by Jason JohnstonSo you have yourself a new CD, now what? There is good news and bad news. The good news is everyone and anyone is making their own music at home and able to put it up for sale. The bad news is everyone and anyone is making their own music at home and able to put it up for sale. Did you catch that? This makes a wonderful creative situation but a difficult marketing challenge. Here is how to use the five P's of marketing: Product, Price, Place, Promotion and Persistence to sell your music online using direct a direct marketing technique.
1. Product
Music is the obvious choice for a product, since that is the point of being a musician. So crank out your CDs, digital EPs and live mp3's because this should always be the core product. And your core product should always be available in great supply. But fans and friends enjoy all sorts of content including homemade videos via youtube.com, pictures from your last show and reviews or stories posted in your blog. Some artists create merchandise like t-shirts, stickers and belt buckles. Make it meaningful to you and it should be meaningful to others as well and keep them coming back. Don't over polish it, it's more important to just get it out there.
2. Price
First big decision: Sell the content or give it away? Most digital content should be given away for free at first, or have a core product like your album which is pay only and make everything else around up for grabs. If you are trying to make a living or even just support your hobby, you will need a price tag on something. Some people give everything away online just to sell out their live shows. Do some research in your genre and demographic and don't be afraid to just try something and watch the results. At the writing of this article the typical price of on online, DRM free, album for sale is $9.99 US and $.99 for each single. This was mostly standardized by iTunes, but even they have changed their pricing scheme to offer three tiers of 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29 per track. If you want to sell your content beyond the people who know you personally, price will have a strong effect upon their decision to buy or not to buy, so be thoughtful. And if it never sells at any price, you might as well give it away for free and get some promotion out of the effort of creating it. Musician hosting company Bandzoogle.com has a feature that allows customers to set their own price for your digital downloads, which can give you market research and sales at the same time!
3. Place
Place is about distribution. Where will you offer your products and content for free or sale? Your own domain name should be at the center. iTunes, Myspace or Facebook will come and go, but your domain could span decades. Build your main content in something that you can control and hopefully will last. As time allows put your product everywhere else too so the most number of people will be exposed to it. Sometimes you can post your free content in one place and simply provide links in other places, like www.youtube.com . There is no need for you to reinvent on your own website a feature that allows you to upload videos, simply create an account and post your videos there and then use the provided links to embed the video anywhere you want. YouTube.com will also bring its own traffic to your videos, which is an added bonus. Sill, you should embed the video into your own personal blog on your website and drive traffic there so you can develop long term relationships and eventually sales.
4. Promotion
Creating, pricing and placing the content is not the hard part. With Promotion, the work has just begun. There are many ways to promote your music, but none as consistently effective as direct marketing: Connecting with fans in a way you can communicate with them regularly and all at once.
Creating an permission based e-mail list is key. For the fan it must be easy to find and easy to join. For the musician it should be easy to administer and easy to send out updates. At the beginning BCC'ing the list from an e-mail account will work, but these e-mails can look like spam to in-boxes. The tools at Reverbnation are nice as well as the e-mail list incorporated into your own music domain site at places like www.Bandzoogle.com. Give your fans an incentive to start the e-mail relationship like a free giveaway of some sort. You can always fill these lists with a clipboard at your shows or through online widgets. Make sure you e-mail people who purchase your music to make sure they are on your list. They are your current customers, not just potential customers, so treat them well! Another way to direct e-mail is to friends or fans through Facebook, Twitter or Myspace. One tip based on the golden rule: E-mail others as you would have them e-mail upon you. Do not sent mass e-mails without permission: this is spam. Do not send the same e-mail four times in one month just asking for them to buy your album: this is greed (asking for more than you deserve). Rather only send e-mails when you have something interesting or meaningful to give them, show them or talk about. Add value to their lives and they will be happy to buy or at least put up with your relentless album promotion.
5. Persistence
Made it through all four steps? Great. Now go back to number one and do them all over again. Maybe change up the content and each time tweak the process to make it better. Always be adding to your list and your content. Make it new and be committed to do it over and over again. Yes, this is our blood, sweat and tears poured out in song, but this is also called the entertainment business for good reason. If we fail to entertain, we fail at the business. Keep on making the music, putting it out there and following this process and step by step it can happen.
Jason Paul Johnston lives in Mississauga, On, Canada and is a musician ( www.jasonpauljohnston.com ), teacher of music technology and owner of Revolution Audio Canada.
