4 Success Habits for Promoting Independent Bands, Composers & Producers

Previously, I talked about the importance of developing an online presence. In this article, I will give you the foundations of a routine that will generate online results and success for 2009 and beyond.
Although this advice is relevant to many business models, I am focusing on independent artists, bands, producers and composers.

You are possibly thinking one of the following: -

• I want to be signed up by a major label and become a rock or pop star
• I want to ditch my day job and work full time on my music
• I want to work full time on my music and it will be a bonus if I get signed

Could this be you? Well, if you are thinking either of the latter two points, then the advice I am about to give will point you well and truly in the right direction.

First off, let’s look at the conventional industry for a moment. Historically, the only way of becoming a successful band or composer was through a major label or publisher.

It went something like this…

You would do the creative stuff, the label would work their magic and hopefully, the result would be success and all that goes with it. The magic of the label is that they invest large sums of cash into your recordings, marketing and promotion.

Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely some benefits to this, although, statistically it is not likely to happen for the majority of us.

Nowadays, most creatives have the means to write, record and produce their own music productions, but don’t necessarily have the funds to create effective large-scale marketing and promotion.

But here’s the thing, major labels invest in short-term, high profile media campaigns to generate a hit record and in most cases the artists longevity is dependant on the outcome of that one release.

Now, let’s suppose you could market your talent to thousands of people resulting in fans, loyal customers and numerous revenue opportunities. Quite simply, you can! You just need to focus on creating a long-term campaign that leverages the amazing opportunities available on the web, web 2.0, social media and future incarnations of the web.

However, I have to mention that this will require consistent hard work, self-education and an investment of time on your part. The information I am about to share will have an impact on your life if you act upon it and work at it consistently.

Your Marketing Engine

The principle is simple! Replace what the record label / publisher would do with your own web friendly marketing activity. Let’s call it your marketing engine.

Let’s be clear though, we are not looking to create a hit single here; we are focusing on growing and developing a habitual process that will ultimately result in a loyal fan base, respect in your industry, longevity and revenue opportunities.

Here’s how:

The diagram above shows the marketing engine and its four main elements.

Content

Most content on the web is mainly text as this is what search engines use to determine your visibility, however, video, audio and images are also an important part of the mix. As a composer, band or artist, you should find reasons to communicate regularly with your audience, ideally on a daily basis or at least once a week. Your blog is the ideal distribution point for this.

Good, relevant content is guaranteed to get you noticed online. Think about the visitors you are trying to attract and aim to write content you think they would be interested in.

Marketing

Once you have created your content and posted it to your blog, there are numerous other places on the web that you can market your content to and different techniques that can be used. We will cover these in more detail in future posts, however, it is worth starting with the following ASAP.

• Start a contact list – I recommend getting a subscriber’s name and email address as a minimum. If possible, request their mobile number too as this could be useful for SMS marketing at a later time.
• Add an RSS subscription feed to your blog – feedburner is very popular.
• Add Google Analytics to your blog if you have not already done so.
• Join MySpace, Facebook and Twitter.

I will cover other marketing opportunities in later posts including press releases and article marketing. However, feel free to suggest any other areas you would like me to talk about.

Monitoring

Need proof? Of course you do! If you are spending valuable time creating and marketing your content, you need to prove that is bringing results. You should be using several marketing channels simultaneously and the results need to be carefully monitored to make sure that you are spending your time on the most productive areas of content creation and marketing.

For example, if you are actively tweeting on twitter.com and also have linkbacks to your blog on Myspace and Facebook, you will only know which platform is bringing you quality traffic by monitoring where the traffic is coming from in your Google Analytics. Knowing and using this information is a powerful marketing tool as it helps you to prioritise your time on those activities that are working most effectively.

Learn & Refine

Stop doing ineffective activity. All of your activity should be bringing results, which will be evident through continually monitoring its effectiveness. For example, you may find that writing a blog post about your latest song, or about your day in the studio brings in a respectable number of visitors and new RSS / newsletter subscribers. Continue to create content that works well. The results will speak volumes.

Likewise, if you have done a YouTube video and it ends up generating no results, you need to consider why it was so poor and think carefully before devoting time to it in the future. You need to try different things and learn by your failures and successes. A poor result may mean that there is not much interest in the topic or it was too sales-like or maybe it was too vague and didn’t give much value to the visitor. You need to provide content that is good quality, free and non-sales oriented in order to get people’s attention. Provide value to your reader / viewer.

This is a natural process in developing your voice as a blogger and identifying what makes your audience / target market tick.

Repeat the Cycle

I assure you, if you keep repeating this cycle and learning as you go, you will end up knowing more about your niche, fan base and network than anyone else. By following this process, you will eventually become the expert in marketing yourself, your band or your company, which over time will result in revenue and in my opinion, will make you a much more interesting prospect for major record labels and publishers.

Obviously, this is a very broad overview of the subject, but these are the cornerstones to making it happen. In future posts, I will share more information on the topics covered so far and explain further about the secrets of leveraging the power of the Internet as an independent composer, band or producer.

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Tagged as: independent bands composers artists, marketing, music producer, Online promotion, promotion, web 2.0