Music Marketing - WHere to Start

Music marketing is made of up of many working parts, strategies, and directions all moving toward one common goal - getting your music heard by as many potential fans as possible. Your marketing campaign may contain strategies that include online awareness, publicity, street teams, radio, video, touring, and many more strategies that all depend upon resources, money, time, and a music marketing team to ensure proper execution. Knowing what you have to work with, what may be limiting factors, what strengths you have, and who you can count on for help is the foundation of every successful music marketing campaign. Without the proper assessment of your current situation and resources there is no clear way to set realistic goals that lead to action plans, that create strategy time lines, and together equal successful marketing campaigns.

A realistic assessment of your current situation, budget, time, and team assembling capabilities will allow you to see what resources you have on hand, what needs work, and what you simply do not have available for marketing your music. Without knowing what is or is not available you simply can not plan for future actions. Here are some important questions to ask yourself while assessing your situation:

What resources do you currently have available to market your music?
If you do not have a car then you know you will have to do a lot of internet based marketing until you make enough cash from CD and merchandise sales to get some wheels under you. Like wise, if you live in the country, with limited internet access, you know you will have to rely on street marketing activities until you get your hands on a wireless internet card. Knowing your available resources, realistically, is the key to effective music marketing, goal setting, and action planning. The most effective music marketing campaigns are born from knowing what resources you have on hand, how to manage those resources, and how to get around not having certain resources. Without knowing what you do have and what you do not have there is no way to set goals, create action plans, or prepare for limitations.

How much time on a daily basis do you have to market your music?
Be realistic. If you have a 9 to 5 job, wife, kids, and pets that must be fed when you get home, you know you are not available until about 7pm nightly. Too many up and coming artists and label owners get excited about their music passion and forget that they have to maintain home/work life until they are making enough money to quit the day job and focus all their energy on marketing music. Do not fall into this trap. If you do not maintain your day job you may not have the budget to get your musical career off the ground, or worse, if you upset the wife/kids/pets your life at home will be miserable making it hard to get quality time for your music marketing efforts.

How much money can you spend on music marketing?
Again, be realistic! Look at how much money you currently earn and how much you spend on paying bills and living each month. How much is left over? How much will your wife or husband let you use toward your musical goals? How much can you afford to take from your savings and still know you can survive if you loose your job, your car breaks down, or you need to replace the air conditioner at your house? Cutting your personal budget too close to actually survive is not wise. Remember, if you don’t have a car, a place to live, or food to nourish your body you will not be able to do much marketing!

Who do you have around you that will become a part of your music marketing team?
Music marketing teams are a funny thing. One day you may have a strong team that is behind you 110% and then the next thing you know you look around and you are standing alone. Sad, yes, but very true. As you look around at your family, close circle of friends, and beyond, you must consider that all these people have their own dreams, goals, and desires that may not include your musical career. Just because you are married does not mean your wife or husband shares your passion enough to work into the wee hours of the night, every night, to ensure your music is getting into the hands of potential fans. You have to realize that any team you build has got to have personal time for themselves. As you assemble your team know that you can only count on a quarter of the time they tell you they will be available to help you market your music. Sure, at first your team may be pumped up and ready to give it their all, but over time you will see that the hours they used to have available to help you start to diminish. This may seem low, but be assured, in 20 years of marketing music this number has held true time and time again for me and my company!

Conclusion
Knowing your current situation prepares you for planning your future music marketing actions. It is unrealistic and a waste of your valuable time to create an action plan that can not be executed for lack of money, time, or team. Goals should always be set high, but setting yourself up for failure only hurts your creativity, drive, and motivation to continue pushing forward. Marketing music is hard, It takes guts, It takes time, and most importantly it takes heart. If you set yourself up for failure by creating an unachievable plan, based on your current situation, you will slowly loose the drive, motivation, and heart needed to continue working toward your goal.

Be honest with yourself. Look deep to find what you have available to stay the course and still be able to maintain a life outside your musical dreams. Remember, you are planning for your future. Your current situation, if you are honest in your assessment, can and will be changed as you start to see the successes you create by planning for what you can do today, allowing you to create bigger plans for tomorrow.

Peace,

Jai
“Love the Music in Yourself, Not Yourself in the Music!”
©2009 Jai Hutcherson. All Rights Reserved.