High and Low Tech Music Marketing – Music Marketing Tactics for Entrepreneurial Musicians

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Here’s a short summary of some of the techniques I use and plan to use to increase my website traffic, sales, and brand recognition over time. These are some of the most successful actions ever designed which I’ve collected over many years of practice and study. These tactics can be added to your existing traffic generation strategies or used to improve the ones you already implement.

You will find that many of these techniques are quite obvious and common, while others are more sophisticated and technical. I thought you would benefit from seeing my list of profitable activities to assist you in developing your own. So check out these ideas and let me know how they can help you or someone you know.

Part 1: Off-Line Music Marketing

This approach to music marketing encompasses any activity that seeking to improve brand recognition or increase sales through marketing tactics that are used primarily through advertising, print media, incentive programs, and promotional materials.

Mini-CD’s, CD Demos, Free Digital Downloads

Mini-CD’s, CD demos, or free digital downloads available exclusively for VIP’s or supporters for their continued assistance and funding. Mini-CD’s, CD demos, and free digital downloads can also be used as music samplers for promotional uses. Place CD samples in music stores. Make a list of stores like Penny Lane, Amoeba, and other music stores like DJ record shops or indie record stores that are friendly to independent artist and offer them a small inventory of your CD sampler. Rather than wait for their customers to take one on a voluntary basis ask the store clerks if they can place one of them into every customer’s bag until they run out. This way you can be sure someone actually got one, but you’ve got to be willing to eat the expense. Remember free CD samplers should be a cheap, no-frills version of your professionally made albums. It should be nothing more and nothing less, just good free music to get buzz started and to spread. Include stickers, bumper stickers, hats, T-shirt and other paraphernalia to your list of promotional music products.

CD Compilations

Create a CD compilation with other artists and split costs with them.

Street Teams

Multiply your efforts by creating a volunteer street teams to promote your music project and provide them with incentives. Give incentives. It can be as simple as “For every 20 people a fan signs-up on the mailing list, they get a free T-shirt.”

Location, Location, Location

Good locations for passing out flyers and gig invitations are places like tourist’s areas, bazaars, fairs, stadium events, colleges, high schools, and popular local hang out spots. Take your free promotional flyers, CD samplers, and other promotional products and material and approach people at clubs either when they’re coming or leaving. Because most people generally favor specific types of music and the few have extensive music collections you’re more likely to get success with your promotional materials by locating clubs that play artists similar to your genre or style. So look for clubs that play music and acts with music similar to yours.

You could also approach film, photography, performing arts, video, and radio departments in colleges and vocational schools. Students in these departments may need to develop their skills in a variety of contexts for college credits and you might be able to receive free services in exchange. A number of quality and long-term industry relationships might begin from these sorts of experiences.

Try advertising on bus stops and small billboards if you've got the budget. Another clever but advanced strategy is to create a music event or movement (political, religious, or environmental) with your music or music project at the center. This strategy can only work if you've got the connections to pull it off or the organizational skill to make it happen.

Find alternate marketing channels like furniture stores, yoga studios, fitness studios, clothing stores, bookstores, upbeat places, cafes, restaurants, malls, festivals, etc. And don’t forget to always include your contact information in your promotional pieces such as an e-mail address and phone number.

Classifieds and Community Boards

Promote in newspaper or magazine classifieds and community boards where film makers are looking for new music and composers. Website designers looking for sound artist or composers for web design might also be another option.

Music Libraries

Music libraries can also offer a terrific source of additional income for you or your music project. Contact a company like iStock Music to get more information about qualifications and compensation. 

Part 2: On-Line Music Marketing

This approach to music marketing encompasses any activity that seeking to improve brand recognition or increase sales through marketing tactics that are used primarily on the Internet through article marketing, copywriting, parasitic marketing techniques, creating brand alliances, video marketing, blogging, generating digital mailing lists, and e-mail. 

Video, Music Blogging, Article Marketing, and Affiliate Programs

Start a blog or use article marketing as a platform to talk about music you like, music you’re making, music you finished, things you do beside music and ways your fans and supporters can connect with you. Article marketing can also drive unsolicited traffic to you from around the world with very little effort on your part.

A vlog (video blog) is another great way to expand your reach because it allows new people and long-time supporters to see you, which is very important because it adds an element of accessibility to your professional image. In your vlog you can make videos of you in the process of production, during the songwriting process, sharing musical sketches, and even performing covers of some of your musical influences.

And if you’re so inclined you can also talk about your craft and discuss topics such as how to compose electronic music, increasing one’s musical output, creating memorable melodies, beat matching (if you’re a DJ), starting out as musician, and developing a signature sound.

You can include a “Recommended Music” section in your blog or website and attempt to generate additional revenue from joining an affiliate marketing program like Amazon Affiliates or ClickBank. Furthermore, writing reviews on books and music can give you a way to show different sides of your personality while staying connected with your audience.

Remember to close every article, blog post, or video with a short pitch for your visitor to sign up for a FREE album or some kind of free gift.

