Mike
King teaches online music business courses for Berkleemusic.com,
Berklee College of Music’s online school. He is also the author of the
book Music Marketing: Press Promotion, Distribution, and Retail, out
now on Berklee Press.
Anyone
that has been following music business trends for the past few years is
likely familiar with the high profile direct to fan campaigns
(campaigns that focus on the monetization of an artist’s fan base
directly) that Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, Imogen Heap, and others have
been involved with recently. As Mike Masnick put it in his 2009 NARM
Keynote, the recipe for effective direct to fan campaigns can be boiled
down to: Connecting with Fans (CwF) + Providing a Reason to Buy (RtB) =
$$$. Makes sense, right? The difficulties arise when you consider that
there are 5 million bands on MySpace, all of which are vying for the
consumer’s attention. It’s easy for NIN and Radiohead to connect with
fans, the skeptics’ note, as they have had years of major label support
and hundreds of thousands of existing followers to work with. How can a
developing artist in this climate differentiate themselves from all the
other bands out there?
The answer can be slightly more nuanced than Masnick’s formula above,
and to me, is based on a four key elements: 1) setting up an effective
offer page on your site that is tailored to your marketing goals and
where you are in your marketing cycle, 2) expanding your digital touch
points through creative fan acquisition techniques, 3) integrating your
online and offline marketing towards the same goal, and lastly, 4) once
you’ve created your groundswell of support and fans, integrating
effective 3rd party digital and physical marketing, sales, and
distribution (such as Tunecore) outlets into the mix. Let’s illustrate
these elements with two examples.
Example 1: Fanfarlo
Creating an Effective Offer Page Tailored to Acquisition
Although they were supported by NME in their hometown of London (who
have called their release “a carefully orchestrated treat”), and have
some high profile fans in the members of Sigur Rós, Fanfarlo found that
they were having a tough time breaking into the US market. Fanfarlo’s
music is undeniably great (aside: the first step, of course, in any
marketing campaign is to have great music. Without this, any DTF
marketing campaign will fail), and as such, the plan for breaking
Fanfarlo relied a lot on getting as many folks to experience their
music as possible, with the end goal of gaining enough interest to pack
the Mercury Lounge in NYC (300 capacity).
The band initiated their
acquisition-based campaign by looking at what assets and connections
they could leverage. Fanfarlo developed a low-cost video, dug up some
unreleased tracks, and recorded new acoustic versions. Of particular
note, the band’s management reached out to Sigur Rós, who agreed to
mention Fanfarlo in one of their emails to their fans.
Prior to any
outreach from Sigur Rós, the band knew it was crucial for them to
create an offer on their site that would make their music as accessible
as possible, while at the same time create a degree of urgency. Again,
as monetization was not the driving force behind their campaign at this
stage in their marketing process, Fanfarlo decided the best course of
action for building up their base was to provide curious potential fans
with the opportunity to purchase their record for $1.00 (for a limited
time), in exchange for an email address (which provided the band with
permission to engage with these fans directly at a later date). They
band adjusted their site accordingly, employing best practices with SEO
and Web IA, and created an offer page dedicated to highlighting their
music and making it easy to purchase via one click off the offer page.
This was the result:
Along with the redesigned offer page on their site, the band adjusted
all of their social media pages (visibility on MySpace, Wikipedia,
Facebook, Last.fm, iLike, YouTube) with appropriate offer copy/images,
and links to the offer on their proper site. Once all the backend was
done and Fanfarlo was ready for the traffic, Sigur Rós hyped the band
in an email to their fans and Fanfarlo essentially had an “offer you
can’t refuse” waiting for them. In exchange, the band built up their
email list, created
a viral buzz on their new record, and not only had enough interest to
pack the Mercury Lounge in NYC, they had to upgrade to the larger
Bowery Ballroom!
Example 2: The Lights Out
Expanding Your Digital Touch Points through Social Media &
Integrating Your Online and Offline Marketing
All marketing campaigns are different, and not everyone has the luxury
of having support from major bands like Sigur Rós. But no matter where
you are at in your career, core marketing principals hold true,
particularly when it comes to effectively using social media to engage
your fans and building up your base. The best example of social media
campaigns are creative ideas that leverage the viral nature of social
media to engage fans and effect change in not only the digital world,
but in a band’s physical campaign as well (which of course is still
incredibly important to any overall marketing campaign).
The Lights Out
is a Boston-based band working to raise their hometown visibility and
acquire new fans to positively impact their touring base throughout the
Northeast. On the heels of an oppressive heat wave in Boston in mid
August, the band initiated a Slush Puppie “flash mob” online marketing
campaign. The band found the appropriate location for the event via
polling their Twitter followers:
Once the location was chosen, the band set up a Facebook event,
which allowed them to update the status of the Slush Mob, get an idea
on who was coming, and communicate directly with those that expressed
interest.
The band then set up a Twitter hashtag (#), which organized all
messaging around the event into a single live channel on Twitter
search. The hashtag use also had the all-important added benefit of
becoming a “viral generator” for the event, piquing the interest of the
band’s follower’s fans, and influencing activity at a level outside of
what the band could do with their fanbase directly.
Once the existing fans were engaged in the event, Boston-based bloggers
picked up on it, the market’s alternative weekly featured info on the
event, and popular Boston-based event and social media Twitterers did
the same.
The band continued Tweeting from the event and after, and shared photos
of the turnout using Twitpic:
So, what did all this mean to the band’s stated goal of raising their
visibility and acquiring new fans?
The data:
• 20% increase in unique web site visitors
• 24 times increase in daily
twitter followers
• 3,352 impressions from media coverage
• 66,160
impressions from Tweets and Retweets
• 195 impressions from Twitpics
•
Approximate Total: 70,000 impressions
New fans also direct-messaged the band, telling them how much they
enjoyed the idea/their music and expressing interest in attending
future gigs. And because this social media campaign included an offline
component, new fans were able to bond with the band in a more personal
way.
Again, all marketing campaigns are different, and should be employed in
a way that focuses on the strengths and opportunities of the respective
band. The specific tools will certainly continue to change as we move
forward, but the principle of determining your core goal and engaging /
developing your fan base to reach this goal will not. What’s
particularly exciting to me is that artists have the option to market
and distribute their music directly, with less gatekeeper involvement,
than ever before. We’re in the early stages of direct to fan campaigns,
but I think it is undeniable that there is a tremendous amount of
growth potential in the segment – and is an area that artists, managers
and others (forward thinking, artist-serviced based companies, for
example) have to look at very closely.
Share your thoughts here on the TuneCore Blog!
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