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Marketing: Getting the Word Out

Billboard magazine said that these two were the ideal mentors for any inspiring indie musician who wants to navigate the ever changing music world and I think that just about sums them up they have license music to disney and viacom, among others. They gave their music experience fans over thirty two years combined and they're a part of the chicago music band beatnik turtle, which is quite impressive so I'm going to introduce the two of them up on stage right now come on up here, guys, how are you feeling today? Great great excited to get into it again we're just pleased to have you with us the really really salmonella you guys take it away. Okay, thank you so much. Thanks. So this is the third day and I know that there's a number of you who are just turning in now, but we've had an interesting two days the first day we started by talking about basically concepts about selling adam's not bits selling adam's, not bits because there's a lot of things out there that you could do you could...

sell downloads you could sell all kinds of things that are frankly very easy for people to share. You need to use the fact that people are sharing it in order to move up and get them to get involved in other parts of income streams. After that, we actually talked about how to prepare your music because there's so many different ways you could make money off your music, including licensing and especially royalties. And that second session we talked about seven weighs seven registrations you should do to your music before releasing it into the world after that we talked about all the different ways you can sell your music and license your music. And then finally we talked about promotion and the second day we talked about branding how it's the ingredients for merchandise. Then we talked about how to make merchandise and how to do everything along that line talked about live shows and what it takes to make a great life show and how you can make all the income streams based on that. And then finally we talked about video. Now we want to talk about all kinds of other creative ways to actually make an income off of this stuff and as we kept alluding to throughout marketing is at the heart of a lot of what you're going to be doing from here. So we talked about brand and putting it together into the ingredients of merchandise that's a distinct topic from marketing let's get into that as a topic how do you build your audience to maximize sales and make money that's the question here it really is about marketing it's about what you need to dio in order to pull that audience together well, the american marketing association's definition of marketing is get ready for this big slide this big block a text I don't know about you guys but we looked at this and we couldn't figure out what to do with it, so we want to summarize it a little bit more succinctly than that it's a message that you control with the intent of getting people to act that's it it's just messages you're putting out there to try and get people to take an action so we like to do this, break it down into three steps and throughout the rest of this talk we're actually going to be drilling into each of them we're not just going to say ok, this is it and go do it say we're going to talk about the audience we're going to talk about the message and we're going to talk about howto actually get people to take an action. The key thing here, though, is that if you don't get people to act, you're just talking, which is fine and we don't like to talk talking is fun, right? But the problem is if you're on the business side of the music business rather than the music side where you're just sort of hanging out once you're on the business side it's very expensive to do a lot of communications to all of your fans and actually not be aiming it at the business purpose that you have so considering that one of the first message is we're going to tell you to think about this because a lot of musicians make this mistake is they try and get their fans to do all these things all at once share my music by my music watch this video right? Come to my live show each message should have a single intent that's the easiest way you're going to be able to take all this stuff you think about marketing and boil it down and in fact the shorter and simpler your messages the better we'll talk about that we'll get to it we're going to even get really practical on how to write good copy but first let's talk about the audience, the better you know your audience, the mohr targeted you're going to be able to make your message and the better you're going to be able to reach them. So here's the top eight questions to ask about your audience obviously how older they is big difference it truly is a big change when somebody's for example, a teenager and living at home and their income comes from an allowance and maybe a side job that they have and then when they're in the twenty five to thirty five range and they're establishing a family and they've got their income compared to each subsequent decade after that that's why marketers always talk about demographics actually makes a big difference. What makes a genders? Where do they live? What other artists do they listen to? Is one of the key questions on this list, and the reason is very simply, if you know which other artists they listen to, you can find out where fans of that artists hang out and you can start getting your messages where they're looking, because those air your fans as well, great for more questions and you'll come up with more it's great to do that, we just suggest these what do they do for a living? Or where did they go to school? Do they have a name they call themselves will talk about this later? Where do