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How to Promote Your Music

How to promote your music

The internet has opened up endless possibilities to promote your music. And, while that may seem daunting, it really allows you to experiment and let your creativity run wild!

The key to successfully promoting your music in today’s music industry is to try new things, learn from the promotions you run, make changes, and fine-tune them to your unique career.

Let’s take a look at some basic strategies you could be using to promote your music right now.

1. Use Social Media the RIGHT Way

We all use social media. If you’re not on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter these days, it’s almost like you don’t exist. However, you may not be using social media to it’s full potential to promote your music.

Social media is NOT a straight-up marketing platform. It’s really a catalyst for conversation and word-of-mouth marketing. About 80% of your posts should be funny, conversational, and interesting, leaving about 20% for promotional material. Here are some examples and checklists that you can use.

That’s not to say that conversational posts can’t be promotional! You just need to learn how to frame the content in interesting ways. For example, if you’re in the studio recording a new album, try sprinkling little updates on social media. Tell a story about your studio experience that day, share a photo of the mix, or post a short teaser video of a song.

If you’re out on tour, take photos at the venues or share short videos or photos of the audiences. These things aren’t obviously promotional, but they still let fans know what’s going on.

It’s important to remember, though, that social media isn’t the end-all-be-all when it comes to promoting your music. It can easily become a huge time suck that takes you away from your music if you don’t manage your time properly (Hint: get social media time management tips here).

2. Promote Your Music and Sell it on Your Website

Your website shouldn’t be a static thing. It should be ever adapting and changing to reflect new events in your career. Basically, you want your fans stopping by your website as often as possible. The more often they’re on your site, the more they’re exposed to your albums, merch, and tickets.

If you’re just starting out, you probably don’t have a lot of big updates other than the occasional album release and tour. Starting a blog is a great solution.

It’s fairly easy to set up a blog on the homepage of your website. Most website tools like Bandzoogle, and WordPress, have blog capabilities. Plan out blog posts at regular intervals like once or twice a week and share anything you think your fans would find interesting. This could be the inspirations behind certain songs, new lyrical ideas you’re working on, a funny story from the last band practice, or even a run-down of the gear you use.

Another idea is to create landing pages on your website. Landing pages can be used to collect email addresses, to raise awareness, to give your fans more information, or to make a sale.

3. Promote with Email

Your email list is an extremely valuable tool to promote your music. Unlike collaboration and blogs, your email list is marketing to your current fan base. If someone signed up for your email list, they want to hear from you, so take advantage of it!

Remember, your emails should be driving your fans to your website, so you want to include links.

So what do you send to your email list? The obvious use of an email list is to let your fans know when you have an album coming out or a tour. BUT you can also use your email list to send fans to your blog when you have new content. (Remember, you want to get your fans on your website as often as possible.)

Of course, you need to get fans to actually signup for your emails before you can start using it as a music promotion tool, right? An easy option is to trade something of value for an email address. Keep in mind this doesn’t have to be a free song (in fact there are a TON of more effective ways to grow your email list)

If you’re not sure where to even start when it comes to growing your email list, here are 10 easy ways to build an email list for your music.

 

“No matter how many followers you have, you can’t eat a tweet. Get New Artist Model and learn how to turn traffic – into fans – into money.” – Dave Kusek

 

Conclusion: How to Promote Your Music

Your music promotion strategy is going to be something that you refine over time, so don’t get frustrated if things take some time to come together.

The important thing to remember is that you should be taking advantage of all the different promote your music tools you have right here at your finger tips instead of relying on just one thing.

If you want more music marketing guidance, download our most popular ebook (all free). You’ll get a roadmap showing exactly how different elements like social media, email, and your website come together into a music promotion machine that will help you grow your fanbase and make more money. You’ll also get 3 social media checklists with easy post ideas you can use on your own social channels.

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for more great tips you can use to promote your music

How to Promote Your Music Ebook

 

There are a lot more resources available for you at the New Artist Model blog.  For example, if you want to self release an album, this will help you get started. If you want help with Instagram for music, this post may be very helpful.

