You’ve spent hours, days, weeks, months, and perhaps even years learning your craft in the bedroom as a DJ, and now feel it’s time to get club or event gigs.
But how can you promote yourself as a DJ? Not just online or in a particular music genre or industry, but also offline, perhaps in a local town or city?
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In this guide, I will set out the everything you need to know in order to master DJ marketing, so you can promote yourself better and earn the DJ sets and gigs that your skills deserve.
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Over the last couple of decades, I’ve worked as a DJ, put on successful club events and ran DJ agencies. I’ve booked hundreds of high profile DJs, local DJs, and have also helped propel their careers via my DJ agency. I believe that this gives me a unique perspective on what works and what doesn’t.
Putting all this experience and knowledge together has given me an in-depth knowledge of how digital marketing can work in tandem with DJ marketing and club promotion.
This is my ultimate DJ marketing guide, with tips on how to promote yourself as a DJ online, and in a local or global market. It’s essential reading for not just bedroom DJs just starting out, but also more established DJs who want to take themselves to the next level.
Dj Marketing: Everything You Need To Know
DJ promotion starts with your brand. Branding yourself as a DJ is the first step in the promotional process to 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.
“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?”
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Most DJs won’t have a great answer to this question, which is essential if you are serious about building a DJ brand for yourself.
You should be able to give an answer that isn’t bland, doesn’t sound like every other DJ, and speaks volumes about who you are, what you bring to the party, and what people can expect from your music and performance.
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.
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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.
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 recognisable plus identifies you and your music style.
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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.
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, Armin Van Burren, and David Guetta – they just sound like great DJ names already.
But you may want to keep your real-life from your DJ-life. Many part-time DJs who have other more mainstream careers like to keep the two things very separated un-related – for example, when people Google your real name do you want it to reveal that you also work as a DJ?
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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.
When I was at school I was called Yogi. Now unfortunately there is already a DJ Yogi out there so that was a non-starter. But perhaps, just perhaps, you have a nickname that is ideal as a DJ name.
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One thing to remember is that certain music styles can tend to have certain DJ naming trends. I’ve already mentioned trance DJs, but similarly look at the dub-step scene.
The names of the top dub-step DJs tend to be very industrial sounding; names such as Skrillex, Major Lazer, Krewella, Nero, and Noisa – they don’t really sound like wedding DJs do they?
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!
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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 Dj 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.
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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!
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.
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I remember in the late 90s when dance music DJs were just starting to become celebrities in their own right. Back then I don’t really remember any of them having logos. It was only around the year 2000 this started to change.
These days every DJ needs or has a recognisable 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.
If you are not someone who can design, and don’t have any friends who are designers, then my recommendation would be the 48 Hours Logo website. Click that link and you can pay just $29 dollars for 20 of their designers to come up with different logo ideas which you can then choose from. The quality of the logo designs are always exceptional.
Digital Dj Business Card
Consider having professional DJ press photographs taken. These can be used on social media, flyers, websites, and promotional materials. Great photography will set you apart from the competition and is an essential aspect to how you can promote yourself with effective DJ marketing.
You will need a collection of hi-res photos that you can give to promotors and event organisers, as well as use on your own marketing materials.
It’s very easy to get this wrong though, as the Internet is littered with examples of appalling DJ press photographs. Here’s one of my personal favourites when DJ press shots can go bad – although I assume this image is tongue in cheek!
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Deciding the style you choose to go for will depend on your music genre, so take a look at what the big DJs in your scene are using for press photography and try to mimic that.
As an example, it’s unlikely that a wedding DJ would have press shots of him or her looking moody in the back alleyway of an industrial city – perhaps a dub-step DJ would though?
Think carefully about the image you want to portray before having any photography done. It will also pay to have headshots, action shots, and various dimensions taken so they can be adapted for use by yourself and club promotors.
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Like anything else in print, a well-written bio has good spelling, grammar and good flow. It should also have a structure as well.
When I managed DJs via my agency, I had a format I would follow for any well-written DJ bios. You can take the format I used which is developed using questions like this:
Some of the worst DJ bios I have read include cliché statements such as “I discovered music in my mother’s womb, and have been destroying dancefloors ever since with banging tune selections” … sounds terrible eh?
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If you cannot write to a good standard then get someone to do it for you – it might pay to revisit the elevator pitch idea I mentioned earlier in the guide to help form the content.
I would also recommend that you update it regularly as I’ve lost count of how
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