they hang out? Online, of course, is critical in what tv shows and media do they like? All of these things will give you clues on actually how to get your message targeted at them and your message in front of them. What? Your two separate things, right? So you might be worth thinking. Ok, well, how do I answer these questions? I mean, given you could just talk to your audience that's one way to do it, but your audience might be all over the world, and I think we've talked about here before most of the people that you even basically will listen to your music you'll never even be in the same room with them. We talked about this on the branding day we talked about how the fact that you're never going to be able to explain yourself and flip side of it is you'll never be able to really talk to him directly, but today you actually have more information about your fans than we ever did before when it comes to the internet and every other way that they interact with you think about it. If you haven't dug into the facebook statistics on the people who are joining your facebook fan page, you're actually missing a huge, very rich source of information. Twitter statistics are more useful than it seems. In fact, one of the interesting tools that we've run across before is called tweeps map and tweets map allows you to make a map of all of your twitter fans that's not a very big profile, right? People put in their bio and where they're from, well, it takes the where they're from and actually makes a math well, how is that useful? Well, if you're a touring musician, then suddenly you know where your fans actually are right away you have a map to actually know where to go, but beyond that, you have a lot of other possibilities to do with this looking up your listeners on last if m is especially useful because once you find them and we talked about this on one of the other day and one of the other sessions that we had once you find out what you're listening to your listeners are actually listening to is, well, other artists again, this allows you to know where to market yourself because fans of that other band are your fans and reformation has a very rich so the stats and reverb nation this free to sign up there's no reason not to him, so also eventful give you information on touring. We talked about this yesterday and for videos. The youtube statistics on this is not on the front end, but this is when you log into your channel, you actually get to have another set of statistics, and it includes the demographic information it includes where they're from and a whole bunch of other information and of course you can always ask them it's very easy to use tools like surveymonkey and other tools out there to actually ask questions and sometimes it's actually useful to do that if you're trying to find out something in particular about them. Any questions about this before we move on real quick? We have lots to cover well want to talk about a marketing concept that's somewhat confusing to people starting out, but I'm going to try and make it is targeted in this possibles we talk about it for those of you who are intermediate more advanced, you're going to find this really useful, but I think I can boil it down to one message that makes sense to everybody you're marketing needs to be tailored to your audience and people pick up new products and waves is how this works, so this is called product diffusion marketing very complicated term that just means there are some people at the top of this curve that love getting new stuff we've seen that with gadget people right they'll buy the latest gadget when it comes out they just don't do anything to you and then they turn around and sell him and get another new gadget because they want the newest stuff and then there's the people right after that they're like if I can get a hold of this gadget before anyone else does, it gives me a advantage I get to be early that they don't want try everything out they just want the things that look like they have promise they don't mind that it's kind of new then you've got your majorities, which you're like ok, good it's been proven let's give it a try and your language of the people who are still on rotary dial phones type of thing, I mean they're they're still hanging out all the way back they they don't want to have to change anything unless they could possibly help it the way you markets each of these groups is for innovators, you emphasize that it's new and it actually works for them, whereas for early adopters they want to see some reviews, but that they want to be known as the ones who found him, like in the early days, and we're on from the for the earliest the majority's, I'll want a lot of proof that a lot of people are interested in it before they want to take this and keep going and get interested in the music. And finally, the laggards is just, like, honestly, don't even bother marketing, so that there's no reason why they have to give up the music that they already have to pick up new music, right? If we think about it from the point of view of music, it's pretty straightforward. Well, the way this goes is, when you first do your marketing of your new music, you want to aim it it, these innovators, these air, the guys and try things out there also, the guys most likely that we'll actually talk about it. So mp three blawg reviewers, for example, want new music because they're interested in new music. People who are bloggers about anything in culture actually very often will pick this up, these are the ones to aim at at first, when you're doing your marketing and then once you get your first review from here you move down the chain and you start aiming it at the early adopt actors who want to catch something that's new but not untrue I'd make sense and then from there you can catch