It can be difficult to find something that really works. After all, your goal is to be able to sell music, merchandise and tickets and, ultimately, make a living with their music, since only getting followers or being “famous of the Internet” is not enough?
You cannot eat tweets, nor do these pay your rent. The social is only one part of the equation.
You must know that a marketing strategy takes time. Making sure you have time to play, write and practice is the top priority.
Marketing plan
The first step to any successful marketing effort is to have a PLAN – know what your goal is and why.
This objective will be a standard to weigh all your actions and decisions against. And it will make everything much clearer in terms of what steps you should follow.
If you are trying to decide if a concert will actually move you forward, ask yourself: “Is this concert directly related to my goal? Or would it be better to spend my time somewhere else? ”
This stage of planning is also where you should know who make up your audience. Every musician should be able to know from the head of their basic information about their fans – age ranges, gender division, general location, and maybe some bands and musicians that they like or some of their general interests.
You can find a lot of this on social media, but I also suggest going out and talking to your fans. You have questions on social networks, have surveys and go out to the public after your concerts to know who they are and what they are about.
This data will help you make decisions such as where to go on tour, what kind of merchandise to order, what kind of covers for songs can be included in the album, and so on. It’s about being able to relate to your audience.
Build
Once you know who you are, where you’re going and who you’re playing for, it’s time to start building! This is where you will use everything you have learned to create social media pages, a website, a blog and an email list that really focus on your unique career.
If you already have these things set, now is a good time to reevaluate. Is everything serving your full potential? Do you need to adjust your brand or how to communicate with your fans?
Your website is the central axis of your music promotion efforts. Your store will live here, as well as its forms to attract subscribers. I also recommend some kind of “blog”. I put “blog” in quotes because it definitely does not have to be a typical heavy text blog. You can post what you want here. The point is to have regularly fresh content posted to keep your fans coming back to your site where you can expose your store, the dates of your tours, and the subscriber forms.
Create
Now that we have the basics, we can start creating awesome content that your fans will love.
Start with ideas for a blog post and then get some social messages and subscribers.
When creating social publications, blog posts and emails, do not think of them as three different things. You can and should reuse your content and adapt it to different places. A single blog post can be sent to dozens of social networks and emails. When you start thinking in this way, the promotion time of your music is drastically reduced.
To integrate
And finally, we are going to integrate everything in a big funnel.
Ultimately, you want to create a trajectory of movement that leads your fans to engage on a deeper and deeper level until they are buyers and financial supporters of their music.
Some tips that you can implement:
Social media is for short-term content and daily commitment.
Your blog is for longer form content and more information (think of things that your solid fans would like to read and see).
Your email list works like a small exclusive club where you share early access and exclusive content that you do not post anywhere else.
And of course, everything should be united…
So in social networks you could share a short video from the studio with a link to your blog to listen to the topic. In your blog you can post a video tutorial where you invite with a link to register and receive emails and for example, get the full day HiFiBeats. For your email subscribers you send the complete HiFiBeats with a link to pre-order the album.
Now, everything you publish does not have to be this thought, but at least you should ask yourself, “What is the purpose of a publication?” There should not be a vacuum; everyone should be working towards something in common, your music.