Browsing all articles tagged with music marketing

Sep

Have You Sorted Out Your Band Press Kit?

Chris

Music

band promotion, music marketing, press kit, promote your band, promotion tips

A really valuable tip I picked from the music marketing workshop I attended the other week was the need to have a press kit available 24/7.

You should have both an online and offline version available for press, promoters, booking agents, etc.

The press kit would include things like:

Band bio
Press photos
Music samples
EPK or video bio

By having both an online and offline version, if you don’t happen to have any physical press kits on hand for whatever reason to give to someone, you can direct them to your website where they can get all the necessary information they require.

Your website is available 24/7 so put it to work!

Keep your bio concise
Also try and keep all your information current and concise, a bio that’s 10 pages won’t get read. Trim the fluff and just present the most compelling facts you can.

Image thumbnails
When you upload hi-res press pictures, make sure you create thumbnail images for people to preview.

EPK (Electronic Press Kit)
It’s worth the little effort needed to create a 2 or 3 minute video where you can present what the band is all about.

Anything that can help make life easier for the person seeking information on you is a plus and a video can present a bit of personality that won’t come across on a written bio.

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Sep

Do You Have A Music Marketing Funnel?

Chris

Music

band promotion, music marketing, promote your band, promotion tips

A marketing funnel is a systematic process which people go through in order for you to establish who is seriously into what you or your band does.

The marketing funnel looks like this:
Suspect -> Prospect -> Customer -> Life Long Customer

The Suspect (Unknown interest)
With a marketing funnel, everyone is a suspect until they raise their hand and express an interest in what you do. You can’t be sure who is interested in what your band does until they give you a sign they are interested.

You can’t convince someone to like your music if they don’t, you just want to sort through and find the people who are interested.

The Prospect (Known interest)
As soon as someone indicates they are interested in what you do, they move on and become a prospect. This can be indicated by someone joining your mailing list or becoming friends on Myspace for example.

They have now qualified themselves as someone you should establish more contact with. The point now is to see if they are interested enough to move on and buy your music to become a fan or customer.

The Customer (Fan)
These are the guys and girls who have proven they like you enough to spend money on you. Treat them well and look after them as these are the people who most likely to spend more money with your band buying more music, merchandise, tickets to shows, etc.

The Life Long Customer (Raving fan)
These are the hardcore fans who will back you no matter what. They eat, live, breathe and believe in what you do to the very ends of the earth.

These are the people who are keen to help spread the message about your band, join your street team and want to help promote you. They will support and buy almost anything you do.

Why is a marketing funnel important?
It gives you a way for figuring out who is at what stage and how that can benefit you as an artist. As people move through the different stages, the numbers become less and less but their value to you becomes more and more.

A hundred raving fans will benefit you in so many more ways than a thousand interested prospects. What you need to do is nurture your relationships with people and figure out who is who.

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Discover More About Music, Websites & Marketing
FREE Book Offer: Make Real Money On The Internet by Stephen Pierce

Sep

No video, no problem for artists on YouTube!

Chris

Music

music marketing, youtube

Check out this article from the NZ Herald newspaper where Ludacris’ manager used Youtube to create buzz for an upcoming CD release.

He even comments how Youtube is now a viable marketing tool!

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Discover More About Music, Websites & Marketing
FREE Book Offer: Make Real Money On The Internet by Stephen Pierce

Sep

Band Promotion Tip – Always Build Up A Mailing List

Chris

Music

autoresponder, aweber, band promotion, mailing list, music marketing, phplist, promote your band, promotion tips

The first and most important suggestion I can give to help you promote your band online is to collect names and email addresses of anyone remotely interested in your band, both from online and off line sources.

I’m not talking about collecting random email addresses either and spamming them!

Build up your mailing list
What you want to do is collect people who willingly wish to hear from you by way of them signing up or opting into your mailing list or band newsletter.

You can then stay in touch and communicate with them, letting them know what you’re up to and continuously promote your music to them.

If they don’t dig what you do, they can easily unsubscribe which is a good thing as you only want interested people on your mailing list.

Why build a list?
Simply because unless they are extremely motivated, they could see you live for the first time or bump into something online, think it was kind of cool but then completely forget about you.

Without a mailing list, you have no way of communicating directly to the very people that are interested in you.

Mailing List Software
PHPList is great, open source, newsletter software and best of all, it’s FREE.
Aweber is a powerful autoresponder service that works on a monthly subscription.

With PHPList, you install it on your web server and send out messages whenever you like.

Aweber differs in that you can write a predetermined sequence of messages which will begin to be sent out when someone signs into your mailing list. This is really handy if you wish each new mailing list member to receive messages that perhaps explain more about your band, your history, anything really.

Both allow you to send personalised messages so instead of them saying just ‘Hey’ or ‘Hey everyone’, you can say ‘Hey John’.

It makes it seem like you’ve personally sent your message to him which is much nicer than just broadcasting a group email.

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Discover More About Music, Websites & Marketing
FREE Book Offer: Make Real Money On The Internet by Stephen Pierce

Sep