7 Steps to achieving your Music Marketing Goals
Introduction
A strong marketing strategy can help you succeed as a musician. In this article, we’ll discuss seven steps to achieving your music marketing goals and show you how to put them all together into a cohesive plan that will take your career to the next level.
Step 1: Write down your goals
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that setting goals are an effective way to achieve your aims. But did you also know that if you don’t set specific, measurable, and achievable goals, your chances of success are reduced dramatically?
You can use the SMART method when setting your music marketing goals: S stands for Specific; M means Measurable; A is Achievable; R signifies Relevant; T represents Time-bound (specific).
For example, “I want to get 100 plays on SoundCloud” is not a good goal because it’s neither specific nor measurable. “I will work out 5 times every week over the next month” would be much better as it’s both specific and measurable (and also achievable).
Step 2: Determine your audience.
Now that you have a clear goal in mind, it’s time to determine who your audience is. Who do you want to reach? What kind of music do they listen to? Are they likely to be on Facebook or Twitter? How old are they? What genre of music are they interested in hearing?
What makes this step so important is that if you don’t know who your potential customers are, then how can you market yourself effectively? In order to find out who these people are and where they hang out online (and offline), I recommend doing some research with Google Analytics. This information will help guide you through the rest of this process.
Step 3: Research what others are doing.
The next step is to research what others are doing, which includes your competition but also other musicians in your genre and bands in your area or scene. Look at their websites, social media accounts, and videos. If they have a YouTube channel or any online presence, check that out too! Not only will you learn from their successes (and failures), it will give you ideas for ways to promote yourself as well.
Step 4: Set the right tone for your market approach.
The tone of voice is the personality of your brand. It’s how you speak and what you say, but it’s also about how you present yourself in text and images on social media.
You want to be authentic, consistent, and unique so that people can identify who you are. Your tone should be relatable too; if someone hears an artist they like when they listen to yours, that’s a huge win!
Step 5: Choose a marketing channel.
After you’ve done your research and tested your niche, the next step is to choose which marketing strategy will work best for you and your music. This may mean choosing one or all of these options: social media, blogs, email marketing campaigns, and more. You’ll need to keep in mind that not all of these channels are going to be right for every artist or project—you’ll have to decide what’s best for you! Choosing an appropriate channel means taking into consideration factors like whether or not it suits the type of music you’re creating (for example: if you’re releasing an acoustic album with heart-felt lyrics about love lost, Instagram probably isn’t going to be an effective choice). You should also consider how much money is available for marketing efforts as well as who your target audience is since this will influence which channels might work better than others. Finally, don’t overlook personal preferences either; even if another person thinks something “should” be done differently/better/more often than they do doesn’t mean it’ll actually work out well when applied within their own context so make sure whatever works best fits within both criteria before moving forward with any decision-making process here!
Step 6: Determine your budget and devise an action plan.
As in any business, you have to know how much money you can spend. You can’t just throw it out there without a plan. You will need to figure out your budget and determine how much of that budget should be allocated for marketing purposes. If possible, I recommend putting aside at least 20% of any revenues generated from your music sales or performances for marketing and promotion purposes.
Once this is done, devise an action plan and create a marketing plan, content calendar, and social media calendar that includes specific strategies and tactics for reaching all audiences (including fans, promoters, bloggers/media outlets). This will ensure that no stone goes unturned when it comes to spreading the word about what you do!
Step 7: Monitor and adapt.
Monitoring and adapting your plan is the most important step in this process. It is also the step that many musicians skip, which leads to many problems later on.
You need to constantly monitor your progress so that you can adapt your plan as necessary. You may find that one of your goals will take longer or shorter than anticipated, or that there are unforeseen roadblocks in front of you that make it impossible to achieve the goals on time.
If you don’t monitor your progress, these problems can cause a domino effect and derail everything else in your plan. For example: if one goal isn’t working out because of unforeseen circumstances (e.g., there’s bad weather), then other parts of your strategy might not work either because they depend on achieving that first goal (e.g., booking gigs). If monitoring and adapting fail at any point along the way, chances are high that everything else will fail too—and all for nothing!
Every musician can use these steps to make a plan for music marketing.
No matter what level you’re at in your music journey, you can use these seven steps to create a plan for marketing your music. If you’re just starting out and need help getting started, this is the right place for you!
If you’ve been working on building an audience and have some traction, but want to take things up a notch, this is also the right place. In fact, it may be even more important if you already have an audience because otherwise how will they know what kind of content they should be sharing with their friends? They won’t! This is where step one comes in: Ask yourself: What’s my goal?