While working with new bands recently, I’ve encountered the same question over and over again: I want to get started on my music promotion, I don’t have a website but I want to get started making online sales.  I’m not a blogger but I want to spread the word, what do you reccomend?

The interesting part to this question is that each band or artist was involved in completely different scenarios.  Some bands were already performing and needed to setup immediate sites for email capture and promoting new shows.  Other artists were a “one man band” and wanted to take their music and test the waters.  With each I replied: Set your own pace according to your goals.

When discussing an online marketing campaign with each artist or band I asked them a few questions to gauge expectations and understand what they want to achieve.  It is very important to define before any WordPress installation begins, the numbers don’t lie.

What Kind of Racehorse is Your Blog?

I am a big fan of Zenyatta, a beautiful racehorse that is setting incredible records and she just recently won her  17th consecutive race here at my favorite track, Hollywood Park.  Zenyatta is known for keeping consistent with racing within her means.

For example, as the races get tougher with higher quality opponents, she still races at a pace comfortable to her.  No matter if the field is filled with quality sprinters, she loves to race from behind to maximize her greatest push and not burn out at the end.

How does this relate to your initial blogging campaign?  You must understand what kind of blog you either want or already have and guide it in the direction of the pace you want to achieve to win your race.  What kind of  time are you willing to dedicate to your writing and promotion?

Setting a schedule to pace your ideas over time will create the momentum to keep this project fresh and consistent.

Is Your Blog An Outlet for Expression or a Sales Strategy?

This is an important question to ask yourself when looking at your initial blogging campaign because they each yield different results.

My blog is my sales strategy in action, ultimately my outlet for expression with a purpose.  If your goal is to sell music, what kind of specific strategies do you want to test to get you higher conversions?  Are you marketing with a purpose?  Is each article designed to get viewers to your store or just to inflate your ego that you got new visitors?

I have been on both ends.  I was able to get increasing traffic on a monthly basis and felt this is all I needed with low conversions.  I had one blog where I was happy with 4% conversion rate because I was lazy and didn’t want to increase that percentage, I was happy with increasing visitors.

Ultimately, you want to make the most of your visitors and make them repeat their visits.  By taking that 4% as a lesson, I created a stronger email campaign and more articles based around what was selling.  That was the day I went from passive income to active income.

What Did I Do Today To Help My Promotion?

Be prepared to ask yourself after each task, how did it help my overall promotion or goals I want to achieve.

If your music site is your sales strategy, what specifically are you going to do to implement it?  Keeping this mindframe will create a purpose for your work.  I hate busy work, I want to create tasks that yield results not just time loss.  If you wrote an article, how did it help your cause?  Did you actively or passively  ask for mailing list sign up or push for downloading your new song?

The point of this activity is to get your brain started in creating plans that you can grade and make correlations to winners and losers.  Spend time where it is showing most promise.  Failure occurs and its up to you how you bounce back and tighten your operation.

Even if you haven’t started blogging yet, get to your nearest text editor or Google Docs and start writing down some ideas for articles you have in mind.  Get active and write down all topics for future use, don’t wait.

Hip Hop Distribution Homework

You don’t have to be a writer to be a blogger.  You just have to have enthusiasm about your work and promote it consistently.  Promotion sounds like an infomercial to many, half of the time it just involves connecting with readers and engaging in conversation with fans.  It’s easier than it sounds.

Answer some of these questions before our next session:

1. Do you have time to dedicate to writing and promoting your music throughout the week?
2. Do you have a mission statement, expressing your overall goals for your music operation? If so, what is it?
3. What kind of content do you have to offer? (music, articles, videos, pictures) How do you plan to use it towards your sales strategy?
4. Are you part of a band or solo artist?

These questions will get the ball rolling until we discuss more specific ways of promoting online.  I learned from my hit and miss tactics in the past, now I feel comfortable we will both benefit from a little planning and action in motion.

