“What’s the plan, Stan?”
When it comes to marketing your music it starts with a plan. Know your target demographic and stick with it. Don't be afraid of "No." No is a fantastic word for you as an Artist, it tells you who is not part of your selective demographic. Throwing your music out there and seeing what sticks is not a good approach to finding new fans for your music. Reason being, it goes against the most important piece of your business plan: Time Management. Make every second you work on your music career count. To start: Ask yourself, "Who listens to my Music?" Now that you've created an awesome piece of music, it's your job to create an awesome marketing plan so your awesomeness can be spread around the globe.
How do you become awesome in everyone's eyes? You DON'T. Everyone, does not exist. The only thing that matters is your niche group of listeners. Everyone, will not like you or your music. Your goal is to sort out the likes from the un-likes. Once you have your group of likes in place, you can begin strategic marketing, a fancy phrase for catering only to the people who will buy your music.
Your most important job as an Artist is to create value. If you are too accessible, you are just like everyone else: Desperate for attention, eager to please. Your goal is to provide a strong social network presence, where your listeners can find you easily. When someone buys your music, thank them personally. Make that connection. This brings up a key-issue I have with iTunes, as a distribution service for my music. When someone buys my song I can't make that "final connection” with the fan. Sure, it's cool to make sales on iTunes, but to be honest I"d prefer to know my fan’s contact information so I can follow up with them, create a relationship and have a customer for life. With this key information, which iTunes does not provide, how valuable is the sale I made on iTunes really? When it comes to selling my music online, I always want two things: An extremely user-friendly interface and the opportunity to connect with my listeners quickly, easily and without too much hassle. By the way if you are interested in who I sell my music with it's TuneCube. I added this link because we're discussing marketing and TuneCube provides me with my fan's contact information. Now I have loyal customers coming back for my music repeatedly. Every time I make new music, I have a solid group of Fans I can depend on to Buy and distribute my music through "word of mouth." That's what's so exciting about the online world. I don't have to play a Live show to cultivate fans, with the right interface selling my music, I can be anywhere and make sales immediately! How many fans do I really need to keep my Independent Music Career going? 5,000? 10,000? Sure, I always want more fans, but I'm just saying, statistically speaking, if you knew 5,000 people would buy your next album consistently, would you be happy? And that's a tiny number. You can make 5,000 strong connections easily. Think about it. How many fans/customers do you really need to make your small business (Your music career) work for you?
Again, as mentioned in my previous blog, Free is for the Bees” use your social networks as tools to make this happen, but don't depend on just them, to make sales. This requires Follow-Up, Persistence and most importantly: A Plan of Action. To market a product takes a creative mind. After you make a recording, transfer your creative energy to creative distribution. When I’m about to work on a new marketing strategy, I like to work with a "let's just see what happens" mentality. I love the online world because it's fast, easy and for the most part: user-friendly. My strategy for Musicians looking to make sales is to think of the places your listeners hang out at. Go there. Make a connection. Don't sell your product, just get-to-know your listeners. Have a beer with them. Talk to them. Ask questions. Notice, there is no online involved here? That's the next step. Make the connection - then create a personal network.
Lastly, since we’re talking about marketing ourselves here, I’d like to add a little shame-less self-promotion: I sell my music directly with TuneCube.com. Why? Because with TuneCube I can target my niche demographic of listeners, know who is buying my music and make 100% commission on my music sales: Everything we talked about above. You can listen to and buy my music at: My Music Store
Send me your thoughts. How are you marketing yourself right now? Do you have a Plan of Action in place when it comes to selling your music?
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