Use Your Email List and Google Traffic to Drive More Music Sales [GUEST POST]
This post is written by Adam Nicholson, an internet marketer whom teaches musicians how to promote themselves online. To learn more about how to apply online music marketing techniques to promote your band, visit the Band WordPress Theme website.
Indie music promotion strategies are mostly the same as the music promotion techniques used by major artists. The main difference, however, is that indie musicians do not have the financial resources at their disposal that the major record labels do.
As an indie artist, you may not get your music advertised to millions via the various forms of offline media, such as in a TV, radio or magazine. You might not even be able to afford your own CDs to sell at gigs. But, the good news is that no matter how limited your resources, you can still reach a large audience and make good money using indie music promotion strategies on the web.
Whether an indie musician or an artist with a major label behind you, the primary aim of online music marketing techniques is the same: to develop a relationship with fans that help drive sales. When you have developed a relationship with people first, it is then much easier to drive sales from them.
Okay, so let’s look at how indie musicians can promote their music on the web by using search engine traffic and an email list:
The Email List
The email list is the best way to convert sales of your music. Now, when I say “sell your music”, this is not limited to CD’s that are sent through the post – this can also be MP3 files that are downloaded.
Your mailing list is arguably the most powerful resource at any musician’s disposal. It is especially important for indie musicians, who do not have access to the high-profile marketing resources of major label acts. Collecting emails is so powerful because the people that have joined your list have expressed an interest in your music – if they didn’t care, they would not have signed up! Even with a small list of subscribers, you can make good sales if you can communicate with them effectively.
The email list should be used to develop a relationship with your fans. You should be encouraging discussions of music in general with them, asking their thoughts, giving them cool members-only gifts and special offers, and announcing general news in the music world that is likely to interest them. When you have developed a relationship with the readers of your email list and have gained their trust, then they will be so much more likely to buy your music and merchandise when you promote this to them.
Many bands just use the email list as a way of sending out the monthly newsletter. A monthly newsletter is very important (and you should have one), but contact with your fans should not always be a sales pitch. Like I said, you’ve got to develop and maintain those relationships first. Just sending out general emails to discuss interesting topics is a great way to start developing a rapport with your fans.
“Okay, great, but how exactly do I build my email list if no-one knows about my band in the first place?!”
Fear not, we will get to this. But it is important for you to first understand that you should have a means to capture the email addresses of your fans before you start an indie music marketing campaign. So presuming you have your own website with an email opt-in box in the sidebar, we can now get down to business with getting people to your website. This will be done by using search engine optimization.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Having your website rank highly on Google for certain keywords can do wonders for your exposure. The good news for musicians is that it does not cost any money to get a high Google ranking and it can be relatively easy to achieve high rankings for certain keywords.
I am sure if you type in your band or musician name into Google, your website will already appear on the first page if you already have a http://www.yourbandname.com domain or social networking page that is. This is great, people who already know that your band exists can now click through to your website and learn more.
But what if people don’t know that you exist yet?
It can be very powerful to have your band website appear on the front page of Google for a wide range of search terms other than just your band name.
Keywords & Backlinks
You should try to get your website ranked highly for more generic terms such as the genre of your music, the geographical area of your band, the type of gigs you perform etc. This way people who are trying to find a new artist in a certain part of the world can find you with a generic search such as “New Jersey Punk Band’ or ‘Rock Music Gigs in Ontario’.
For certain keywords on the web, it can be very hard to rank for them. But music-related keywords are much easier to rank for because they are not usually related to selling a particular product. Also, most indie musicians are not aware of the web-based indie music marketing techniques that can be used to help them to rank highly on Google.
For example, it would be hard to rank highly on Google for terms related to buying an iPhone, as many businesses are in competition for these terms, but competition for music-related terms are going to have much less competition.
Think of as many relevant keywords as possible that people could type into Google in order to help them stumble across your band. Once you’ve got a nice list, then start using those keywords throughout your website. Use them in meta tags, blog posts, landing pages, etc. It’s a long-term strategy, but can pay off if you manage to rank highly for certain keyword phrases.
Keep in mind it’s nearly impossible to rank for really generic terms such as ‘indie band’ or ‘rock music’, but more specific terms such as “indie band Pittsburgh,” “wedding bands in Cambridge,” or “singer-songwriter similar to Nelly Furtado,” you will have a much better shot.
In order to rank highly for a certain keyword terms you need to have them appear several times (or at least once) in the text of your website. You also need to have other websites on the web linking to your website using your keyword as the anchor text link. The link to your website from another website on the web is known as a backlink. The more backlinks you have, the higher your website will rank.
The anchor text is the keyword you wish to rank for, and appears as a link that is highlighted in blue and underlined on a web page. If many other web pages around the web link to your website with this keyword, then Google will rank your band or musician website highly for that term.
As you start to receive more and more visitors to your band website from Google, chances are your email list will start to grow, you can develop a relationship with more fans, and ultimately make more sales.
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