Well if I were you I think I would start more locally and expand from there. I think it would be harder to compete if you are trying to go directly to really big name players. Find either some of the most popular local bands or some bands who are signed to small labels but still play nationally. Obviously if you are giving them a free snare drum most guys will take it. But that is not enough, you need them to market for you. So after you contact these drummers, I would give them a snare to try for a week or so, let them play a show with it, then they can come back and give feedback to you. If they don't care for it, then you get some good feedback on your product from a working drummer and its no cost to you. If they do like it then I might write up a contract sort of thing stating that you will give them the snare drum for free and will require them to play it for x amount of time, and to promote it whenever possible meaning any questions from fans on their gear, any interviews they may get they will always mention your snare. You need to think of it this way, you are not giving your snare away for free, you are using it as a marketing tool and you just hired this guy to promote your product, and you are paying him with a snare drum. Do some research on these "smaller" signed bands, see how many hits their website gets, how often they do gigs, if they are getting top billing, how many song plays their myspace has. Have them stick a link to your website on their band website.
Oh and where is your website? first thing would definitely be to provide a link on here