One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned comes in the form of an acronym for the word system. As the saying goes, a system will “save you stress, time, energy and money.”
When applying that principle to your music career, I believe one of the easiest places to begin is with your marketing.
Before we dive into the strategies let’s be clear. This will require you to do more than just create one-off promotions or email blasts that say “buy my stuff!”
Customers are bombarded with messages like this from people they don’t know, like or trust daily and it drives them insane.
Instead, I’ll show you how to create a campaign that immediately adds value to your potential fans and gives them a reason to look forward to your content.
The 4 phases of a digital marketing campaign
- Attraction
- Interaction
- Conversion
- Satisfaction
Attraction – The attraction process is the first step in creating new fans online and consists of offering content such as your songs and videos to your fans and potential customers.
Now then, rather than just posting about on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat, I encourage you to be a bit more strategic.
Social media is an excellent way to promote yourself, but it’s only the beginning of the marketing process.
The real wins come when you get someone to click on your social media links and visit your website.
Interaction – You’ve gotten a new fan excited about your free content and they’ve gone to your website, great! But now what?
In order to get the most leverage from the interactions on your website you should be intentional about one thing—getting the prospect to share their contact information with you.
The people who are willing to make this small commitment up front are much more likely to make a larger commitment later when you ask them to buy your merchandise.
Interactions usually happen on landing pages, forms, contact pages, etc. where it is acceptable to collect information such as names, phone numbers, email addresses and more.
The better you get at this step, the easier it will be to build relationships with customers who want to support you and your music.
Conversions – Getting conversions is how you begin getting paid for your artwork.
To do so you’ll need to take your fans through a systematic sales process that generates customers.
I tend to think of this as an educational process that helps the people connect with you, your story and feel inspired to support your movement.
In terms of communication forms, nothing does this better than a well-written email.
Email is non-invasive and when you are intentional about following up, you can expect to build positive relationships with your fans. And they’ll, in turn, want to support you.
Satisfaction – Satisfaction is the final step in the digital marketing process and happens regardless of whether you make a sale or not.
Now, more than ever, your fans have access to you through your website, email inbox and social media channels so it’s important to use these new tools to create exceptional customer experiences and keep them engaged.
Remember, your best fans are the ones who look for your music, interact with you and tell others about you.
So be consistent in sharing your latest updates, interesting stories, and promotional content and encourage them to help spread the word.
Now that you have the model above, let’s apply it to your music career.
Action Steps:
Consider answers to the following questions.
What pieces of content do you have that would make fans want to visit your website?
How could you convince someone to give you their contact info so you can follow up with them?
What could you do to keep the people who’ve connected with you interested in your music?
Draw the digital marketing model above and brainstorm ideas that fit into each section. Don’t worry about writing actual emails or social media posts just yet. Today our task is simply to generate ideas and write them down.
Leave a comment with any questions you have about your ideas for content.