Ok so lets assume you have your songwriting down and you’re producing great content. Your next most obvious action item is to market that music, but more often than not music artist simply market to the wrong audience. This blog is about marketing to your niche or target market of fans who can relate to you and your music. When we think about booking a gig and bringing people or selling CDs and Merch, without defining our target market, its like throwing a dart down a black hole and hoping to hit the jackpot in Vegas.
If for instance you make reggae music, which is pretty mellow and happy for the most part and you stumble upon a Metallica show, chances are you won’t find many interested parties in your music. Finding your niche could be one of the biggest mistakes musicians make. Lets face it, there are hundreds of genres of music now (not just 5 anymore) and for every song there is an audience somewhere just waiting for your music to cross their ears, but a lot of times it gets mixed in to the wrong genre and never gets heard.
How to define your niche
In defining your niche the first thing to realize is there are many niches and the closer you can get to defining your niche the more dedicated, hard core fans you can potentially acquire. Yes, fans that really identify with you and your music are way more likely to stick with you for life and buy everything you put out there. So lets get down to the nitty gritty and determine exactly who is in your niche by covering the basic categories which will nail down actual people who will buy from you. Write down answers to these questions as we go along. What is your:
- Demographic (age, gender location)
- Favorite artists that you sound like. Think about low hanging fruit first (the people who like local bands like you)
- Where online can they be found? Check blogs, facebook, Youtube, Twitter, etc.
- Where do they find out about new music? Think about asking everyone you meet this question.
- What culture do they follow? i.e. surfers, bikers, hippies, late night crowd, etc.
- What are your favorite hobbies? Do these resonate with your fans as well?
These people need to be informed about your awesomeness so the first thing you’ll need to do is devise a plan to first find them, then market to them. I suggest you write down this plan to really test your niche, as right now its just a theory. Once you start pulling in some decent numbers it will be clear who your fans are and where they come from.
Your Pitch
Of course you’ll need to have some kind of pitch prepared even when testing these markets. So if you haven’t already defined your pitch check out blog post: https://musiclaunchpad.com/blog/music_marketing/crafting-your-pitch-for-maximum-sales . The main thing here is that you’ll need to relate your music to someone well known and respected. But this takes some time to craft a great pitch so don’t get lazy, take the time to craft your pitch first.
Next, take your top 3 places that your niche fans can be found and begin a simple information / giveaway campaign. For instance, I write music that appeals to surfers so everytime I go surfing I talk to as many surfers in the parking lots and in the water that I can. I usually tell them I’m a musician and if I have a sample of my music or a biz card I give them something. Now this is just offline strategy, which is much more personable and effective given the barrage of crap we get online. I can talk to someone once and its like having them see my facebook ad 10 times.
Online you’ll need to test as well before you unload all your time and effort in a niche that doesn’t work. While this is several courses in itself well summarize some strategies here so you can get started or keep moving for those that are already taking action. For the full marketing courses for musicians make sure you sign up to be a Free Beta tester of our new platform coming in 2014 by signing up on the right>>>.
Basically, you’ll want to start interacting socially on these social platforms by “contributing” valuable content and then sprinkle in your pitch here and there with links to your blog, your songs on soundcloud or pandora, your videos on youtube and your live concerts. Don’t just blast out anywhere, find some pages or friend people who like artists like you, then monitor which pages and platforms you get the most response from. Once its clear, you can ramp up the promotion and possibly even pay for marketing.
Stay the Course
Set a goal to do this for 1 year minimum, not three months, 1 year. Then after that another year and see what happens. Remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint. Nobody makes it in 1 year, nobody! Have fun while you’re doing this, keep creating new songs and content and pushing the envelope, but NEVER GIVE UP!
Best of luck
Kevin – MLP Advisor