you. I learned that one the hard way! I ran into the Hip hop legend Scarface once and I gave him a flyer. He said, "I hear you talkin' bout the music but I don't hear it. Where's yo CD?"

I'm glad I had one in the car or else I would've looked really amateur.

Always keep samples while you're out! The key to this strategy is to use repeat marketing. This means that you have to hit those same spots and keep promoting your music more than once. Your budget is going to dictate how many flyers you can distribute.

You will meet a lot of people while you are out so make sure you have a pen and paper or some way to collect contact information. You will never know who you'll run into on the street. Now this may take a while to generate a buzz but let's look at it from a numbers perspective:

Let's say you have an opportunity to run a full page ad in a major rap magazine like The Source or Vibe. Well let's throw out a cost of $30,000 for the ad. Okay so you got a nice beautiful ad that will ONLY RUN ONE TIME in the magazine.

Plus people will generally respond to a marketing message over period of time. Research shows that it takes approximately 7 times so that ad ain't gonna cut it. On the other hand if you had invested that 30 grand in street promotions you could have hit your target market at least those 7 times and then some. Do the math! I hope this gets your creative juices flowing on how you can get your name and music out to the streets. If you have any questions you can email me at mello@free-hot-rap.com.