2.  Amazing and Consistent Promotion – The best thing my band ever did was hire a PR company. If you’re a band like us, i.e. an abrasive, unmarketable band that will never “hype” in the way that other, younger, more digestible bands will, then hiring a publicist is the best investment that you could ever make (check out Fresno Media). Victory takes everything a PR company would do a step further. Aside from a constant stream of interviews, features, etc. they also send out a huge amount of promo materials to every venue that we play, have passed out thousands of samplers with our music on it, taken out ads in magazines, and generally raised our visibility to a point that we would have never been able to achieve on our own.