The New Artist Model is an online music business school for independent musicians, performers, recording artists, producers, managers and songwriters. Our classes teach essential music business and marketing skills that will take you from creativity to commerce while maximizing your chances for success.

Check out the Music Business Accelerator (MBA) a new program that will help you plan your music projects, promote your music and create a sustainable career.

MARKETING AND PROMOTION

We also have a suite of marketing and music promotion courses to choose from, including How to Build Your Audience with Cover Songs, Music Marketing 101 and the Promote and Market Your Music Super Pack.

These marketing and promotion courses will teach you:

  • The modern strategies for music marketing, branding and promotion that will work best for you.
  • Tools to identify and create goals for marketing your music.
  • How to build your brand and leverage the power of sponsorships to drive awareness of your music.
  • See exactly how to develop and enhance your website and create an electronic press kit (EPK) to attract attention.
  • See how to master digital marketing including how to build an email list and create effective communications for your audience.
  • How to effectively promote your music on social media and how you can leverage these channels to build your audience on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and via email.

Get the knowledge to understand marketing and branding and what works for you and your fanbase. Gain the confidence to excel by building alliances with people who can help you grow your audience. See exactly how to sell more music, tickets and merchandise using modern social media marketing techniques. Get more fans and sell more music. Learn how to tap into new revenue streams. See how to leverage your interests to find real fans and harness momentum. Discover the power of niche marketing and how to find your exact niche. Learn how to differentiate yourself and stand out from the crowd by tapping into like-minded people, sponsorships and causes to find and grow your audience.

Check out our music marketing and promotion courses here.

 

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Easy Steps to Get Started with Email Promotion for Musicians

Easy steps to get started with email promotion for musicians

Email is a big topic (which is why we dedicated an entire module to it in the Music Power Tools course), and it’s something that a lot of musicians put off. But I’m here to tell you that email doesn’t have to be scary, time-consuming, or intimidating.

Instead of thinking big picture, narrow it down to a few easy steps you can take right now to get emails flowing in.

Choose an Email Promotion Provider

Before you do anything with email promotion, you need to choose an email provider – Gmail or Yahoo isn’t going to cut it here, you need something professional and legit with the ability to group and segment your list.

There are a lot of options, but let’s run through two big ones quickly so you can start deciding which may be best for you.

Mailchimp

Pros

  • Very easy to use, even if you’ve never used email services before
  • You can start with a free plan – which will give you up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month
  • Affordable pricing for paid plans starts at $10 for 500 users/unlimited sends (see more here)
  • Good templates are available, you can create your own templates, and the editor is very easy to use
  • There is awesome RSS feed support
  • You can track where signups come from and automatically add to group statuses with hidden form fields
  • Easy to understand reports
  • Customize signup forms for mobile devices
  • Easy to import and customize your lists
  • Easily share songs from iTunes or YouTube
  • Segmented email campaigns, such as by location (great for tour alerts)
  • Mobile apps available
  • Lots of integrations with website providers

Cons

  • Many advanced features require a Pro plan, which starts at $199/month
  • Some segmentation features require a paid plan

Aweber

Pros

  • Awesome drag-and-drop editor which allows you to easily format text, add hyperlinks, and insert images
  • You can schedule emails by time-zone
  • There are 700+ email templates to choose from
  • The interface is clean and easy to use
  • They take spam very seriously
  • Split A/B test your emails
  • Mobile Apps are available
  • The shopping cart integrates with PayPal, Shopify, and Google Checkout
  • You can add attachments to emails
  • There is extensive tracking and reporting of email campaigns

Cons

  • Lacks Google Analytics integration
  • No social media tracking or reporting
  • You can’t build your own email template.
  • You can only import xls, xlsx, tsv, csv, txt files

Need some ideas on what to send to your email list? Download these 10 email templates – Attention-Getting Email Templates for Musicians

Don’t Ask for Too Much

Once you have your email provider, your next step in your email promotion plan is to start creating opt-in forms where fans can signup to receive emails.

