50 Music Marketing Tips

Being music marketers, we are always testing new strategies and discovering what techniques bring the most sales to the musicians and brands we work with.

That's one of the best aspects of this industry, really — how volatile it is. A method that worked flawlessly in 2015 may fall flat in 2016, and it's up to those of us who consistently work in this wild industry to stay up to date with what really works. 

We've compiled a list of 50 Music Marketing Tips that are tried and true. This list is an inside look at how we think and operate in the music marketing realm — bona fide marketing tips that will get you and your brand more results when employed correctly.

Tweet the ones you dig. And if we can help clarify any of these, please comment below and we'll get back to you a.s.a.p.. 

We've separated them into sections via their respective subtopic. 

Cheers!

Email

• Don’t underestimate your email list. We see more money made from email lists than anywhere else.

• Keep email subject lines under 30 characters for mobile readers, otherwise it will be cut off.
• Keep email subject lines under 50 characters for desktop users.
• Keep marketing emails short and lead back to your site. Get a free effective email marketing template here. 
• Send out consistent emails and make email subscribers feel like they are receiving exclusive content.
• Use segmentation to target specific email subscribers. Click here for a detailed rundown on segmentation.
• Set up automations to save yourself time with email marketing.
• Always email your fans during any big content release or sale.

Social Media

• Use social media to lead to your site
• Use the 70-20-10 rule with social media. A.k.a. don’t spam!
• Use Crowdfire to mass follow your demographic on Twitter and Instagram.
• Use Twitter and Facebook’s built-in analytics dashboard to monitor your efforts.
• Use photos and videos on Facebook to get the most reach.
• If you’re verified, take advantage of Facebook Mentions — reach is pretty powerful with that tool at the moment.
• Build a bank of generic social media content to pull from that includes the text, target persona, and corresponding visuals.
• Make sure social media communication goes both ways. Don’t just post — regram, comment, like, and engage with your followers’ posts.
• Don’t use Facebook or other social media platforms just because they are “big”. Find out where your target demographic interacts and engage with them there.
• Cute animals always get likes.

Marketing Strategy

• Divide your content in buyer’s journey stages. Learn more about buyer's journey stages here. 
• Trade free content for marketing information. Ex. Have a free song download behind a formidable form that asks for their email, gender, state, and age.
• Tap into your target demographic by taking advantage of similar artists or brands’ communities.
• Set SMART goals for every aspect of your business.
• Don’t ever release an important content piece without a plan behind it.
• Think in terms of momentum. Create marketing pieces that build on each other.
• Don’t let marketing overwhelm you. Divide everything into small goals (10 minutes on social media a day, etc.).
• Find your target demographic through personas. Learn more about personas.
• Use buyer personas to shape your content (see best new music marketing strategy blog).
• Don’t you dare forget to market the heck out of Black Friday.
• Use Facebook advertising to tap into specific markets.
• When releasing an album, use Facebook to advertise to your email list subscribers via a custom audience. Click here for more album release tips.
• Don’t expect fans or customers to come to you. Give value by finding out what they like and deliver it.
• On a similar note, when attempting to reach someone for any reason, think about what problems or business issues they are dealing with and answer those questions without asking for anything in return.
• Put yourself in the mind of your fan and market appropriately.
• Make sure you have a clearly defined sales funnel. Click here for more information on sales funnels.
• When advertising, find out how many dollars it takes to earn one conversion. A.k.a. how much money do I need to put into advertising to get a sale? Find that number through initial rounds of advertising and base your decision off of that.
• Don’t be afraid to be controversial. It sells.

Business Development

• Use Asana to organize your marketing efforts. It’s free!
• Use Slack for team communications.
• Use Zapier to connect services that don’t offer an official integration. Ex. You can sync up Formidable with Mailchimp to gather information from fans.
• Outsource tasks that take up too much of your time and don’t require expertise. See Upwork for a popular freelance site and read this blog for more details on outsourcing.
• Review your marketing progress every quarter and tweak as needed.
• Don’t be afraid to experiment. Every business is different and expect your marketing strategies to change.

Website

• Make sure your branding matches across all socials and your site.
• Make sure all your photos are high resolution. Keep them crispy. Here's a list of our favorite stock photo sites.
• Have email sign up spots on your site that are accessible but not obtrusive.
• Don’t use Comic Sans font for anything. It’s not cute.
• Use Google Analytics to track your website’s effectiveness.

Blogging

• Update your old content for quick content.
• Put call-to-actions that match the blog’s content at the bottom of blogs.
• Build a bank of brand appropriate stock photos to pull from via the above list.

Hope this helps! Let me know what you think in the comments.