In this article, we’ll go through some of the ways that you as an artist can market yourself. There are essentially infinite ways to market yourself. Some are good, some are great, and most never generate any results. Let’s get to it!
Marketing #
This has been a secret for centuries, but we’re going to reveal it to you. The most important aspect of marketing music: HAVE GREAT MUSIC.
No, it’s not as simple as have great music = get famous, but great music is so important since it sets the cap for what your marketing efforts can achieve. Marketing can only ever get people to give you a chance if they don’t like it enough to save it to their playlists or listen to it again — there’s nothing even the best marketer on earth could do. So making sure your music is 250% amazing and mindblowing on every possible level is crucial.
The second most aspect of marketing is directing your efforts. Think about what you want to achieve for instance 100 000 plays on Spotify, or feature in When The Horn Blows, or track featured on TrapNation. Depending on what your goal is, your marketing approach should be different.
On TrapNation it might be more important to get SoundCloud and YouTube attention, while When The Horn Blows wants an elaborate pitch with great press photo’s and cover artwork and to get 100 000 plays you need to have a track that’s playlist-friendly and stands out enough to get selected but fits in enough to get the placement.
Set goals together with your team on what you want to achieve, then figure out how you’re going to achieve it, and who will do what when to get there. Follow up on everyone’s tasks.
However, there are a few things nobody but you can do — and focusing your efforts on these and delegating other tasks will most likely yield better results.
Social Media #
Saying social media is important is like saying oxygen is nice, you need to have a strategy for social media. Whether that’s posting every second of every day or once a week about stuff that really matters only. There are a few strategies that have been proved to work, that are very flexible in terms of what you can do with it. Let’s talk through them.
Storytelling #
This might be one of the most worn out buzzwords in the industry. But bear with us, it’s nothing fancy about it. Think of it as instead of stating facts like: “New single out now”, you’re telling a story like you do for your friends.
Think of social media like a cocktail party, you don’t go up in front of everybody and say, “NEW SINGLE OUT NOW!” “New Single Out Now!” If you are not a social freak, you probably say something like “I’ve been working on a project for a while now and probably I have to much free time, but I’m releasing a quite nice country song today”
By telling a story both in individual posts and across your social media timeline makes it easier to talk about and share, it also helps fans feel connected. If done right, it also makes people want more like watching a great TV Show or movie.
Some of the most successful pages on Facebook apply this strategy, the best one, in my opinion, is Humans of New York, which is a photography/interview project where individuals tell their stories in short posts which in the larger context tells the story about the depth of a city. Focusing a lot on emotion and personifying strangers — it’s genius from a marketing perspective.
Another example of this implementation is NowThis and A&J where they condense stories about events and technology into a comprehensible and easily digestible video format. There’s very little assumption of a knowledge base with the audience, which makes their videos accessible to anyone and at the same time they cover a wide enough range of topics to make something hit home with everyone.
Creative Nagging #
If you post 3 text posts about your new single coming up, you’ve most likely exhausted about 80% of your audience and essentially all of your algorithmic clout leading to essentially nobody seeing your post and the ones that do refrain from engaging with it.
By varying your content and constantly offering new value you can remind people of the same thing over and over without exhausting your audience. Below we’ve listed a number of content types you can use to remind your audience of your latest or upcoming release.
Video #
- Music Video: Sharing a Music Video post-release is a great way to blow new life into an older release.
- Lyric Video: Lyrics are always appreciated by fans, and everyone likes a nicely animated video.
- Behind the Beat: Do an interview with your producer (or yourself) on how the production of the track was done.
- Live performance/Acoustic version: Do a live performance/acoustic version of the track and film it, a great way to promote the same track with new content.
- Covers: A cover from an artist that has the same target audience as you have.
Images #
- Cover artwork: Good thing to post in the initial announcement post, since it’s rarely enough to drive engagement on its own.
- Studio photos: Everybody likes to be invited behind the scenes, share some photos from the studio sessions where you made your latest single.
- Press photos: Nothing does sales like good old fashioned sex, strike a pose and get showered with compliments.
- Live shows: Trying to get live shows in close connection with a release is a great way to promote both the show and the release.
- Merchandise: Merchandise both monetises your fanbase and turns them into walking & talking advertising for your music.
Other #
- Playlist features, Interviews & Blog reviews: Posting more than once about each puts you back into the nagging territory, but it’s a great way to show social proof to your music.
- Remixes: Getting a DJ to remix your track is a great way to promote it.
- Brainstorm: This is just the top of the iceberg. Have a brainstorming session and see how many ways you can creatively nag your audience.
Fanbase #
Streaming & Artist Superfans #
Older music marketing techniques talk about Superfans, these are the people who live and breath your music. They’re hard to reach and even harder to convince and you usually end up stumbling upon them at a varying degree of success depending on how good your target audience is. However, with the music accessibility in the streaming era, there are two types of Superfans: Streaming Superfans & Artist Superfans.
If you are new to the music business we usually recommend you to start trying to get Streaming Superfans and then move on to the Artist Superfans.
Streaming Superfans #
Streaming superfans are a bit easier to reach and attract since they like to discover new music and listen to a wide array of music. These are the people who treat their Discovery Weekly like a bible, never misses a track on their release radar and obsessively curates their own playlists with new music.
The problem is, they’re not very loyal to artists. They go away as quickly as they come and rarely get deep enough to buy merchandise or show tickets. But they still have a lot of value since they can make up for a big chunk of streaming and especially save rates, which makes Discovery Weekly recommend you to even more people.
The strategy for getting Streaming Superfans is pretty straightforward. Release good music & pitch for playlist placements in relevant playlists to get Discover Weekly running.
Artist Superfans #
These are the “classic” Superfans. They don’t just love music, they love you. They engage on social media, listens to your albums back and forth to find all the little things. They go to shows, buy merchandise and generally make up for the heart of the fanbase.
To utilise them to the fullest, make sure to create topics for them to tell their friends about. Give them the content variety to do your creative nagging for you, and they will. These people are probably the most powerful marketing tool you have. Help them help you.
Summary #
Social Media is a relationship tool. It will help you to connect with your audience and building a relationship. Don’t expect to get new fans by solely focusing your marketing efforts on Social Media but it will help you nurture the ones getting interested in you.