Music Marketing Your Band Using Google

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You should always be building a mail list of people interested in your music.

In Using Google as a Marketing Tool, Bob Baker shares a couple of ideas how you can use Google’s services to help promote your band and they’re totally free!

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Have You Sorted Out Your Band Press Kit?

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:

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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Do You Have A Music Marketing Funnel?

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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Youtube Tips For Musicians

Since Youtube is the third most visited site in the world according to Alexa, it makes sense that you get a presence for your band on there asap!

Aside from music videos, you can use Youtube for video messages to your fans, posting live performance clips, showcasing any news articles or interviews you may do or have, basically anything that you can communicate with video.

People like to view the personalities of the people behind the band these days so show them!

What camera should you use?
The cheapest and easiest option would be to use the video option on a standard digital camera. Download your video off your camera through USB and then upload to Youtube and viola, you’re done.

If you feel the need, you can always upgrade to a camcorder later which is certainly handy if you wish to film live performances.

What about editing software?
If you need to edit your video, I’d recommend using Windows Movie Maker or Apple iMovie. They’re free and more than capable of performing the basic editing required, you can even add titles and captions to your videos.

Add your url to all videos
Yes you can place your url in the video description box but it doesn’t quite grab the attention of the viewer as when its watermarked and displayed the whole time throughout the video.

It will help drive interested people back to your website which you should then encourage to sign up to your mailing list so you can stay in touch!

Using Youtube annotations
If you’re too lazy to learn how to use editing software for adding text and titles, Youtube has a feature called annotations where you can overlay text onto your Youtube videos! Handy for adding your band url and extra comments that you wish to convey.

How to make a dirt cheap music video
Find some cool video footage of something and add your song as the ’soundtrack’ to that footage, skateboarding, surfing, motor racing, whatever!

People searching for videos on surfing, for example, will find your video, if they like the song they’ll see your url and visit your site. Add them to your mailing list, show them what a great band you are and encourage them to buy your music!

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Discover More About Music, Websites & Marketing
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Band Promotion Tip - Always Build Up A Mailing List

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
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101 Resources For Band Promotion And Music Marketing

Here is a huge list of resources that can help you expand your reach on the internet and reach world domination!

You get links to help with the following:

  1. Where To Sell Your Music
  2. Where To Get a Band Review or Interview
  3. Where To Break News - Do a Press Release
  4. Join Forums & Post
  5. Where To Create a Blog + Comment & Ping
  6. Where To Get Links To Your Website
  7. Where To Post Your Gig Dates
  8. Get Your Music on Internet Radio
  9. Create a Profile to Promote Your Music
  10. Essential Resources
  11. Marketing Music - Resources

Check out 101 Resources for Music Marketing.

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

How To Promote Your Band On Myspace

I came across this great post from Eric Herbert over at evolver.com about how to promote your band on Myspace.

Though he talks about Myspace in his post, the same principles apply to any other social network like Facebook, Bebo, etc.

Use them as a tool to promote your music and build up your own mailing list on your own site.

If these sites were to one day disappear, all that hard work you did getting people to know about you and your music would go down the toilet!

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

Are You Treating Your Band Like A Business?

I know this is probably a thought which scares most musicians and in an ideal world, a musician could be left to be just that, a musician!

However, nowadays you need to get on with doing things yourself if anything is ever to happen.

I believe if you understand the business elements of running a band, you’ll certainly look at everything in a much different and hopefully more insightful light.

Let’s examine the following as we compare some business elements as they relate to a band:

Let’s not forget about running the business/band:

Most small businesses fail because they don’t know how to market and promote themselves, do you see a pattern forming here with bands too?

“But Chris, I’m a musician, not a business person!” I hear you say.

My point here is that you don’t need to be a business person, but I’m sure if start to understand some business concepts, it could really benefit the way you promote your band.

Over my next few posts, I’m going to share some ideas which I’ve learnt from online marketing which I think can help any band or musician utilise the internet to better promote themselves.

I welcome your feedback and comments so please subscribe to this blog to receive post updates when they occur.

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