I no longer assume what an artist knows about online promotion.  It is to his/her benefit to understand the marketing aspect so that they can engage with their fans and maximize how they can help their online visibility.  If a fan asks how I can help, don’t just reply “buy my album” because of arrogance.  Share articles, ask them to invite a friend, offer free music, or just conversate on Twitter and build a relationship.  Invest in your marketing.

I was looking for inspiration for my mailing list strategy and chose to check out what the commercially cool kids were doing on Billboard’s Hot 100.  I randomly chose 10 artists from this weeks Hot 100 and wanted to ask some questions:

1. How hard is it to sign up to their mailing list?
2. Do they have a mailing list offer with any free music?
3. What are they offering to make me want to sign up?
4. What catch phrases are they using to invite you to sign up?

The real thing I also wanted to see is how these big labels  are now dealing with this new “socially conscious” movement of marketing and social networking.  By now they must have made adjustments and learned from some independent musicians’ success, right?

I was disappointed with a majority of the sites that I looked at.  There is a reliance on popularity and a somewhat arrogant attitude by not creating offers for fans.

Random Billboard Artist Experiment

A. Robin Thicke

1. I could not find a mailing list to sign up for
2. There is NO free music offered
3. There is a “Community” section that is used to capture emails, but doesn’t really peak interest into reasons to subscribe
4. no catch phrases and no mailing list

B. Usher

1. There is a mailing list sign up found at the top right of the page
2. There is NO free music offered
3. No offer clearly stated for the mailing list.  There is a Community section and Contest offered for a personalized Platinum record used for capturing emails as well
4. “Join Newsletter” is the catch phrase used

C. Timbaland

1. There is no visible mailing list on home page
2. There is NO free music offered
3. Not offering anything for signing up.  There is a “Community” section that encourages signing up, but community section looks boring
4. No catch phrase found for a mailing list

D. Trey Songz

1. There is a mailing list sign up section in the right sidebar, easy to find
2. There is NO free music offered for signing up
3. Not offering anything to encourage signing up, there is a “Community” section as well for catching emails
4. Catch phrase:  “Sign in, Join the Community, Upload Content”

E. Alicia Keys

1. Left hand side bar there is a mailing list sign up form
2. There is NO free music offered
3. There are no clear offers for signing up.  There is also a “Community” section to capture emails, featuring fans and social networking
4. Catch phrase: “Stay up to date with the latest from Alicia Keys. Get the Newsletter!”

F. Rihanna

1. Mailing list sign up found in the middle of the page
2. There is NO free music offered
3. There are no other offers seen, just another “Join” tab to get more emails.
4. Catch phrase: “Join The List”

G. Lady Antebellum

1. Join mailing list found on the top right corner, join by email or mobile, easy to find
2. There is NO free music offered
3. There are no other offers for signing up.  “Fans” and “Join the Community” are prominent.  Entice you by being able to post blogs, comment, rate and vote on stuff
4. There is no catch phrase for the mailing list.  The “Community” section offers some reasons to sign up, more along the lines of social networking. Joining the mailing list also gives options to join the street team and their community

H. Muse

1. Mailing list easy to find on left hand side of website
2. There is NO free music
3. No offers, more of a newsletter
4. Catch phrase: “Register for the mailing list: get the latest Muse news on albums, gigs, competitions and more”

I. Train

1. “Join Now” found at the top and another mailing list sign up is found in the right sidebar
2. There is NO free music offered
3. There are no other offers
4. Catch phrase: “Join the email list”

J. Miranda Lambert

1. Newsletter sign-up found on right sidebar.  Join fan club also found to emphasize community
2. There is NO free music offered
3. There are no other offers, but fan club promises perks.  You buy into her fan club by purchasing fan kits.  This gives you access to meet and greets, fans only merchandise and personalized “Fans of the Month” newsletters
4. Catch phrase: “Subscribe to Miranda’s free monthly newsletter”

Surprises?

