I have received a lot of calls and emails in the last few days…. I guess my own marketing and promoting is working well!!! … And almost all of those calling have the same thing on mind: “Where do I start?” After talking a bit further to understand what they know about independent music marketing and promotion I begin to see what the real issue is… Way, Way, Way too much information over load. I think what is happening on this information super highway we call the internet is people are getting information from all different directions and it is actually paralyzing them instead of pushing them to action. Is this you? Have you reached overload yet? Do you have way too many strategies, campaigns, social networking tricks, and beyond in your head to really have a grasp of what to do? I bet you do even if you do not want to admit it!

Marketing and promoting Independent music is really not that hard and in today’s world does not take a rocket scientist nor a multi-million dollar bank account to be successful. But it does take understanding the information you receive, knowing how to categorize information, knowing how the information fits within the entire campaign puzzle, and most importantly – knowing the road map to success utilizing the information.

Most likely every single “strategy” available online has or does indeed work. The author of the strategy has most likely used it within a total campaign with good to great success. But in most cases, these “off the shelf” strategy author’s fail to let you see how one particular strategy fit within the entire campaign. No one strategy is an end-all-be-all to the music marketing and promotion game. PERIOD. You can not simply do one thing and expect the press, radio program directors, labels, distributors, and beyond to start beating down your door. I am sure you have already found this out when trying the various strategies promoted online!

Every music marketing campaign has to begin with a planning and strategy session. In fact, to truly create a successful campaign you must put more time into the planning stage than the actual action phase of music marketing. The action is the easy part, it’s simply following a plan that was created to be successful. Planning, now that is the hard part. It is also the part most up-and-coming independent artists, musicians, producers, and record label owners fail to ever start!

Just like the calls I have received this week, I usually get a client, maybe just like you, that calls up and says something like: “I have spent X,XXX worked my butt off for six months and I still have not sold more than 150 CD to people other than friends and family! What am I doing wrong? I am following what they say to do online.” I then simply ask: “What is your plan and can you email it to me so I can take a closer look at the strategies you are using and how they work together?” Every single time I ask this question, and I do mean every single time…. I can almost hear the deep swallow, the brain racing inside their head to form some sort of answer that doesn’t make them look like an idiot admitting they really have no plan, and then the eventual admission… “I am just following what I can find online when I find it!”

Here is the really cool part: Reading, studying, learning, and trying to find solutions online is the best thing you can do in the world for your music marketing and promotion efforts! There is nothing wrong with learning all the strategies on the internet. In fact, it builds your toolbox from which you can create a successful music marketing and promotional campaign from. It is a good thing to read every article, blog post, or tid-bit you can find on marketing your music. The only bad comes from throwing out ideas with your money and hoping it works instead of planning for it to work!

So, what are the basics as the title of this blog promises? The basics, the nuts and bolts, the meat with your potatoes has already been discussed! It is the plan. It is understanding what you want to do, researching how you will do it, and then finding the music marketing strategy, plan, idea, concept, or guide to get you closer to your planned goal. Planning is the most fundamental basic concept of independent music marketing. It is how you stretch a dollar into ten dollars worth of marketing and promotions revenue. It is how you can track your efforts to see if what you are doing is getting you closer to your planned goals or simply spending your money and time for no results. You see, without the fundamental plan you have no way what-so-ever to know if your money and time are getting you anything in return until it is too late and you have spent your entire marketing budget.

This brings me to my next point…. A plan creates a budget. Not the other way around. This is a huge lesson! A lot of people will tell you that you look at your budget to see what you can do and then create your plan. NOT TRUE! To create a plan you need to first look at your goals, what it is you want to accomplish, then you create a plan to get you closer to that goal – One step at a time. You see, I can say you need $5000 a month to really get the word out about your music. But really you only need the time to sit online and communicate with potential fans. How much does that cost? Internet costs about $30 a month through a cable provider. So really all you need is $30 per month for right now… correct?

You see, if you know what you want – your goal – you can create a plan to get there that fits within your reach. Reach includes budget, team capabilities, resources, and drive. When you really sit down and create a plan to success you will find, as most independents do, you do not have the money in the budget to act upon every single item in the plan. But you do have the money, even if it’s simply $30 per month right now, to start the first phase of your plan which is always awareness. Awareness does not cost much and almost every artists, musician, producer, or record label owner I talk to completely skips this step, among a mountain of others, to go straight to radio and shows. BIG MISTAKE! How does it look to a club owner or radio program director when they do a bit of research on you or your music and find very little because you didn’t first act upon an awareness campaign that costs very, very little? BAD!!

A successful music marketing and promotion campaign author build a plan that grows upon itself. Meaning, you start with $30 per month and the success you build from that pays for a big chunk of the next step. Do not get me wrong, you will need money in the budget, but if you set goals, plan for success, and follow your plan… you will create a budget to act upon the rest of the plan when the time is right!

So the answer to “What are the basics of music marketing and promotion?”

Setting goals > Plan a way to reach goals > then and only then – execute and act upon your plan!

Follow this link to learn more about How to Successfully Release Independent Music!

Peace,
Jai
“Love the MUSIC in Yourself, NOT Yourself in the MUSIC!”