the majority's because by then you can get a decent density of reviews to really prove this thing is something you should check out everybody's doing it come on and join along I can't go back real quick I think one of the points that we should make and maybe and we did but in the slide you caught it that the world is divided up into these five groups but there are more people in certain groups and others so there's these percentages that are actually on the slide so the innovators it's actually the smallest group but there tend to be the most vocal very little stuff like that so just keep that in mind on then the last bit I want to just emphasize what randy was saying is that when you have a new album or a new single or something like that you would target the innovators which would be like these mp three blocks and stuff like that and then you snowball the reviews basically so once you get that the first review of that first mentioned or something he used that uh for the next wave and I know you said that but I just want to catch that was just underlining and highlighting some points there. Excellent so does that make sense? Because this sometimes that I've had this confused people but it just tells you the waves that you do in the way that your message changes the way that your message changes as you go through this type of thing by the time you get here it should be proven it's like yes, we're out there here's the reviews here you can say it's fresh new totally new band got a new sound doing something yeah there's an early adopters of big kind of like your evangelists like check this no artist out exactly absolutely in fact they are that's exactly what motivates them is that they want to discover that the new thing before anybody else and then we'll stepping back they not only they want to be known the people that find their like I discovered this before anybody else did I was there first you have to in a very small percentage but these influencers of the ones that matter aa lot of this comes out of a book that we're going to talk about throughout here called the word of word of mouth marketing is coming the secrets of word of mouth marketing and they talk about how they will find groups of innovators and they will bring him in a room and introduce products to them because they'll be talking about it generally they have blog's but they could be very geeky blog's not even like the big mainstream not talking about like the pitch forks of the world but the ones that are really focused on that one type of music that they have because they want to be known as experts as well I just we can't spend a lot of time digging in that the key thing is your message will change as you go and we should make one more point publicists you know all about this yes that and when they sign a band or a musician or an artist or something they're targeting and changing their message based on this if they want to get buzz this isn't this kind of like how you get buzz they want to get buzz with these early these innovators and early adopters so that they can grow it and show that there's there's something happening there's a there's a movement here you know there's something exciting with my artist in my musician so that was about the audience a few things at finding basically places to answer questions about them and knowing who they are in hard to target their message now let's talk about the message the message itself here's seven things you should know about writing if it effective messages from a marketing standpoint this isn't necessarily something used for everything that you communicate the first one is something we hit two dead earlier you really should only try and have one idea that you're trying to express when you're trying to do marketing, otherwise you're going to confuse people it's we've seen it over and over again, and it shouldn't be a huge block of tax I mean, if you're if you're writing in your web page to try and get somebody to take that action, remember that's the goal is this huge block, then you'll bury the lead is what they call it find what the lead is fine like that one a statement is that will get him to take the action, bring it to the top, get rid of the rest and have the actions sitting there right next to it so you could get him to do it. It's a great book on this called the paradox of choice by barry shorts very much worth reading for those of you who are a little more business book inclined that's where we get a lot of our ideas, by the way and we just apply it to music in case you're wondering where it all comes from here's another one that actually comes from another business book, draw them a map you want to be concrete about what you want people to dio don't be kind of have a button, but then say something before the button that doesn't have anything to do with the action you just say hey by click this button and buyer music and it comes from a great little story out of a book called the tipping point, I believe, and they said that they wanted to do a study this was at a college, a lot of armored colleges studies social studies like this, and they wanted to find out if writing or images would be better about trying to get college students to get a tb shot tv shot. So one was a graphic, awful description of what you know what it was all about, and then the other one wass this picture of what it would look like and they've got the same extremely low response like a few percent, so they tried something else, they put a brochure on there and it had a map to the health center that they'd have to go to get the shot now every single student had been to the health center when they first arrived to drop off their paperwork it's just something that everybody had to stop that in the first place, so isn't completely unnecessary math and yet it got a