Overall I was very surprised by Artists not offering some free music to get mailing list subscribers.  They don’t have to offer continuous free albums but they should reward a visitor with something they can listen to.

Your music is your best marketing asset.  Offering free music doesn’t always have to get a bad rap.  Free music that is downloaded and copied to a new fans music library is such a plus.

The branding begins as your name pops up on random play-list. Let your fan hear musical reminders and let your email strategy draw them back into new projects.

I got used to knowing many new music acts from just being on Twitter and letting their “Timeline” marketing happen, and I’m pretty sure your music can serve the same purpose in someone’s library, it just has to reach it first.

Most of these artists had “community” pages that allowed fans to chat with other fans, and keep alerted on the band’s news.  The community section seemed to replace traditional email marketing for most acts, which didn’t make sense to me.  What about fans that don’t want to chat with other fans but just want to receive music and news only?

The Catch phrases were not enticing at all and this is due to the fact there were no free offers. Internet marketers do it all the time with offering free PDF’s in hopes to get you to see value in exchange for your email.  Shouldn’t your music serve that similar purpose?  The recent mailing lists I signed up for offered some form of free music, almost as a test drive to get to know artists.  “Join my newsletter” is just not good enough.

I expected more of these mistakes from artists with limited budgets or ones that are on the independent grind.   By looking for inspiration I actually found the same problems left unsolved.

Some of the sign up forms seemed more like the record labels were only concerned with collecting demographics.  They were vague in regards to what you would receive with the mailing list but they were very direct to ask you for name, address, mobile, zip code, country, or favorite social network.

This was a test to grade initial impressions of mailing list sign up forms.  Some of these artists might have great autoressponder sequences to sell new subscribers, but what use is it if its not grabbing the attention of new readers.

As a musician, finding a mailing list service is key.  The next step is, how will you attract fans to sign up?

I’ve been really impressed to see independent artists being more creative than established acts in this area.  My attention is drawn towards value and quality, not so much on popularity.

What makes you sign up for someone’s mailing list?

I knew I needed a mailing list for my music promotion. Every music blogger out there will tell you “YOU NEED A MAILING LIST”. Once I found my mailing list solution, I knew it was time to strategize and plan.

While I agreed it was important when I first started, I didn’t know too much about what I could really accomplish with Aweber. It’s not just about collecting an email and shooting out a newsletter.

I read some articles and became convinced that my mailing list promotion needed attention and not treated as just another tool.

Here is a collection of awesome articles to get your mind thinking on different ways to approach your mailing list promotion.

Email Marketing Insight

Darren Rowse from ProBlogger: How I Use Email Newsletter To Drive Traffic and Make Money

1. interesting example of an email cycle
2. customizing your welcome email
3. creating themed updates for promoting your artform
4. adding promotions throughout a sequence of emails

Michelle Bowles from Top Rank Blog: 5 Top Email Marketing Tactics for 2010.

1. creating viral campaigns
2. monitoring open rates and click rates
3. engaging new subscribers

Sonia Simone from Copyblogger: Why Email Marketing is Dead (And How to Bring It Back to Life)

1. focusing on what your fan wants or needs
2. email is “a more intimate medium than RSS”

Invest In Your Music

Invest time into your list. Build your list over time and finally market your music to people who are actually interested in what you do. They did sign up, didn’t they?

Design is a very important factor for musicians. I was looking for a theme for some other projects and stumbled across Themeforest. Themeforest allows independent web designers to upload their themes for sale for multiple content management systems. I am running my blogs on WordPress, but you can find templates for Joomla, Drupal, Email templates and PSD templates. The prices are just right, ranging from $5 to $40.

Affordable Options

The reason I like Themeforest is I bought a theme for $25 and it had so many options, with a sweet modern design. If you are a WordPress musician, you will love the options features on many of the themes.