As you’re doing this, remember that it’s important to only ask for what you need. People are wary of giving out too much personal information, and too many form fields can lead to people dropping off before they submit their email.

You need to decide what information you absolutely need (and what you can live without).

Keep in mind that you can create multiple different forms that collect different information depending on where they’re located on your site. So for example, an opt-in form on your homepage may just ask for email and first name (so you can personalize the emails you send). An opt-in form on your tour page may include email, first name, and zip code so you can notify them when you’re playing in their area.

Add Opt-In Forms to Your Website

Where you place your email opt-in forms will have just as big an effect on how well they perform and how many fans signup.

To start, make sure you have an opt-in form towards the top of your website’s homepage (it should be visible without scrolling down). Tell them what they’ll get for signing up right on the form.

If you have an active blog page, include another opt-in form towards the top or in the sidebar allowing fans to sign up for blog updates or weekly blog roundup emails.

Another option is to add an opt-in form to your merch page giving your fans the chance to sign up for emails to receive a discount code.

Pop-ups and welcome mats can be used, but be sure to adjust the settings so they’re not popping up all the time and getting annoying. Sumo.com is a great one to try, but there are plenty of other plugins for WordPress and other sites that will do similar things.

Let Fans Subscribe at Checkout

Another easy way to get more people signing up for your emails is to add an opt-in checkbox to your store’s checkout page. Don’t assume that everyone who buys from you is on your list. Plus, for the most part, fans who actually purchase from you are probably your most loyal fans, so you want to be able to contact them again!

Add a Call-to-Action to Your Facebook Page

Adding a button to your Facebook page to get mailing list subscribers can help create a mailing list from your Facebook following.

Here’s how to do it: Click the “Create Call to Action” button on your cover photo, select “Sign Up” from the button options dropdown, then enter the URL to your mailing list and click “Create.”

It’s a pretty easy step, but it’s yet another way to funnel fans into your email list.

Collect Emails at Your Merch Table

Your merch table is another place where email signup forms can easily be added into the mix. It can be as simple as having a clipboard on the table, or you can tie it to some kind of a contest to really make it worth their while. Tell your fans that anyone who signs up for emails will be entered to win a merch bundle at the end of your set.

If you want to go further with email marketing and learn more about what to send and when to send, consider signing up for the Musician Power Tools Promote Your Music Crash course. There’s an entire module dedicated to email promotion, and 5 other modules covering social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, as well as your website so you can get everything working together to promote your music.

Written by Nicholas Rubright of Dozmia, Chelsea Ira

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6 Things You Need to Promote Your Music on Social Media

Social media is a cornerstone to the artist-fan relationship today. With that direct connection you can find a fanbase, and develop a connection with your fans (something that wasn’t possible in the past), and even sell music. Social media really puts your music career in your hands!

But with so many options out there it can get totally overwhelming! Every platform gives indie musicians a unique way to connect with their fans. Twitter is great for fun, little engaging conversations. Instagram gives your fans insight into your daily life. And YouTube is almost like talking with your fans face to face.

But with each new platform comes new rules, formats, and strategies. Image specifications are different on each and every social platform, the optimal posting times vary from platform to platform, and even the people are different! You’ll find that some social channels cater towards fairly specific audiences and demographics.

To help you make the most of each platform you’re using to promote your music, check out this infographic. If you want to promote your music on social media, this is going to be your best friend.

You’ll learn:

  • The best image sizes and formats for your posts and profiles on each social media platform
  • Keyboard shortcuts to save you time
  • The best days and times to post so you get the most exposure
  • Social media tools you should be using every day
  • Easy tips that will help you get more engagement
  • And a quick guide to writing headlines for your posts

And if you want to take it even further and really step up your email promotion as well, download this free ebook. You’ll learn what to send your fans to create more engagement and how to email music industry people to unlock more opportunities. Plus, you’ll get 10 free email templates and examples that you can start sending to your fans today. Just change out a few words and press send!

This infographic is from On Blast Blog.

Promote Your Music on Social Media Cheat Sheet

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