Part 3: From Beats to Brands: A Marketer's Framework for Independent Musicians
The Last Two Marketing Tactical "P's" Revealed ... Where The Music Meets Your Fans
Here’s the final part of a trilogy of issues of The Music Marketer, where we’ve shown how to apply MBA level marketing thinking to your promotional work as an independent artist.
Today we’ll explore the final two tactical “P’s”:
Promotion (Marketing Communications)
Place (Distribution channels)
Before we tuck-in though, if you missed the first two parts, you can check them out here;
Part 1 – explored the importance of Market Orientation and Marketing Strategy-before-Tactics.
Part 2 – linked SMART Marketing Objectives to Strategy and started to unpack the Tactical toolbox with two of the four “P’s”; Product and Price.
Promotion (Marketing Communications)
This is the tactical area where most artists, and indeed most marketers, jump straight in and get busy doing stuff. Yet, as we’ve shown, without the proper groundwork covered in the earlier strategic steps, as well as consideration of your “product” and pricing tactics, the promotional bit will fall flat on its face.
Your Marketing Communications plan will essentially consist of all the different marketing and media channels you deploy to deliver against your strategic decisions and subsequently defined objectives.
As a self-promoting artist, spending your own money, the chosen channels will be determined by several factors;
Available Time: to manage one or more channels effectively.
Marketing Budget: particularly if you’re looking at any paid media channels, but also in relation to the production of any content or other assets.
Technical Expertise: if you only know one channel well, start there and add more to the mix once you feel comfortable and begin seeing positive results.
Fan’s Journey: from discovery, through curiosity, to high interest and finally hardcore fandom for those ready to buy and watch you. You’ll select the channel, or channels, best fitting your key audience’s behaviours and where you are most able to move them from one stage of your marketing funnel to the next .
Social media will very likely tick many of the boxes when it comes to your marketing communications tactics. It’s the obvious starting place for any artist. However, there are some key considerations relating back to your earlier strategic decisions;
Platforms: Instagram, Facebook or TikTok? YouTube? Multiple platforms or a single one? Where are you currently active already and where do your fans gravitate?
Organic Content: This can easily be started and is free to distribute on the platforms of your choice, as regularly as you wish. Organic audience growth can be slower and more limited without other promotional routes, such as PR or live gigging, to drive broader interest into your marketing eco-system. Creative production is also worth thinking about. What types of content do you want to produce? How does it fit with your “Product?” How much time and money do you have available for organic outreach?
Paid Advertising: This should be focussed initially on your social platform of choice, if you have one leading environment. Instagram and Facebook remain the most sophisticated paid social ad platforms and are a great place to start if you’re already active in those spaces. They’ve been developed over many years and offer a multitude of targeting, flighting and creative options. TikTok has enjoyed huge growth in recent years, especially with younger audiences. However, TikTok performance is currently still often stronger through organic posts and their subsequent promotion, rather than pure, paid advertising to new audiences.
Email Marketing: If you’re on your way to building a list of opted-in fans, congratulations! Using email marketing to regularly communicate with your followers can be a great platform to push key updates, exclusive releases, early-bird notifications, new merchandise or other special fan updates.
While there are a wide range of other possibilities when it comes to marketing communications, if you’re starting out, or doing much of the work on your own, I’d recommend initially sticking to one or more of the three routes mentioned.
When you consider the depth and breadth of the various social platforms, there’s a huge amount of headroom. As you become more experienced, you’ll know when it makes sense to expand across more platforms or into other areas completely.
YouTube has not been specifically recommended as a potential marketing communications channel for Organic or Paid Advertising. It can certainly be part of the mix, but the recommendation is to prioritise social platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, as their eco-systems are more entwined with people’s lives. Think about your own personal activity. Do you spend more time scrolling on these platforms, engaging with friends and family, across a variety of topics?
Special Note: The Music Marketer is dedicated to helping artists grow their fanbase through the effective use of media advertising. Future issues of this newsletter will cover the use of social platforms in much more detail. Stay tuned!
Place (Distribution Channels)
This is where your fans get to stream and buy your music in all its glory.
It’s any channel you use to enable purchases of your music or other merchandise. It would also include any real-world venues or virtual locations where you play for audiences too.
Certain distribution channels, such as YouTube, will, as mentioned already, also possibly act as marketing communications channels. But we’ll assume slightly different “outputs” for distribution, defined as the end products of finished music, merchandise or performances.
Music Streaming Platforms: You’ll want to make your music as accessible as possible on the listener’s preferred choice of platform. Apple Music, Spotify, SoundCloud, Deezer and Bandcamp are all likely to be key destinations for your audience and will require a presence.
Video: YouTube provides a fantastic platform to deliver music videos of your recorded work, alongside any other type of video content. With the opportunity to earn ad revenue from video views and also the ability to host links to sell more of your own products or third party “affiliate” offers, YouTube is definitely worthy of consideration for the independent-minded artist. TikTok, Instagram and other video focussed platforms also offer the ability to showcase your work, but are more likely to be prioritised for promotional communications to build your fanbase.
Merchandise: Dependent on the type of products you are selling, options including Shopify provide some of the most robust e-commerce solutions. However, they will require some set-up and ongoing management to properly utilise.
Live: Gig venues, pop-up live performances and virtual livestreams again provide a mix of revenue-earning distribution channels and promotional vehicles. Exactly how you make use of them will depend considerably on where you are in your career and how regularly you play live or tour.
With all these routes to market, the key is to make your music widely available and easily accessible. Don’t make your fans have to work to find you. Whether using a single or multi-channel distribution model, think back to the goals set, objectives agreed and available resources to balance marketing tasks against your core music-making craft.
The Final Word:
The last three issues of the Music Marketer have been great to share with you. We’ve covered a fair bit of ground on the theory and practice of marketing strategy-to-tactics.
Ensure you get your strategy defined and realistic objectives set first. Then select and manage the tactical choices available across the 4 P’s of Product, Price, Promotion and Place. Always do it this way round. Do not start with tactics.
If you follow the basics of the MBA Marketing framework, as adapted for music artists, you’ll avoid the many mistakes of haphazard activity and inconsistent results common amongst tactics-first approaches.
I’m keen to know where you are with your own marketing, and the challenges you’ve faced in getting clarity on either your approach or the actual execution. Do get in touch to tell your story and help guide future issues of the Music Marketer.