1. Admin Options: Easier customization features within WordPress Dashboard, versus dropping code into your templates.
2. Multiple Page Layouts: Important for me as an artist because it allows me to find a different page layout for my albums, home page, and blog area.
3. Installation: Step by step instructions for certain customization features
4. Save On Web Design Costs: Now that you have found a theme structure you like, you can still get expert help from a web designer. Having a theme idea already makes the job easier for a web designer and will save you money from starting a design project from scratch.
5. Customer Comments: check out the comments from people who have purchased the theme. You get to find out about how helpful the designer is with answering questions or any problems with their product.
6. Affiliate Program: If you like their service you can promote them on your blog or to fellow musicians you work with. Great way to get your money back and create a passive revenue stream. Here is my affiliate link.

Just another option if you are tired of looking at endless “Top 100 Free WordPress Themes” articles found everywhere with the same recycled themes.

I recently switched over to Aweber as my solution for my mailing list. When I began blogging, I settled for a simple opt-in WordPress plugin that would add some value to my subscribers.

The problem for me was the free plugin was limited and sometimes would have problems with random updates. I’ve been researching mailing list solutions and found some reasons why it is very important for your development.

Test For Yourself

I signed up for multiple mailing lists of websites that I enjoyed and found interesting things. I analyzed what I liked and didn’t like about their mailing lists: frequency of updates, or just too damn pushy and salesy.

My music operation is a business. I have made that distinction and its time to treat it as one. Reading some great posts by internet entrepreneur David Risley got me thinking about not just purchasing business tools but applying them.

If you don’t find ways to market your music with business tools then you are hurting yourself.

The view of the mailing list changed for me. I used to work crappy sales jobs and everything was about leads. I don’t want to be “that guy” because I have been on the receiving end of some horrible practices. This form of labeling made me not take my subscribers for granted, but reward them. Build relationships.

Aweber To The Rescue

I signed up for Aweber and was mad I didn’t do it earlier. The main reason early on I didn’t get it was I didn’t want to spend any money. I was just cutting corners and settling for passive email subscription services with limited features, such as Feedburner, just to save a buck.

Some of the features include:

1. Videos explaining the different ways you can use their multiple features to improve
   your business.
2. Sign Up forms are easy to customize and install on your blog
3. Email Web Analytics allow you to track if people are actually clicking and reading your
   emails or clicking on your products
4. Email Newsletters are easy to assemble and there are html templates to make your
   newsletter shine if you choose
5. Follow Up Autoresponders are a great way to send a sequence of emails personalized
   for your subscribers
6. Publish your email newsletter to Twitter

The service runs about $19 a month, with some low introductory offers for new subscribers. Paying for a high quality service like this is worth it. It is also the kick in the ass most musicians need. If you are paying for something, you want to get your money’s worth. Get active!

Reasons I See Value For a Musician Blogging:

1. Welcome Message: Send new subscribers a welcome message with some articles you think they will enjoy. Introduce subscribers to your website, or some aspect of your site you think they may have missed. Cover your ground
2. Autoresponders to the rescue: sending a sequence of emails that can introduce every
   subscriber to your music catalog. Old albums and new albums can receive the same
   attention
3. Newsletters can be sent on whatever timetable you like: daily, monthly, weekly. Test the
   right timetable that won’t annoy your subscribers
4. Split Test Messages: see which subject lines people are clicking more, or which messages
   are being opened. Maybe your music is great but your headlines suck.
5. See Sales Generated By Subscribers
6. Create Anticipation: while music is being created you can build anticipation for the
   future release in hopes of stimulating sales and blog visits.
7. Everyone has an email account: building your reach and not just relying on passing
   social networks

I like to promote services that I actually use and Aweber is one of them. It’s never to late to improve and I learned my lesson. Build your list as your traffic rises and don’t wait. Your mailing list is your asset that needs to be developed.

On that note, (shameless plug) feel free to sign up for Hip Hop Distribution’s monthly newsletter. The Sign up is located on the top right sidebar.