Millions of musicians are passionate about music, but not enough are willing to invest the time and energy necessary to get their fans.
Whether you’re an independent musician, a producer, or a band, digital promotion should be an important part of your marketing campaign whenever you’re coming up with a new single, music video, local event, or multi-city tour. Online recognition is key to an artist’s success in the digital age when more and more music lovers are exploring online music platforms and are being influenced by digital marketing.
By investing in consistent and focused digital marketing, you’ll build a strong brand identity and have more opportunities coming your way. So don’t let yourself feel daunted when you hear “digital marketing”—it’s not as difficult as it sounds.
These five digital marketing tips will help you get more fans and sell more songs if you’re an independent musician or want to start a music career.
Table of contents
Introduction to Music Marketing
Music marketing is a complex field. You need to understand how everything works and fits together to get the most out of it. That way, you can make smart decisions and reach your goals.
You can spend millions on traditional advertising, or you can invest your money where it really matters. In today’s world, online music marketing is a game-changer, and music marketers must understand its true potential if they want to succeed.
Independent musicians struggle to get noticed by the mainstream media, so how can they market themselves and grow their fanbase online?
Related: How to Start a Streaming Music Business: Building an App Like Spotify
Digital Marketing Strategies as an Option for Independent Musicians
The music industry is going through a major transformation. You need to ensure you’re keeping up with what’s happening, so you can create a strategy that gets you ahead of the competition. The good news is that the digital landscape has evolved to provide musicians with a platform for growth and promotion.
Digital marketing strategies for musicians are an essential component of running an effective business and reaching your music goals. A digital marketing plan can make all the difference if you start out. It’s also an area where you can cut costs by doing things yourself. However, digital marketing can be one of your best investments if you’re looking to improve your business.
What Will You Need to Do?
Digital marketing includes various marketing efforts, including email marketing, social media advertising, SEO, mobile marketing, influencer marketing, and much more.
You need to do your homework, build your brand, get out there, and work hard to find success. With an ever-expanding array of opportunities online, the days of relying on an old-fashioned mailing list are numbered.
There are a variety of online resources for musicians looking to start their own businesses. Music blogs, social media platforms, music streaming services, and more provide platforms for musicians to showcase their skills and make a name for themselves.
Read the rest of this guide for five useful tips to help grow your following and gain access to new fans.
1. Create a great website as a part of your digital marketing efforts
The importance of a quality website cannot be understated. Whether it’s a small business or a large corporation, there is no denying that a website is a huge part of your overall business strategy.
Online marketing requires a digital address where people can find you. Your fans may not visit your website often, but gig organizers, producers, talent hunters, and record labels will find it easier to know your story and contact you if you have a website.
What Information to Include on Your Website?
If you’re a musician who wants to attract more fans and promote your music, one of the most important ways to do this is to set up your own website. Websites provide all sorts of important information, including:
- where you can sell music (like iTunes, Amazon MP3, and CD Baby),
- your artist page where fans and listeners can interact with your artist’s recordings and see everything about your show schedules and pictures from previous shows.
- a profile for your social media accounts,
- a blog that will educate your fans, showcase your music, and provide a lot of compelling content,
- a video explaining what makes you unique, and
- contact info.
Websites are a great way to connect with your fans and promote your music.
Show Your Professionalism and Commitment as an Independent Musician
A good website indicates professionalism and commitment on your part, regardless of whether you’re a band or a solo artist. Aside from being visually appealing, your business website should be mobile-friendly, fast-loading, and easy to navigate. If you’re also looking to sell your music online, consider adding an e-shop to your site—and test and retest the payment process before going live!
You’re a musician, and you want to start making a living playing the music you love. So, your first step in creating a successful online presence is creating a great website that showcases your musical talent and shows people why they should listen to your songs.
Use SEO to improve your website traffic.
If you haven’t been actively using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to improve your music website traffic, you should start doing so immediately. There are many ways to use SEO to improve your music website traffic, including writing relevant, descriptive meta tags, optimizing your images, and using keyword density properly. Doing so will increase your chances of ranking for related keywords on Google’s search results page.
If you don’t use SEO to optimize your music website, you’re missing out on a lot of traffic and potential customers.
While SEO is a great way to drive targeted traffic to your website, it’s a long process. You must invest in the process by building links and content for your site.
2. Focus on increasing your online presence
Focus on increasing your online presence, not just on your music.
As an independent musician, you should build an online presence to grow your fan base, increase your chances of being discovered and booked for shows, and build a sustainable career.
This requires ongoing effort, which includes developing superlative digital marketing content and regular social media activity to keep your fans intrigued and gain more followers. Most music fans discover new music on online platforms such as Snapchat, Facebook, and Twitter.
People use the internet to find the artists they love, and if you’re not there, you’re missing out on a lot of business.
Define Target Audience
A clearly defined target audience helps in this case, as it will help you pick the digital marketing platforms where you want to focus your efforts.
Make sure you’re sharing the right content for the specific target audience, and make sure you’re using the right media channels. You have to be where your audience is looking to find you.
Analyze Where Your Target Audience Is
Increasing your online presence means increasing the visibility of your music. This includes creating a profile on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.
Music transcends all boundaries, so keep an open mind, make social media handles on all popular platforms, and share your creations with your followers, who may lurk in the most unexpected places. As you go along, use social media analytics to analyze your target audience and refine your social media brand-building and marketing strategy toward better results.
People will pay attention if you focus on getting people to listen to your music. Focus on building your online brand. This will pay off in the long run and help you build buzz and credibility.
