The Cyber PR Guide to Creating an Effective Music Marketing Plan (Part 3 of 3)

In creating an effective music marketing plan, so far we have discussed building a solid and complete online foundation and outlined strategies for a successful new release launch. Now it is time to kick back and relax for a little while before starting to write material for the next album that you’ll release a year or two down the road right…..Couldn’t be further from the truth!

To build off of all the progress you’ve been making up to this point, while you are working on that next record, you will have to keep supplying content on a consistent basis to strengthen your relationship and stay relevant with your current fans, and at the same time this content will also help to increase your fanbase.

Additional merchandise is one content idea, you can make vinyl for the last album or announce a new T-shirt design. Continue to release music videos for songs off the last album is another, for example take footage from the album release tour and edit to create an easy and fun music video to upload to your YouTube channel.

In the final post of this series I will discuss the three crucial content streams of Music, Social Media and Performing Live.

MUSIC

Gone are the days of releasing an album once every couple of years and leaving it at that, today’s artists need to be constantly feeding their fanbase new music. Releasing singles will keep people engaged while they are waiting on a full length, but you’re not limited to just releasing original new works.

Create alternate versions of your studio tracks:

Get a DJ to remix one of your songs. Not saying this has to be a famous DJ, just someone who knows the technology and is creative. If you’re interested in holding a remix contest should contact the folks over at Indaba Music, they put together some great remix campaigns for artists. Unless you’re already an acoustic act, take a page from Nirvana and release an album of stripped down “unplugged” versions of your studio tracks. A great way to show a different side of the band and appeal to potentially new listeners. Lastly release a live album, preferably from the CD release show, but any show will work as long as the audio is of top quality.

Record cover songs:

Music fans love covers. Recording cover songs is a great strategy for gaining awareness for new artists and providing fun content to share with your fans. Cover artists that inspire the music that you make and bigger name similar sounding artists to further entrench yourself within your genre. But also look outside of your genre as you never know, might end up tapping in to a whole new fanbase. This is exactly what the pianist Scott D. Davis did when he decided to combine his love of heavy metal with the beautiful piano pieces he was recording. The result was millions of youtube hits for his metal covers and new fans out of the heavy metal community, even of the artists themselves; Scott has been invited to open for Godsmack, Korn, P.O.D., Sevendust, Vince Neil of Mötley Crüe and Queensrÿche among others.

*Please note, to legally sell a cover song you will need to obtain and pay for a mechanical license. Harry Fox Agency is the foremost mechanical licensing agency in the US. Or work with Limelight who will get the license for a small fee per song on top of the mechanical license fee.

 

SOCIAL MEDIA, NEWSLETTER, BLOG

Real simple here, keep doing it. Just because you may not have a big ticket item like a new album that doesn’t mean you should stop communicating with your fans on a regular basis. You should be updating daily to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Newsletters should still be going out once a month and keep your blog active with a couple new entries per month. In addition to all the content ideas I’ve gone over in this blog post thus far that you can share, post about things happening in your personal life, such as a vacation you just went on or a great movie you recently saw. Repost interesting articles you’ve just read or a post song from a band you recently discovered that you love. News, politics, sports, parenting, art and fashion all make good topics for people to engage and connect around. Now that you have continued to stay present with fans, you’ll have a stronger and larger online audience when you’re ready to release the next album.

PERFORMING LIVE

Continue to tour, hitting the same markets that you played while supporting the new album to build on the momentum that has been made. There are undoubtedly limitations though on how often you can tour and you more than likely won’t be able to tour to every market where there are fans. Live streaming is a great solution to these limitations and if you use a platform like Stageit or Concert Window you will also be able to monetize these performances. There are also some great features that they offer to reward supporters and create tip rewards for an enhanced and more financial rewarding experience. Then spread the word by making a Facebook invite with all the details and sending to your fans, posting on twitter and letting everyone on your mailing list know.

Keeping the shows fresh and different will help with increasing viewership from show-to-show:

• Play a game at some point during the performance using the live streaming platforms chat feature, a fun way to interact with the viewers. Trivia would be a very easy game to execute, where people could win merch or any other prizes that you can get your hands on for being the first to answer the question correctly.

• Learn a new cover song for each performance, or better yet, ask people what covers you should play for the next live streaming show. Post the question to Facebook as well and the song suggestion that gets the most likes will be the one(s) you cover.

• Invite a guest performer to join you, a great way to add a new element to the live stream, while cross promoting to each others fans at the same time.

LEADING UP TO THE NEXT RELEASE TAKE PEOPLE ON THE JOURNEY WITH YOU

People like to follow along to real life stories that are interesting and different from their own lives, hence the popularity of reality TV. Used by an artist around a specific story, such as the making of a new album, is a great way to form a stronger bond with your current fans. The types of content that you could be sending are updates on how the recording is going using text posts, videos and pics via your social media channels, blog and newsletter. But also engage with your following on things like artwork and song titles by polling your fans and holding contests to select what cover or title to go with. The goal of all this activity is to get people excited so they are telling their friends about the upcoming release and will buy it the minute it’s available!

I hope that you have found these blog posts helpful. For more information on our Cyber PR® Custom Marketing Plans For Musicians, visit here or please reach out to me directly at chris@cyberpr.com.

The Cyber PR Guide to Creating an Effective Music Marketing Plan (Part 3 of 3)