Presence, meaning doing the legwork - visiting music stores that are vital to the artists' exposure; dropping off stickers, flyers, displays when allowed- space and placement policies are sometimes an issue. It helps if one can schmooze with the store's owner/manager.Tickets for store employees and/or people that are helpful with your promotional activities.
Make sure that samplers, stickers, paraphanalia are in prominant places so students,customers can access them. Play copies at selected stores work if you have a good relationship. Otherwise they can end up at used stores or on the music stores' employees home CD player/burner.
I had a good relationship with the WEA office in Cleveland. Once we had a drawing in advance of Owsley's solo release in '99. The winner received a gift certificate for a dozen roses - his radio single was called "Coming up Roses". Things like that; tie-ins, give-aways, word-of-mouth, making the visits, all in prep of the band/artists' visit.
I knew the OSU rep for Artemis Records; he was also the Programmer at the OSU student radio station. He would come in well in advance of visits to get posters up, stickers and postcards where they could be easily grabbed. I always let him put up posters and flyers because he was a music focused person first, biz only in support of the music.
I never had to ask for play copies of Artemis artists; The Forty-Fives,Steve Earle (now on Lost Highway, I hear), Rickie Lee Jones,Warren Zevon. If they came to town I knew he'd take care of me and my employees.
If you have a good relationship with a store, an in-store visit or autograph session or even a small inpromtu performance can do wonders for a show's visibility.
In Columbus, back in the 80s, there was a guy named Curt Scheiber who ran School-Kids records on High Street across from OSU campus. He was able to get Richard Thompson to do a visit, sing a few songs and sign autographs. As the booking agent for the show, he was his own street team.
It starts with passion about and belief in the artist, though.
