By: Online Publisher's
1. Market Yourself A As Business To Business Musician
Ok, so here’s the first huge tip I can give you:
Instead of focusing all your efforts reaching all your fans individually, focus a lot more of your efforts on building up good relationships with other businesses!
So I know some of you will be wondering what I mean by this. What I mean is that you should spend a good portion of your time contacting event organizers, radio stations, websites which cover your genre of music in some way, TV channels, Djs, musicians who are more established than you, and the like.
What do all of the above have in common? They have a much bigger audience than you, and their audience are people who will fit into your ideal fanbase!
While a lot of musicians spend lots of time grinding it out trying to make new fans one by one, more successful and full time musicians often spend a lot of time building up relationships with people who can get their music out there better than they can. The thing is, if you get in good with bigger companies and they recommend you to their audience, you’ll get a lot more exposure from that one article / event / show / interview than you would from spending a month on Facebook and Twitter trying to get new fans from scratch. That’s why it’s worth investing time and effort into forming these kind of relationships.
Now I’m not saying don’t market to fans individually. You should, but usually only once they’re already on your social sites and mailing list. In terms of actually getting people to hear you the first time around, getting other established business to promote you is one of the best ways to go about doing this. So switch your target audience and start focusing more of your efforts on other businesses. And remember, as a musician, you are a business!
2. Focus A Good Portion Of Your Time On Gigging
Focus on giggingGigging is one of those golden activities every musician should be doing! Not only can it be great for raising awareness of your brand, but it can also be monetized in multiple ways, and help you build a strong relationship with your core audience.
Now playing gigs isn’t anything new or ‘out there’. That said, it’s something that works, and works well.
In terms of promotion, some of the best gigs you can do are events which have other acts in your genre also playing at the event. This will mean the audience will contain one or two types of people who you’ll want to target:
Fans of other musicians in your genre, or
Fans of your genre in general.
For gaining NEW fans, this is the kind of audience you want! While for increased revenue you’d want to put on your own gigs and make it all about you, you won’t get very many people first discovering your music at these kind of gigs. Because of this, they won’t do much in terms of increasing your fanbase. When playing at shows with multiple artists however, you have a good chance to get your music in front of new targeted music fans.
Gigging is great for both gaining new fans and making money from the music industry, so be sure to get your gigging game on!
3. Post Content Regularly On Your Own Professional Website
With so many new acts coming out every day, it can be hard to stay in people’s minds. Yes someone might hear one of your songs and like what you’re doing, but if you don’t keep giving them more content and keeping them entertained in some form of another, there’s a good chance that they may forget you.
It’s because of this that you’ll want to take advantage of your website, and employ a good ‘content marketing‘ strategy.
Content marketing as described on Wikipedia is:
“any marketing format that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire customers”
In other words, you want to use your content to get in new fans and to keep existing fans happy.
But what kind of content can you publish? Here are some types of content you should be creating:
Songs. This is the obvious one.
Videos. Another obvious one.
Blog posts to do with your music career. So what you’re working on, where you’ll be performing, asking fans for their opinions on things etc.
Blog posts related to your genre of music. You can get a lot of people finding out about you by publishing content related to your genre as a whole rather than just you as a musician. More on this later.
As I mentioned, the majority of content should initially be going on your own website. This will help build your website up into a valuable asset, and one that will go a long way to getting new fans as well as keeping existing ones happy. If you haven’t yet made a site, you can see how to make one here.
4. Be More Than A Musician
Stand out from the crowdThis is a big one, so listen up. If you want to get as much exposure for your music as possible, you’ll really want to make yourself more than just a musician! What do I mean by this? Well, you want to do everything you can to get yourself out there and in front of a targeted audience. And by everything, I mean things that aren’t directly related to promoting yourself as a musician (but that will still get new targeted eyes to you and your music).
The good news for you is, not many musicians are doing this. This means there are a lot of opportunities out there if you use this tactic correctly.
