Becoming a star musician is a dream sought after by many. However, it’s a goal that’s very difficult to achieve. The music industry is highly competitive thanks to a lot of new artists entering the market each month. Artists must differentiate themselves from the rest of the crowd.
The music industry is difficult to get into, but also very profitable. According to Citi, the total revenue of the music industry in the United States is $43 billion. If you’re wondering how to get your music heard, you need to learn how to market yourself. Without proper marketing, you won’t be able to gain an audience. In this guide, you’ll learn how to promote your music to take your music career to the next level.
How to Create a Marketing Plan for a New Music Artist
It’s important to plan out your marketing strategy so that you know exactly how to promote your music. These are some of the most essential steps that will help you understand what you need to do to succeed.
#1: Define Your Audience
It’s important to understand who your audience is so that you can better promote your music. It may seem like a good idea to market to as many different kinds of people as possible.
However, trying to cater to too many people may not be as effective as tailoring your music for a specific type of audience. Not everyone likes the same thing and becoming more personal with a smaller group of people can lead to better engagement.
Here are a few questions you can ask yourself to help you narrow down your audience:
- What genre does my music fall into?
- If someone asked me what my music was, how would I explain it to them?
- Who do I want to listen to my music?
- What is the goal of my music?
#2: Analyze Your Competition
Keep in mind what other artists are doing when deciding how to promote your music. Study how they achieve their goals and who their target demographic is. Think about what social networks they use, how they engage with their supporters, and the other artists that their fans follow.
#3: Perform a Competitor Analysis
When deciding how to promote your music, it can be helpful to use a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats analysis, or SWOT. By thinking about these four factors, you can better plan out a strategy for your music.
Strengths: What skills and resources do you have that you can leverage to your advantage?
Weaknesses: understanding the challenges you face is important to overcome them.
Opportunities: think carefully about opportunities that you can take advantage of. These must be actionable and directly lead to your success. Avoid risky or ‘pipe dream’ opportunities that seem too good to be true.
Threats: Think about what’s out there that could threaten your success. The ease of digital piracy may be a threat to you. Another example might be deeply entrenched music empires like streaming services and popular artists with far more resources than you
Develop a Social Media Marketing Strategy
With social media, you can promote your music to a much wider audience. For example, when people click on links in your social posts, they can land on your website, your music, and more information about you. This greatly increases the likelihood that they may become loyal fans that will continue to engage with your music.
It’s important to keep in mind the audience that you investigated earlier and engage with channels that they use daily. Creating engaging social media content like behind-the-scenes videos, holiday posts, and other non-music content can help bring a more personal touch to your engagement with fans.
Creating a social media marketing strategy is an incredibly important part of promoting your music. And in tandem with that, so is implementing it in a low-stress, efficient way.
Tailwind’s social media management platform takes marketing pressure off of the musician. When scheduled to do so, Tailwind will automatically post content across Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook. It also will provide you with the best hashtags to use with its Hashtag Finder tool and the times to post when your audience is most engaged.
Blogs, Playlists, and News
Building out your media footprint will help solidify your reputation as a music artist. When deciding how to promote your music, think of opportunities to put yourself out there.
One of the most important ways to reach people is through Internet search engines. If you can create blog posts, playlists, and get mentioned in news outlets, you can become more likely to be seen in search engines and other channels.
Develop a digital press kit that aligns with your objective. You can also take a deep look at other music blogs and Spotify playlists to decide how you want to go about developing your own.
You can put together a spreadsheet of resources that you can reach out to that may be able to help extend your reach to your target audience.
Keep in mind that you may have to send dozens of emails before you may get a single response. It can be difficult to break into the market. However, once you gain momentum, it’s much easier to continue your journey.
Additional Tips to Successfully Promote Your Music
There are a few other tips that you should keep in mind when promoting your music. Try not to please everyone. It’s better to have a smaller, dedicated group of fans than to engage with millions of people only loosely. Narrowing your focus will also help you stay unique and corner a niche in the music market. This will also help you focus on making your marketing more effective!
You should also participate in the music community by communicating with your fans when possible. Engaging with your audience is one of the best ways to appear authentic and will help you meet other like-minded individuals who can help you along the way.
Internet discussion groups are one way to do this, as well as social media. Groups online can contain thousands of people where word can spread quickly about your work.
Conclusion: Break Into the Market!
Now that you know how to promote your music, you’re ready to take your career to the next level! Understanding your audience, keeping track of the characteristics of your musical identity, analyzing your competition, and engaging with your followers are all solid ways to stay in the game.
Social media is a powerful tool to take advantage of when considering marketing plans for new music artists. If you’re interested in learning more, check out our creative social media campaign ideas to enrich your marketing strategy!