higher in response. What this tells you from a marketing message standpoint is even if it's obvious just spell out what you want them to dio and be direct make sense teases we've been actually using this throughout because we've incorporated this into our communications style we'll ask questions at the beginning of every section in order to get you interested enough to keep listening and we'll do that actually in between each segment like we'll say the seven methods you do to do this you want to find out what's next the best teases air useful though to the audience that's listening you could say something like that but it won't be that interesting if the question isn't something that they want to answer right it needs to be urgent as much as possible like this is a limited time it works very well unique and ultra specific but more so you could make your message like this the more you grab people where they are and pull them to the action that you want them to take here's another concept that's very easy to apply it's called aida it comes straight out of marketing one o one you take a business course like that get their attention catch their interest enough to read the message have them make the decision but it's not enough to have a make the decision if they can't take the action we have seen musicians and actually all kinds of people using marketing messages saying we want you to do this but the thing that you want them to do isn't really possible for them to do quite yet you've actually done all that work for nothing right that whole chain needs to be set up and working okay use images you really should include an image whenever the text appears to give it more impact this is something that the best communicators of you look at newspapers if you look at some of the most effective websites that doing marketing will be very image based and that could be difficulty if your primary way of communicating is through text and that kind of thing this is why if you are not graphically inclined it's a very good idea to team up with a graphic illustrator I could help you with that here's another method I know I'm flying through these things but there's quite a lot of different concepts and you're like how could I make a message that fits all of these? Trust me once you go through it it will start to make sense and come together you want to use identity words so this is a word that actually people walk around and say I'm there are people who walk around if you can believe it that say I'm a juggle oh you know I know it's weird but they do that but when they d'oh if you can make your message include hey juggalos blah blah drink figo then it works for some reason it's just amazing how that goes blackhawks fans because we're from chicago reddit er who whatever it is that you would find that people identify with the mohr effective it is it catching their attention which when we go back a slide or two catches the a c how that works gonna go back again the more specific you can get the more you can grab somebody and this is the ironic thing about marketing the more mass you get, the harder it is to get people to really respond to it and so this is where people usually do marketing as if they were a huge company and they don't do so well so here's what I mean if I was trying to market if you were trying to market to somebody you knew really well like your sibling or your parents or somebody like that you're close friend you khun give up marketing message that will get them to take the action because you know how they think you go slightly larger let's say your whole group of friends and now your messages I want to go to this particular movie you know not everybody is sold on it you can still make a message that gets them all to do it you go a little bit bigger on it say everybody who's a facebook friend of years who might not all be close friends you have a slightly harder time there's a little more diversity to it right so the larger you go the harder it isthe the more focused you get the more easy time you have so what does that mean when you start marketing focus as nearly as you can a small you can get those people to take the action gets some success in that area and then widen it out little by little it's a key concept of course the most specific words you can use to grab somebody has their name which you will see in current spam they will do all kinds of things like grabbed the first part of your email address guessing it's your name and I'll say hey, you know I've seen him they say, hey randy great, you know and you're but it catches your attention right? I mean there's nothing you can do about it because it's actually grabbing you and then here's number seven subject verb object if you haven't written a lot of copy or had to do a lot of formalized writing doesn't even actually matter if it's formalized or not a lot of people unfortunately right in the passive tense passive tense is when you usually use a form of the verb to be like was the album was written by our band in two thousand twelve has to be really boring you want to get interesting, you actually flip it you put the subject first, the love poems wrote of his ireland petrin in two thousand twelve gets much more direct if you want to improve it even mohr verbs are the most exciting part of our language and that's, where you want the excitement to be. So you, if you really want to do some interesting stuff, throw the subject first, and then think of any verb you, khun d'oh, to make it more exciting, here's. A little test. Surprisingly, this works. I don't know why this works, but it works. Try to add by zombies to the sentence, if you can. It's passive tense, the album was written in two thousand twelve by zombies. Okay, passive tense, doesn't work, gotta throw it out and put a subject at the beginning.