As an independent
singer/songwriter, it's a lot of work to get people to hear my music. I've done interviews on local radio, and I
have a blog, Facebook, and YouTube, but these have only gone so far for me. Do you have any ideas as to how I can better
promote my music?
“Deck the Halls/Joy to the
World” from my holiday CD: http://loismahalia.bandcamp.com/track/deck-the-halls-joy-to-the-world-2
Introduction
First, congrats on surpassing the one million mark on one of your songs on YouTube! That’s a big accomplishment! Likewise for working
with greats like Joe Walsh, Kenny Loggins, and others! Great work!
Regarding your request, of course we can come up with some ideas
for you!
In this post, we’re going to offer some thoughts on how to
effectively direct marketing communications, whether you’re a
singer/songwriter, new business, or established organization.
Our Findings
Before You Start
Before you start promoting your business, here are a couple things
you should consider:
1. Who is responsible for
marketing communications?
The first step should be to determine who is responsible for
marketing communications. For a
sole-proprietor with no employees, this responsibility may fall directly on
your shoulders. That, or you may want to
look for additional help—be it a consultant or freelancer, or by hiring an
employee.
As for a company with any amount of employees, you (the owner) may
still want to take care of marketing communications yourself if it is seen as
appropriate. Alternatively, you may wish
to assign the responsibility to one of your employees.
In any case, assigning responsibility over promotional activities
should not be taken lightly—it is, after all, your communication with
prospective customers and it directly affects your company’s revenue.
2. How much time should be
spent on marketing communications?
Your second step should be to determine how much time will be
spent on marketing communications. If
you’re a sole-proprietor working alone, this might be tough; sole-proprietors
only have so many hours in any given day or week, so it’s difficult to find
time for everything. But again, since marketing
communications affect your bottom line—both in cost and return—the right amount
of time needs to be put aside for such activities. Altogether, this means that promoting your
business shouldn’t get in the way of actually providing your service or
producing and selling your products, but it needs to fit in somewhere.
So, it would be wise—for efficiency and consistency’s sake—that
you put aside specific times of the day/week to devote to promoting your
business, just as you should do for strategizing, accounting, and the
like. And if you feel that you don’t
have enough time or your time could be better utilized elsewhere, you should go
back to step #1 and consider alternative methods to get the work done (like by hiring
or contracting-out).
As for companies with employees, the concept is the same: You
should still set out a specific amount of time to devote to marketing
communications. This way, the person
assigned to the task doesn’t spend more time than deemed necessary (which obviously
costs your company money).
3. What have you already
done that works? What are competitors or
other businesses doing well?
After you know who is responsible and how much time will be
devoted to marketing communications, you should examine what promotional activities
work—be them internal or external. So,
assuming that you’ve been measuring the effectiveness of your different types
of marketing communications, this may mean using one approach more frequently
because it’s brought in the most money.
Similarly, if you’ve seen competitors doing something very well,
consider using similar techniques to promote your product or service.
Marketing Communications Options
The following are some marketing communications options to
consider (in no specific order):
1. Take advantage of your
present contacts
- Tell your friends and family about your business.
- Ask your friends, family, and past clients to refer you people
who could use your business’ products/services.
Alternatively, you can be more proactive by asking them for the
prospective customer’s contact information—of course, keeping privacy and
anti-spam legislation in mind.
- Keep in touch with present contacts to promote repeat business—see
what they’re up to and don’t be shy to ask them if you can do anything else for
them!
2. Consider supporting
business activities
- Making a complimentary, part-time business might be worth
considering—for Lois, maybe consider offering singing lessons.
- Hold your own for-profit events, and preferably ones where you
can make money—for Lois, host an art show/sale for local artists and provide
the entertainment.
- Organize a fundraising event for a related local, national, or
international charity.
3. Network
- Join and attend professional groups related to your business.
- Get involved in community activities—for Lois, consider helping
with local music shows.
- Be a sponsor for a team or group, or a local event.
- Join and attend networking groups.
- Attend local events—for Lois, consider attending museum events,
art shows, plays, etc.
- Talk to anyone and everyone—be it at church, the gym, the grocery
store, a gas station…anywhere!
- Participate in local, national, and maybe even international
competitions to show off your skills.
3. Consider different or
more specific customer targeting; go where the money is
- If the market you’re currently in is saturated, consider
specializing or targeting a more specific customer base—for Lois, if you can
speak another language, there might be more business potential in targeting
customers who speak that language.
Likewise, maybe you can target South American immigrants in the United
States, either using their native tongue, English, or both—whatever they
prefer!
- Basically, go where the most money is!
4. Consider different or
more specific geographic targeting; again, go where the money is
- If your local market is saturated, maybe a different state or
country could provide better potential—for Lois, certain states might be more
interested in your music than others, and likewise, maybe Canadians,
Australians, the British might like your music more. Actually, other countries might like your
music even if it isn’t in their native tongue.
Altogether, do your research and find the best market.
- As it was mentioned above, go where the money is!
5. Promote locally
- Whenever you can, try to get yourself in the local newspaper, on
local radio, or on local TV—for example, try to arrange interviews, be a guest
speaker, and send out press releases.
- Consider mutually beneficial partnerships with related local
businesses.
6. Maintain a strong
online presence
- If you find a website that benefits your business and doesn’t
require much maintenance, make an account on the site—for example, the online
Yellow Pages and other directories are often free and rarely require regular
maintenance.
- Only participate in social media if that’s where your customers
are and if you can put in sufficient time and effort. Consider one of the main ones—Twitter,
Facebook, YouTube, or Google+.
- Consider blogging if it suits your business, but only if you
have enough ideas to be able to write on a regular basis.
- Have a clean and well-polished website that’s easy to
navigate. And make sure you maintain it
so there are no technical errors.
- With web browsing becoming more mobile, you should try to make
your website mobile friendly as soon as possible.
7. Other ideas
- Don’t forget e-mail marketing, direct mail, and cold-calling as
options.
- Consider writing a newsletter to keep your customers up to date
on what’s new with your business.
- If you have something interesting to write about, consider
writing a book (e-book, paper version, or both).
- Hold contests or have giveaways to draw attention.
- Post ads in online classifieds.
- Post ads on websites (i.e. banner ads) or in search engines.
- Make a useful mobile app that relates to your business.
8. Ideas specifically for
Lois
- Don’t be shy to submit your music to national and even
international radio stations. Because
we’re not in the entertainment industry, we don’t know if this would work, but
it’s a thought.
- Consider browsing online radio stations—they may be more open to
playing independent artists’ music.
- Try to get some publicity in music magazines or on music news
websites.
Pieces of Advice
- Make sure you know your customer—where they are, what they want,
and how they want to be communicated with.
If things aren’t going well, you need to either change your marketing
communications or target a different or more specific market group (or
potentially all of these). And don’t
forget: Customer service is key!
- Measure, measure, measure—always measure the effectiveness of all
of your activities and strive to improve upon past results.
- If you’re going to participate in social media or blogging, make
sure that you’re present. Too many
businesses open accounts and don’t maintain them—this doesn’t help your
image. In our opinion, it’s better to do
one or two things really well than to do five very poorly.
Hopefully all of this helps!
If you think we’ve missed any important points on the subject, let us
know!
References
Just us! :)
Links to More Information
If you’re a sole-proprietor running your business by yourself,
here’s a couple freelance options:
Want to make a request for free research? Follow the
directions found on the left.
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feedback@ostrichcanada.ca