Piggybacking
Piggybacking is the idea that you can promote your band more successfully by leveraging something (or someone) that has greater recognition and pulls in more eyeballs (or, in this case, ears) than yourself. This "something" can be a person, charity, or business, a place or annual event, or even a thing. In promotion, the thing that costs the most money to establish is name and brand recognition. Rather than trying to establish your band name, you can use something that people already know well and leverage it for yourself.
One of the simplest ways to use piggybacking is to mention the bands that you sound like on your website. People who know those bands and search on them will find your site on searches for those bands, and may gain you new fans. You should also use other band names that you sound like on all of your digital music stores, or anywhere else that your band is mentioned among many other bands.
Another way to use this idea is to make an album or a song about a holiday that people know well. When they search on "St. Patrick's Day" for example, your band might come up. In this case, you're Piggybacking on something that people already know well. We discuss this in Idea #3, Make a holiday album.
As you market yourself, think of other ways that you can piggyback your band or your music on other's successes. We include some ideas here in this Promotion section, but they come up in surprising places. Keep alert for places that need music, but don't have any yet.