Influence through On-Line Reviews

Commenting on the news or shares news about yourself, your music – new songs, albums, and future releases – are all great ways to keep your fans and supporters engaged in your musical development and progress.

Free Tools

Take advantage of free websites, blogs, and social media, especially Twitter. One Pager, Blogger, and Google Pages are all cheap and easy electronic tools to help funnel traffic to your main website. This is where much of your energy should go, which is to learn technical Internet marketing tactics to increase the effectiveness of your branding efforts such as understanding SEO and forging business alliances with other marketers and promoters.

Artistic Quotes

Use artistic quotes in order to turn your website or blog into a source of inspiration.

Mailing Lists and Artist Profiles

Build your mailing list and increase sales by learning how to write copy. To write copy is simply the art of selling in print. Your website, blog, articles, social media accounts, etc. are all excellent places to test your copywriting skills and find out what results you can achieve in generating and creating an on-line following.

Create a profile, press kit, or bio for your readers, fans, and supporters to use in promoting you. Provide a ready-made story for the readers of magazines.

Parasitic Marketing

Employ parasitic marketing strategies on Amazon, MySpace, Official Websites, YouTube, and Bandcamp. With Amazon, MySpace, YouTube, official websites, and message boards for established artists you can post reviews, add responses, leave comments, while simultaneously linking back to your profile or website to bleed traffic off from their site to yours. The reason this is called “parasitic marketing” is because you’re using someone else’s platform to get your message across.

In contrast, with Bandcamp what you can do is add an album roll of other artists on Bandcamp, link to other artists in the Bandcamp network, offer other Bandcamp artist’s free music downloads as free gifts to your audience, and occasionally change up the look and feel of your Bandcamp page.Any free music you make available for your growing audience should be set to ask for their e-mail address in exchange for their free digital music package. This step alone will separate serious fans from freeloaders who just want indiscriminate free stuff. This step will also provide you with an important piece of contact information that you can later use in your e-mail marketing campaigns to expand your audience and generate sales. Furthermore, your mailing list just might also be the beginning of your street team.

Part 3: Production and Business Services to Deepen Your Music Marketing Program

Audacity is a music recording and editing program that you can use to create ringtones and shortened versions of your songs for purposes like selling ringtones, and edits for T.V. and radio commercials.

Bandcamp is a great service that I also use as a point of purchase for my music. You can use this service to promote free music giveaways in exchange for e-mail addresses to build your mailing list and sell your music and merchandise.

Animoto is a terrific service that’s great for making commercials, ads, videos, photo film strips, to pair your music with images.

iContact is a contact management service that you can use to manage your growing personal and cold list of contacts. You use this service to send them a steady stream of communication regarding your interests, music news and progress.

Trusonic, Ricall, and Getuplayed are also wonderful services for licensing your music to businesses for royalties. Many other services such as these exist, but these are the only ones that I’ve had some experience with.

Reverbnation is another excellent service that takes your music and creates brand association with products and services that your music complements. This program also pays the artist a royalty.

Last.Fm has interesting marketing component for you because it allows artists to create playlist and a customized radio station to promote their own music such as the Stereo Thesis Radio Channel. I have yet to explore the possibilities this service has to offer, but I plan to discover whether or not it can be integrated into my promotion and marketing approaches.

Wikipedia – Getting a page on Wikipedia might be a bit tricky. I haven’t been able to get my own up for Stereo Thesis because of the following:

According to Wikipedia’s Notability guidelines, you must be a notable person in order to get an article. You have to be famous for something. If you're not famous, then you cannot get your own Wikipedia page. The guideline states that there must be several articles written by a third party about you. You must have some kind of sources or articles that are written by someone else like online or magazine articles written about you. Once you’ve accumulated enough third party sources about you, then you an attempt to create a Wikipedia page for yourself. So basically, the trick is all about getting a little press about yourself or music project to qualify for an article that might get approval from the people at Wikipedia.

Otherwise, if there are no articles or info available about you from third party sources, then you cannot have a Wikipedia page.

Bandzoogle – This is a website template service specifically geared towards musicians and the unique characteristics musicians need a website to have in order for us to properly display our image and artwork as well as providing us with a clean and simple user interface.

Echospin or Nimbit – These are 2 services that make it possible to sell your own music from your own website.

OnePager – Provides you with an additional knot in your marketing web by offering you another free space on the Internet to place your contact info.

Bonus Video: Seth Godin

To further assist you in developing a more detailed music marketing plan here’s a great video with Seth Godin, master marketer, noted author, and founder of Squidoo, discussing how to get your ideas, products, and music to spread like a virus. 

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Related Music:

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Mystery Meat

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Related Articles:

The Music Gallery: Can Music Ever Be Valued As Fine Art?

The Cash Flow Quadrant - What Is It? And What Should It Mean to Musicians and other Artists

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P.S. To support Stereo Thesis with a financial donation, click here.

Marc

http://stereothesis.com/