What is a music marketing campaign and how to plan one? A music marketing campaign typically involves a time-based plan, built through a collective effort of promotional materials and platform advertising. With a measurable objective established at the start, musicians must look at their campaign as a journey that leads to individual sales of their song/album/concert.
Sure that sounds like a wordy way of explaining Promo, but a campaign does have a holistic approach and needs to be looked at as individual blocks that you link together through scheduled instances in your market, and audiences.
A lot of thought and work goes into the music marketing or PR campaigns of well-known artists, so where can an independent artist start?
To be fair, it’s not impossible for indie artists to plan out, strategize, and execute an entire campaign by themselves, but with apps like Virtual Publicist let’s just say this process becomes 1000x simpler and more user friendly.
Today, let’s discuss the basic steps when it comes to planning your campaign.
Create a product that can be used in the music marketing campaigns
Whether it’s a song or an album or even a small tour or a gig, you have to first decide on exactly what the product is.
- Album:
- A full-length body of work is referred to as an album or LP (Long Play), and it typically comprises between 7 and 29 tracks with a duration of 35 to 60 minutes.
- EP:
- A half-length piece of work known as an EP (Extended Play) includes between 4–6 tracks and a duration of between 15 and 22 minutes (but can be up to 30 minutes).
- Single:
- The shortest body of work you can release is a single, which typically comprises one to three tracks and lasts for less than ten minutes.
Budget your music marketing campaign
A budget needs to be taken into account for both production and the promo that will follow it. If your musical product is purely audio then strategically speaking your focus should be maintained on streaming unless you have a novel and innovative means of selling your music physically, stick to a digital Funnel.
If you’re looking to do a production chain, for example, Music to Contest to Concert, your budget needs to have the full spectrum of the investment, or you’re going to be fundraising in mid-campaign and lose your momentum.
Digital Music Distribution
Decide where you’ll be distributing your song or album.
Streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Pandora, Tidal, YouTube Music, and Amazon Music are well-known for paying artists when their music is played. But most of us are unaware of the technicalities behind how those payments really operate, which can occasionally result in miscalculating your gains.
Merchandise is the low hanging fruit of promo
If your budget allows, create a merchandise line that can be fun for your target audience. This step is for artists who aren’t starting their career from scratch but already have a small but loyal fan base.
Take care of the legal stuff
Review all contracts before signing and always register and license your music to prevent fraud beforehand.
When it comes to events or gigs, you might need to obtain permission for alcohol, food, music, and even sometimes the event itself depending on the venue you choose and the city you are in.
To determine what you need for your circumstance, check with your venue and the relevant municipal authorities. Regulatory elements may divert some thematic factors of the event but overall, unless you are throwing a bush rave, you will have to work through them or risk facing legal penalties.
Purchasing insurance for your event is another smart move. A lot of events will have security, medical and damages covered by a daily insurance contract, usually costing a per-person amount so your numbers should be well evaluated prior to meeting a broker. Many common accidents will be covered, and your venue might even insist on it,
Influencers and Promotion are a long-term game
Influencers are key when thinking of a music marketing campaign
Using influencers and promotional channels in your music marketing campaign should be seen as a long-term game. An influencer can come into the picture as a singular instance but in the ideal situation, it is a person that will stick around because they believe in your sound and style. Find a way to nurture the relationship so that it goes beyond a pay-to-promote instance.
For promo assets, unless you have a particular talent in Photoshop have a designer create a set of promotional banners to post on your social media and website. Have distinct ones for ads and channels, but make sure they are all coordinated in terms of color and style.
Relevant press coverage for your product is also key and should be seen as a long-term process. The top media outlets will always allocate presence to your music based on merit rather than just payment. So make sure you have a visible brand before you pitch so that it can have a presence, weight, and a reputation online. Finding influencers who would be interested in promoting your music is made easy through the Virtual Publicist database. There is really no wrong way to go about it!
Test, Review, and Tweak, facing your failures or missed opportunities
Double the efficacy of your efforts through always reviewing the results of promotion on a weekly, biweekly, and monthly basis. Most platforms will offer insights that help you track how your outreach is going.
It is suggested to test your outreach by placing small-budget ads or boosts on the content that is leading up to the campaign launching. this way you can figure out how much money it will actually take to get the result you are looking for. Furthermore, by having some test content that comes out early, you can see which audiences respond best. That way, when the time comes for launch, you have a clear vision of which tags, audience, geography, and time your ads should come out.
Keep whatever works and tweak what doesn’t, then review again. This way you’ll get to know exactly what your target audience wants to see and hear from you!
To help independent artists with PR campaign execution, Virtual Publicist implements AI tools that will make it easy to find any person within the industry, draft a professional pitch, reach out with ease, and even plan other promotional strategies. Get more done with Virtual Publicist.