Think back to the time when you first realized your dream to be a musician. Remember the passion that flowed through your veins and radiated to everyone around you? Hopefully it still does, in your music and performance. But that’s not enough. You want to draw more listeners in and the best way to do that is through music marketing.
What is Music Marketing?
If you want your music to succeed, you will need to promote it. Music marketing is the action and the process of promoting your music (and yourself and/or your band) through raising awareness of your musical creations so that as many listeners as possible realize it exists and are drawn to listen and are driven to the desirable end result (buying your music and/or merchandise).
The best music marketing involves:
- Creating your brand.
- Promoting your music and your brand.
- Building a bond with listeners.
What are Your Goals for Marketing Music?
In order to achieve your goals for marketing music, you must first define them. Some great goals for aspiring artists are:
- Increase fan following
- Establish greater fan loyalty
- Deliver more material (music and music merchandise)
- Build/improve music website
- Develop social media advertising strategies
- Keep fresh content flowing across all sites
Don’t be afraid to include personal goals too like taking better care of yourself, staying in touch with fans more regularly, or writing more lyrics. Whatever is important to you and your music qualifies for a great goal.
Tips to Reaching Your Goals
Write your goals down and review each of them. Make a list of short-term goals that will help you reach longer-term goals. Taking care of yourself now is conducive to putting out more music. Building a stellar website is the first step to increasing engagement. Whatever the first actions towards reaching your goals are, place them in a priority list.
Next, line out the steps involved to attaining your short-term goals. Be specific. If you are starting a website but don’t know the slightest thing about web design, hiring a website developer and designer should be first on the list.
After listing the steps you’ll need to take to achieve your short-term goals, map out the medium and long-term goals and make a plan for achieving each of them. Be sure to mark out each accomplishment so you can take pride in going forward.
As you go through the process, you will most likely come up with new goals as well. Add them to your list and work on them the same way you work on the original ones. Soon, you’ll begin to see the fruits of your labor which is always encouraging.
Motivation Along the Way
Finding out what motivation is necessary to help propel you to your goals will help you reach your ultimate goals. Maybe it’s being accountable to someone you are close to. Perhaps keeping a progression log is helpful. Or you may find that being able to mark things off your list is motivation enough. You might even treat yourself to something as you progress from one step to the next. Whatever helps, do it.
Putting Your Music Marketing on the Line: Go for the Gold
Today’s music marketing is much easier than it was in the past when musicians were dependent on radio advertising and magazines and newspapers. The internet, social media, and other modern inventions have opened a myriad of new doors.
Some of the best music marketing promotion tools include:
- Creation – Not does music marketing depend on the creation of great music but also on the creation of innovative methods to promote the music and the musician/band identity. That means trying new things and thinking outside the box to attract new listeners and retain the interest of established fans.
- Communication – You never want to seem as if you are talking “at” your audience. You want to talk “to” them. The best way to do this is to find out more about them and provide relative, interesting content such as music videos pertaining to what they like, blogs and articles that give them information and entertain them and capturing the essence of your music in amazing photos and images. In short, you want to draw them in where they feel they are a part of your music.
- Delivery. It is imperative to deliver what you promise. If you build up a CD, album, download, or concert, you must give your followers what you said you would. In doing so, you’ll build trust and pump your listeners with excitement. They will engage in your music and feel as if somehow, someway, they played a part in the execution of your new product. In reality…they did. Without fans, followers, and new listeners to share your music with, it would be of no value.
- Exchange. The great exchange is when you produce a product that your listeners love. It is a gift to them. In return, they buy your CDs, albums, downloads, or merchandise.
Putting Your Goals into Play
Now that you have your thoughts organized into goals – short, medium, and long-term ones, it’s time to get busy. Follow your mapped out plan to achieve each goal, starting with the short-term ones. Then, move on to mid-range ones and finally, to the long-term ones.
If obstacles pop up, create plans to maneuver around them. Never take defeat for an answer and don’t hesitate to ask for help – even if that means hiring someone.
A Dose of Reality
It’s vital to get real and to be honest with yourself. Do you have the skills it takes to manage the marketing of your music? Do you have the time. If not, your main goal might be to find and hire a music marketing agent to tend to it for you.
If you are looking for the best music marketing agency, check out Nela Records where musicians market musicians.