Share Compelling Content With Your Target Audience
When creating compelling content, sometimes you don’t need a lot of resources or money to get started. There are two key reasons musicians should focus on producing high-quality content.
- First, the content that you create can help promote your music to new listeners, which can, in turn, increase your exposure and grow your fan base.
- And second, if you can make some serious money off of your work, you can afford to create your own tools and processes to help you achieve your goals.
People who make music are the same people who listen to music. So if you want to get noticed, you have to do something different from the thousands of other bands out there.
So what is the best type of content to share?
There are two primary categories that you should be sharing.
- The first is the creative side of what you do. This includes the music you produce or videos from shows. It’s also about sharing your unique perspective from being an independent musician.
- The second category is simply providing education. This could be about learning how to play some specific instrument.
Independent musician has various potential content ideas they could share, but each has pros and cons. The best way to decide which is the right one is to consider what kind of content is easiest to share and how often you want to share it.
Use email marketing to stay in contact with your fans.
Email is still one of the most effective ways to build brand awareness and create a relationship with your fans. It allows you to reach out to your fans in a way that other forms of marketing can’t.
Email marketing, such as newsletters or special promotions, can keep you in touch with your fans. Fans feel a closer connection to musicians who communicate regularly with them via email and are often more willing to buy their music. Email is one of the most cost-effective forms of communication for musicians. It is a great way to connect and build relationships with your audience and increase sales.
3. Make a YouTube channel where your fans can find all your music
An excellent resource for finding new, up-and-coming musicians is YouTube. This is because millions of people on YouTube are looking for new music to listen to.
Talent hunters looking for a fresh voice and authentic talent scour YouTube to find the next great artist. In addition, event organizers want to listen to your music before offering you a performance. YouTube gets you an audience for your music and also a platform to be discovered.
While newer, dedicated platforms such as Spotify have emerged, YouTube remains popular for its simplicity. Initially, you may not get a lot of views or followers, but perseverance is the key to success in this medium. YouTube’s algorithm allows potential fans to find you, provided you tag your music right. Even a few hundred fans will bring your music recognition and help you develop a true fan base over time.
Create a Separate YouTube Channel for Your Music.
It doesn’t matter what kind of music you’re making, you need to be sure that your fans have a place to access your content. A music blog, for example, is a great place for fans to access all of your albums, but a YouTube channel is best suited for showcasing your individual songs.
The more information you provide about yourself, your fans will likely learn about you.
How to Start With a YouTube?
Start with a few videos of your own songs and see what happens. You may find that people are already liking and commenting on your videos.
Then start posting at least three videos per week.
Make sure your song is a minimum of 90 seconds long and only one track.
The quality of your video matters, too – the higher the resolution, the better.
You can earn money through YouTube advertising if you’ve uploaded many videos and have enough fans.
You can upload your music through YouTube or use specialized services to help you upload it.
4. Hire an agency for professional brand management and digital marketing
Hire a digital agency to help create and launch a social media campaign for your brand. An agency can take the guesswork out of social media marketing and help you build a strategy tailored to your audience and business objectives.
Working with a digital agency specializing in music promotion can take the load off your shoulders so that you can focus on what you do best. Moreover, working with a well-established agency gives you access to their well-connected network of influencers, decision-makers, and leaders in the music industry,
Check out https://www.amworldgroup.com/music-promotion to learn how an experienced and successful entertainment marketing agency can help grow your brand with tailored marketing campaigns, event management, end-to-end publicity solutions, premium collaborations, and expert consulting to steer your music career in the right direction.
An experienced agency knows how to leverage the most efficient channels for you. You should consider the cost of your services versus the return on investment (ROI) you get from using them.
5. Collaborate with other independent artists
To become successful as an independent artist, you have to collaborate with other independent artists. This is a good way to learn and experience new ideas. You can collaborate with a songwriter, a producer, a graphic designer, a drummer, and many more people. This is very beneficial. You will meet a lot of different people, and you will learn new things.
The virtues of collaboration are many, particularly for up-and-coming artists. It exponentially increases your visibility and puts your music in front of a new audience already primed for your kind of music. So be open to collaboration, but pick musicians based on their talent and the genre they play and not just the size of their fanbase.
The goal of the collaboration is to get more fans. If a track or gig doesn’t seem to be working out, agree to shout each other out on social media. Sharing and recommending each other’s music to your followers is a simple and effective way to boost your own fan following. In addition, you can reach out to industry influencers and bloggers and get them to mention or write about your music enterprise on their social media pages and blog sites.
We all need a community of like-minded individuals willing to offer advice and help.
What is stopping you from collaborating with other independent artists? If you can collaborate with others, why haven’t you taken advantage of it yet? More people will notice your art if you collaborate with others than if you’re a one-man show.
Conclusion
In conclusion, as an independent musician, you are the face of your band and music. If you want your music to reach a wider audience and bring new fans, you need to build a marketing strategy that will put you in front of new audiences.
If you’re struggling to attract your first thousand fans and wondering how to grow your fan base, you can start building your personal brand and promoting yourself and your music through social media. There’s no one size fits all approach to growing a fan base, so it’s important to find a strategy that works for you. This approach focuses on creating authentic, honest content that connects with fans on a human level. And it gives you the tools you need to share it with your audience.
Start with things you already know are working for other musicians – social media and email campaigns. Then, explore new places and ideas that you haven’t yet tried. And don’t forget about things like SEO.
In conclusion, I hope this list of digital marketing tips for musicians will give you an idea of how to make your brand more visible online. I’m not saying you’ll get rich overnight, but the endless possibilities are endless.
