In the last blogs, we have written about how digital marketing can help build the business for various verticals, e.g. restaurants, medical practices, and law offices; We are going to pivot for this one and write about how musicians can benefit from digital advertising. This is a subject dear to me since I am a long-time musician and have a lifetime of experience as a drummer.
Covid-19 has been a huge burden on musicians. Canceled concerts, no Coachella, no SXSW in Austin, TX, which all spilled over into record labels, booking agencies, wedding bands, etc. It all came to a screeching halt. However, this will not last forever, and now is the time to roll up your musician’s sleeves and think about your strategic move when the world opens up again. And it will.
The Internet has given musicians an amazing leverage and you can embrace DIY to build a strong online presence. Getting your house in order is priority #1 since your strong , centralized online presence will be your storefront. This means you must have a polished social media strategy where fans and potential fans can engage with your product, i.e. your artistry. A good high-level tip is to apply the OCTO formula for a sound social media strategy. It stands for Objectives, Content, Targeting, and Optimization. This will define your brand and differentiate yourself from other musicians in your genre. A good social media strategy is a never-ending cycle, which includes the keyword “Optimization”. It needs to be continuously optimized to maximize engagement and fan acquisition. Yes, it’s a lot of work and there’s no shortcut here.
The organic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) juice will be important to build your site’s, or your EPK’s (Electronic Press Kit), authority. One way to build site authority is through a strategy known as “backlinking”. This strategy will build votes of confidence for your site. It means that you want other relevant sites link to your site. Search engines do not only crawl your site but also the links between your pages, and the links between entire sites. A healthy linking pool to your site will improve your organic ranking score on the search engine results pages, which means more traffic to your site, and more engagement and, hopefully, more business/gigs. Now, this strategy is not easy and it’s time-consuming but the pay off is well worth the effort. It can help you build authority in your niche be it Jazz, Classical, Native American Flute Music or Southern Blues, etc.
YouTube is a powerful platform for musicians. It doesn’t cost you a dime to start your own YouTube channel. There are best practices to follow and strategies to make your YouTube channel “search friendly” and we can definitely help you with that. YouTube is the #2 search engine in the world after Google and guess who owns YouTube? That’s right. Google does! If you cannot afford a paid advertising strategy with YouTube, you can still do some good damage with a thought-through organic (free traffic) strategy. YouTube can help grow your audience and you don’t need a record label to do this.
PPC (Pay-Per-Click) is our candy store of online digital marketing. There is so much you can do on the Google Ads platform. Bing is an option too but only necessary if you have the budget and want to spread your wings for more conversions. For example, if you are a wedding band in your local area and you want to sell your services, Google Ads can expand your reach tremendously and drive traffic to your site for those yummy conversions. The good news is that it doesn’t need to break your bank. You can easily start with a couple of hundred dollars per month for your PPC strategy. Remember, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad hence Pay-Per-Click.
COVID-19 has been a train wreck for many of us. Musicians have powerful online advertising strategies at their disposal that don’t need to cost much or can be completely free. Nevertheless, a good online advertising strategy is necessary for musicians to be able to get their product heard and acquire business. Once gigs start to roll in the referral part of the marketing can take over as well. If you need any assistance with your digital marketing, please contact us. We can consult you and write up a strategy that you can follow. For now, stay safe out there and remember Miles Davis’ words, “Don’t worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.”