1. Market Yourself A As Business To Business Musician
Ok, so here’s the first huge tip I can give you:
Instead of focusing all your efforts reaching all your fans individually, focus a lot more of your efforts on building up good relationships with other businesses!
So I know some of you will be wondering what I mean by this. What I mean is that you should spend a good portion of your time contacting event organizers, radio stations, websites which cover your genre of music in some way, TV channels, Djs, musicians who are more established than you, and the like.
What do all of the above have in common? They have a much bigger audience than you, and their audience are people who will fit into your ideal fanbase!
While a lot of musicians spend lots of time grinding it out trying to make new fans one by one, more successful and full time musicians often spend a lot of time building up relationships with people who can get their music out there better than they can. The thing is, if you get in good with bigger companies and they recommend you to their audience, you’ll get a lot more exposure from that one article / event / show / interview than you would from spending a month on Facebook and Twitter trying to get new fans from scratch. That’s why it’s worth investing time and effort into forming these kind of relationships.
Now I’m not saying don’t market to fans individually. You should, but usually only once they’re already on your social sites and mailing list. In terms of actually getting people to hear you the first time around, getting other established business to promote you is one of the best ways to go about doing this. So switch your target audience and start focusing more of your efforts on other businesses. And remember, as a musician, you are a business!
2. Focus A Good Portion Of Your Time On Gigging
Focus on giggingGigging is one of those golden activities every musician should be doing! Not only can it be great for raising awareness of your brand, but it can also be monetized in multiple ways, and help you build a strong relationship with your core audience.
Now playing gigs isn’t anything new or ‘out there’. That said, it’s something that works, and works well.
In terms of promotion, some of the best gigs you can do are events which have other acts in your genre also playing at the event. This will mean the audience will contain one or two types of people who you’ll want to target:
Fans of other musicians in your genre, or
Fans of your genre in general.
For gaining NEW fans, this is the kind of audience you want! While for increased revenue you’d want to put on your own gigs and make it all about you, you won’t get very many people first discovering your music at these kind of gigs. Because of this, they won’t do much in terms of increasing your fanbase. When playing at shows with multiple artists however, you have a good chance to get your music in front of new targeted music fans.
Gigging is great for both gaining new fans and making money from the music industry, so be sure to get your gigging game on!
3. Post Content Regularly On Your Own Professional Website
With so many new acts coming out every day, it can be hard to stay in people’s minds. Yes someone might hear one of your songs and like what you’re doing, but if you don’t keep giving them more content and keeping them entertained in some form of another, there’s a good chance that they may forget you.
It’s because of this that you’ll want to take advantage of your website, and employ a good ‘content marketing‘ strategy.
Content marketing as described on Wikipedia is:
“any marketing format that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire customers”
In other words, you want to use your content to get in new fans and to keep existing fans happy.
But what kind of content can you publish? Here are some types of content you should be creating:
Songs. This is the obvious one.
Videos. Another obvious one.
Blog posts to do with your music career. So what you’re working on, where you’ll be performing, asking fans for their opinions on things etc.
Blog posts related to your genre of music. You can get a lot of people finding out about you by publishing content related to your genre as a whole rather than just you as a musician. More on this later.
As I mentioned, the majority of content should initially be going on your own website. This will help build your website up into a valuable asset, and one that will go a long way to getting new fans as well as keeping existing ones happy. If you haven’t yet made a site, you can see how to make one here.
4. Be More Than A Musician
Stand out from the crowdThis is a big one, so listen up. If you want to get as much exposure for your music as possible, you’ll really want to make yourself more than just a musician! What do I mean by this? Well, you want to do everything you can to get yourself out there and in front of a targeted audience. And by everything, I mean things that aren’t directly related to promoting yourself as a musician (but that will still get new targeted eyes to you and your music).
The good news for you is, not many musicians are doing this. This means there are a lot of opportunities out there if you use this tactic correctly.
