You have that “banger”, so excited that the lyrics, hooks, and beat slaps. But one key “bit” is missing, even the producers sometimes miss it out.
What could this be? What’s missing after all those stress?
It’s music marketing, Champ.
Music marketing is that key element that gets your songs to the audience and eventually makes it the certified hit you pictured it to be. You can spend several nights sleeping in the studio, sessions back and forth with your producer creating the best jam ever, but without a marketing strategy, it remains just another almost hit. A good marketing strategy gives you a higher chance of having a hit song and consequently, a successful career.
Confused? Stay with me.
Think of your music as a product, pizza for example. After spending time creating this tasty pizza, no plan to get it to the final consumer, delivery or pickup plan, no budget for advertisement, nothing. No be only you and your household go chop am?.
However, you don’t need a strategy or marketing degree before you curate a basic strategic solution to promote your music.
How Do I Create A Music Marketing Strategy?
Coming up with strategic solutions isn’t one easy task, we know. That’s why we’ve come up with this article explaining the most basic music marketing strategies to help you work things out by yourself.
Ready? Grab your pen and jot things down.
Define Your Sound
Do I want to sing shakushaku high-tempo? Afrobeat mid-tempo? Afro-blues? Afro-jazz? A genre of my own?
Setting out to create a music marketing strategy begins with defining the type of music you want to market. Every successful artist stepped into the scene with a particular genre and a certain sound they remained consistent with even if they later diversified to explore new audience. You won’t want to appear as a wishy-washy, unserious artist—juju today, hip hop tomorrow, highlife with a touch of jazz and soul the next. No one will pay attention to you. Even if you’re going to impress us with your range, let’s get to recognize your sound first. Stay consistent. Start leaving a lasting impression.
Define Your Audience
Do I want to sing for generation Z? Party people? Fuji lovers? Local audience? International appeal? Gym people? Sad people or people that love to love?
Recognizing your ideal audience is the foundation of any marketing strategy, not less that of music marketing. Understanding your audience not only gives you an avenue to create an insightful strategy, but it also helps you create music that is in touch with your audience. Gathering information regarding your fans and their preferences is important for you and the success of your music career.
- Which social media platforms your fans do your fans use the most, (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter)?
- What is the demography of your audience—age, location, gender?
- What type of music do they like
- What emotions do they best resonate with?
Creating an ideal fan image helps you build a foundation on which you’ll build your music marketing strategy.
Analyze the Market
Figuring out the basics and intricacies of the market is the next step after creating the ideal fan image. This involves adequate research on both local and global practices in the industry. This gives you an insight into your place in the market and the steps that will contribute to your success.
- What type of music do you make?
- Where does it sell better?
- Who makes my type of music?
- What platforms do they use?
- What do they do to have high engagements?
- Can I tune my sound to fit this market?
- What’s the trend? How does my music relate to or differ from the trend?
- Am I jumping on trends with a different style or going entirely different from the trend?;
Answering this will not only make you relatable but also will play an immense role in finding your uniqueness and creating a better music marketing strategy.
Create an Action Plan
The next step after all the information on your audience and the market is to define your goals and develop actionable strategies to achieve them.
An adequate action plan consists of details on the following components:
- PR
- Advertising
- Content Curation
- Touring (radio tours, tv tours, campus tours etc…)
- Social Media
- Networking
Assigning due dates to these action plans helps you to better track your success. Begin with the easier ones, the ones you have the capability for to keep you more motivated. However, this shouldn’t be a rigid flow. Test, tweak, measure successes and failures, rinse, restrategize, repeat.
Create A Feasible Budget
“I don’t have 30billion in my account” That’s alright. You can have a budget too according to what you have now.
Marketing takes time and money to grow and bring results. And music marketing strategy just like every other marketing requires a feasible budget—a budget that cuts through every process in accordance with your pocket. Budgeting helps you with assigned cost (financially and time-wise) to every element of your marketing strategy. Track and recognize what takes your money and the profit it brings.
To conclude, when you spend time burning the midnight oil to create potential hit tracks, don’t forget the marketing strategy that would get that content to the fans and actually make it a hit. Remember, the marketing is just as important as the music.
By: Shomade Abdulazeez.
