5 Marketing Tips to Promote Your Music

To make money from music, you need a loyal following and from that, you hope to get some gigs, sell your music and get people to download your songs. With marketing, you can realize great profits from music. You might not like it and it’s not the easiest skill to master but it is your only ticket to making some serious cash through your music.
Like music production and writing, marketing has its fair share of hacks; though you will still need to work hard and maintain consistency. To help you crack the marketing juggernaut, here are five quick tips that should get you on the straight and narrow of marketing and getting your music career soaring through the clouds.

Make great music!

Let’s be honest, great music speaks for itself. It makes marketing much easier. Even with the best tips and tricks on how to market your music, you should remember that you are fighting for the attention of listeners who are always getting bombarded with hits topping charts. As such, your music needs to be good enough for listeners and fans to want to listen to it. To achieve this you have to be willing to go above and beyond to impress your fans and critics alike. If you have to, collaborate with other musicians – do whatever it takes to produce great music.

Go old school

In a world where everything has gone digital, it’s easy to forget how efficient conventional methods like live music promotion are. The value of person-to-person interaction is still held in high regard. This is especially because today artists can create and market their music without living the comfort of their homes. Even with marketing giants like social media in play, live performances are still one of the leading avenues of making money. These also present the perfect opportunity to build loyalty and a strong following.
Gigs in different towns help an artist to grow a fan base in different cities and countries. They also present the perfect opportunity to launch a new song or album. A quick tip (that is rarely used) is attending shows by other artists. Even if you cannot get a gig in your preferred location, attending a gig by another artist can give you a great platform to mingle with new people and get your content out there.

Leverage on the Social Media Craze

Social Media is one of the trending topics in the millennial era. With more than 3 billion people using social media, it is easily one of the most valuable marketing tools available.
When using social media, there are a couple of things you should know. First, it is not a straight shooting marketing platform. While it does carry a lot of weight, it’s not the place to package yourself or send business emails. Instead, it is the perfect place to speed up conversations and conduct some word of mouth marketing. With social media, there is no one tip that can help you crack it. So here are a couple of tips that should help you use social media with better efficiency to market your music. While at it, don’t forget that YouTube also falls under this class and should rank highly in your list of marketing strategies.

*For most of your posts, you should adopt a conversational, funny and interesting tone. Such a tone is captivating to your followers. It helps them easily warm up to your brand. Only about 20% of your posts should be about promotional.

*It is said that photos are worth a thousand words. But in the same breath, videos are worth even more; especially on social media. Whether you’re on tour, out shopping or at a charity event, take photos and short videos of you or the audience. These should be the kind that can be shared with your followers and fans.

*Time and space your posts. Don’t post content too often. It can be annoying and it can earn you more dislikes than likes. If you do insist on this, create different content to avoid monotony in your posts.
When using social media, make sure you use an analytics application. Analytics tools help you keep track of the progress you are making and more importantly, identify areas that need improving.

Create a website or a blog

Websites are not only a great place to build your online presence, but also the perfect place to build, and run a business. It is utterly important for any brand to have an online presence – a website is a great start. But the thing about running a website is that it should be regularly and consistently updated to show recent achievements and activities in your career.
You could also set up a blog. It is more limiting with regards to marketing but all the same, it does provide you with plenty of actionable options that you could use to market and distribute your music. These options include opt-in forms which are crucial in building a mailing list. The beauty of having a website or a blog is that you can juggle between hard selling your music and giving your fans a sneak peek into your personal life. Needless to mention, your website or blog has to be quite interesting and attractive, that is if you want people to stick around long enough to buy your music.

Airplay

Radio and TV airplay are among the most important mainstream marketing tools you can use to push your music. Because radio airplay is considered public performance, you get to make money off your music in form of royalties. These are paid to you every time the song is played. However, penetrating radio and TV waves is not easy. You need to know how to get radio airplay which, in all honesty, can be elusive at times.
Depending on your budget, there are different types of radios you can approach. There are the commercial stations that are the hardest to crack, local stations, college and university radios as well as satellite radios.
When you’re starting out, the college stations and web radios are a great place to get your music played and reach out to new fans and the curators in such stations are always eager to connect with new musicians. Regardless of the platform you decide to use, always remember to remain professional, and don’t attach links to your first email. Instead, you can ask them what they prefer; a link to digital track, a physical CD mailed to them or a downloadable album.
Proper marketing is responsible for some of the greatest hits you can make. Without marketing, you wouldn’t know of some of the greatest hits today and the biggest names in the industry. The biggest challenge is that it is a multi-cogged wheel with numerous moving parts. You have to make sure you choose the right ones to get your music in front of the right people. With these five tips, this task should be much easier and more fruitful.

* We want to thank our friends at Dozmia for helping support our mission. Again, all thoughts, opinions, and musical tastes of our partners do not necessarily agree with those of the illustrious and handsome editors of ETTG.