Marketing For Musicians - A Beginners Guide

So you’ve written some tunes that you want to release, and your mum loves them, but apart from that, you want to start building a fanbase. And you’ve got no idea how.

This article covers branding, social media, email, websites, and how to approach marketing when you are a musician.

Brand Identity - Lay the Foundations for Cohesive Marketing

Before we get into social media, emails, and the rest. It’s important to think about, and solidify your brand identity. Your brand identity consists of your sound, your story, and your motivations for making music. What makes you tick as a musician, the themes you explore, and the aesthetic that ties it all together. Your brand identity helps you to stand out from the crowd, unifies your marketing, makes you look professional, and like an artist with an aesthetic and vibe that people want to be part of.

As an artist I expect you’ve already thought about this—A LOT, especially your sound. But if not, now is a good time to think about it.

You can break down your branding identity into three parts, each can inform and compliment the other:

Sonic Identity

What is your sound, and why? Do you have two feet fully in one genre? Does your music span multiple, or is it a hybrid? What defines your sound—certain instruments, a style of playing, or do you let your vocals do all the talking when songwriting.

Visual Identity

As an artist, your visual identity goes hand-in-hand with your music—supporting it, complimenting it, telling your story, adding context, and enhancing your overall aesthetic.

If you don’t have an eye for the visual, working with a designer can help here. Even if it’s to create a logo and templates that you can use in the future.

Things to think about:

• Logo
• Colour palette
• Font (not the most exciting I know, but the right one can be a gamechanger)
• Types of images
• Themes

Brand Story

What’s your musical story as an artist? What was your musical education growing up etc.? Who are your influences? Why do you make music? What inspires you? What makes you tick, and how does this tie into your music?

Your brand story gives you key themes and ideas to base your marketing efforts around. You can weave it into social media posts, copy, emails, and your website. It can help you to stand out, and show fans what they are investing in.

Write a Bio

A great bio is essential for modern artists. It shows potential fans, promoters, labels, and gig goers what you are about, and why they should invest, book, and support you. It’s a good marketing element to do early on, as you can refer back to it when writing social posts, emails, website copy, and more. Think about how to condense your brand story into a few paragraphs that inspire and sum up what you are about. You can always hire a writer if you prefer writing songs over words.

Social Media

Love it or hate it, it’s almost impossible to build a successful music career today without using social media. Again, if you have the budget there is the option of hiring someone to help you with this, so you can spend more time making music.

Pick your Platforms

Pick a few platforms, and focus on those. With so many platforms available you are in danger of spreading yourself too thin and not getting any traction if you try to tackle too many. It’s important to think about your target audience, and where they will be when choosing. Facebook for example is on average, an older audience, whilst Instagram has in the past favoured a more creative audience.

Be Consistent

You don’t have to be posting 3 times a day, but platforms reward consistency when trying to increase reach, and build an audience. 3 plus times a week could give good results. And if the thought of that sounds daunting, you need to take a look at the next point.

Simplify Things

Use a Scheduling Tool

You don’t have to be on social media all of the time. You can create content in bulk, and then schedule it to be posted automatically at set times with a scheduling tool. You can do this in one or two sessions over a few weeks. Which can help to maximise productivity, remove the pressure of having to think of a new post everyday, and you don’t have to feel like you are spending your whole life on social media.

Create a Content Calendar

Especially important if you are planning releases. A content calendar helps you to create bulk content more effectively. Recurring weekday themes can help. E.g. Tune of the week Tuesday.

What Do I Post?

When creating posts for your socials. You want to think about connecting with your target audience—current and potential, and building real fans. Communicate your brand story—what you do, and what you are about as an artist.

It’s important to try out a variety of content—short-form videos, lives, carousels, single images, text, and more. Pay attention to what works well and what doesn’t.

Post Ideas:

• Short videos showing some of your creative process—making a track, recording in a studio,
• collaborating with another artist
• Your thoughts behind a track
• Prepping for a gig
• Your favourite track at the moment
• Songwriting
• approaches

Collaboration

Collaborating with another artist can be a good way to expand your audience on social media, and your creativity in the studio. Verse-Chorus is a collaboration platform brimming with musical talent. With songwriters, lyricists, singers, producers, and more. Connect and create with thousands of musicians in one place.

Email List

Building an email list can be a really good way to build a relationship with fans—sell tickets for shows, run successful releases, and more.

It can seem more personal than social media, can be longer form, and you can segment your list into different audiences to tailor what you send.

There are a number of email marketing platforms available for bulk email sending, scheduling campaigns, newsletters, and more, and you can add your own branding.

Build an Artist Website

A website shows that you are an artist taking themselves seriously. It gives you a place to sell merch, releases, shows for tickets, and more. It can tie together your other marketing efforts, help you to build your fanbase, and get bookings. Weave your brand identity throughout it.

Find What Works For You

It’s important when marketing to monitor your efforts and see what works for you and your brand, as it’s hard to tell in advance which strategies will bring you the results you want.

Written by Nick Stephens, a music production tutor, music marketing writer, and down to his DNA—music obsessive. When he isn’t making music you can find him at live music events, DJing up and down the UK, including Glastonbury, and the gym—sometimes.