What are the best DJ marketing tools?
In an age where the electronic music industry is more packed than ever before, bursting with upcoming producers and DJs who are intent on making a name for themselves, how can your name stand out from the rest via your marketing techniques? Here we will focus on one of the most important marketing tools for a DJ: Branding yourself, and choosing your DJ name, and logo.
Branding yourself as a DJ is the first step in the promotional process for building a long-lasting career. Think of yourself as a marketable business and asset. The best businesses in the world are the ones that have an instantly identifiable brand and logo that perfectly represents them. You also need one that will help promote you and your music. To help with this, answer the following question:
“If you had just 2 minutes to tell someone about your identity, market, and how you are different to other DJs, what would you say?”
Get this right, and it’s the successful first step you can take in building a DJ brand for yourself, as well as being something that you can adapt for your DJ bio to use in your promotional and marketing materials. Once you have this aspect done, you can then start to take that brand identity over into the development of a logo and DJ name.
Create a DJ Name
You might already have one, but if you don’t it’s time to create a DJ name that will speak for you as a DJ, as well as representing you as a brand. The secret to choosing a good DJ name is to come up with something that is instantly recognizable plus identifies you and your music style. Think carefully about your DJ name. It’s not easy to start from scratch once you have an established DJ name that you are using in advertising materials. Here are some tips on choosing a DJ name that can help you in choosing yours:
Option 1: Use Your Own Name
Some DJs will have a real name (or real-sounding name) that already sounds great and gives off a vibe. Think of DJs such as Calvin Harris or David Guetta – they just sound like great DJ names already.
Option 2: Use a Variation on Your Name
It still means you keep things personal, but could just be an adjustment to your surname, a shortening of the name, or making it sound more foreign and exotic. For example, some of the biggest trance music DJs in the world tend to have Germanic and Scandinavian sounding name, so you might want to change up your name to sound more like that.
Option 3: Let the name suit the style
One thing to remember is that certain music styles can tend to have certain DJ naming trends. For example, the names of top bass and trap DJs tend to be very industrial sounding; names such as Skrillex, Nero, and Noisia. So let your name suit your style.
Other things to consider when choosing your DJ name
Once you have settled on a DJ name, go and make sure that nobody else is already using it. This is simple enough to do, just Google it! If you find that it’s not being used, then the next thing to do is to check that the website domain name is available as having a website will be a key part of your DJ branding and marketing in the future. The best place to check to see whether a domain name is already taken is on a website called Namecheap. Visit that website, type your DJ name in, and see if the .com version is available to purchase. It might also be worth making secondary checks on Facebook and Twitter to see if the name is free and available to use. If you need any additional inspiration go take a look at DJ Mag’s Top 100 DJ list. Are there any DJs in there who play a similar style of music to you? If so, look for trends in DJ naming conventions and choose your own wisely!
Design a DJ logo
Knowing how to design a DJ logo is an interesting aspect of your DJ promotion and marketing, as it will be the main identifying element to your brand that will appear on flyers, posters, websites, social media, business cards and even merchandise. A well-designed DJ logo will embody you as an artist and be a key part of your marketing materials, press pack, and online presence. These days every DJ needs or has a recognizable logo. It’s very common now for dance music events to simply have DJ logos listed, rather than DJ names – you can see an example in the poster below from the UK Creamfields festival. Again, the best thing to do here is let the style of your music speak to your logo. If you create sharp, bass sounds, the logo should follow a similar route; with sharper edges etc. Alternatively, if your sound is more of a warm, house, sound, then softer shapes will serve best.
In the modern day, the quality of your music is clearly an important tool, but before anybody gives the music a chance, they’ll want to see a clear, concise, and strong brand. Get this right, and you’ve successfully achieved the most important marketing tool of them all.
