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The Attractive Character For Musicians

April 5, 2017 by Mattie Leave a Comment

I have loads of books related to the music business. Songwriting, recording, touring, getting fans, legal stuff, and of course… marketing.

And I love those books. I think a lot of them are great.

But as I started to study direct response marketing more, I started to have a theory crystallize in my mind.

Part of that theory is that marketing principles are essentially the same across a lot of industries. Sure the product and the specific tactics will change if you’re trying to sell music rather than insurance or vacuum cleaners or something, but it’s all still marketing.

Then I started to think that if you wanted to stand out in your industry, maybe you shouldn’t do exactly the same thing that everyone else is doing to get noticed.

Otherwise you just become part of the noise and can be easily overlooked.

*Sidebar: I had this reinforced by a genius real estate marketing coach. Pretty much all real estate agents promote the same way… And no one wants to see a real estate agent coming toward them!

And if you only read books on music marketing, chances are you’ll follow the advice and do the same stuff that pretty much all musicians do.

It’s not even that any of this stuff is particularly bad, it probably even works! It’s just that it’s not the best way to distinguish yourself from the pack and be memorable.

So how do we start doing stuff in a different way?

Enter Russell Brunson

Russell is the founder of Click Funnels and has had the opportunity to learn directly from some of the biggest names in marketing.

He’s a pretty sharp guy and he wrote a book called DotCom Secrets. It’s a great, great introduction to direct response marketing that you can get for only the cost of shipping. I highly recommend it. There’s so much awesome info in there.

But today, I want to focus on one specific concept that I think is particularly relevant to musicians, the concept of The Attractive Character.

He defines the Attractive Character as “a persona that attracts clients or customers and helps you build your following to eventually make sales.”

The reason this is necessary is that people aren’t really going to pay attention to your marketing message if they aren’t interested or attracted to the person delivering the message.

He used this concept to stand out in the online marketing space, one that’s filled with competitors (and a lot of shady people too).

The Attractive Character for Musicians

So how does this apply to you as a musician?

Well, think about this. You probably have good music. Maybe even great music. But guess what?

So do millions of other guys and gals out there competing with you for people’s earbuds.

What makes you stand out? What makes you different?

I’m going to argue in almost all cases (with rare exceptions) that it’s not your music…

It’s you!

It’s your back story. It’s your current story. It’s the story behind your most recent song. It’s your look. It’s your sound.

All of these things contribute to what makes you unique as an artist. Good music is pretty much a given. It is the cost of entry now.

Besides, people that aren’t musicians are often fascinated by musicians. This is an industry where you can talk about your craft and there will be people who are interested in what you have to say.

This doesn’t happen everywhere. Believe me when I say that no one wants to read about a real estate agent or insurance agent’s work on a daily basis! But a musician… That’s a different story.

How To Do It

There are a number of possible ways to go about this. Social media is one. It’s valuable to bring your fans inside your world using Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc. Videos are great because people can get a feel for your personality, how you look, how you sound and more.

There’s another way that a lot of people go about doing this, and that is with an email newsletter. As you know, I’m a firm believer that musicians absolutely need to be using email marketing to communicate with fans.

So you can and should use one of those routes, but now let’s take it a step further.

But first, some background.

The Millward Brown Study

In the Millward Brown study, researchers used MRI technology to study differences in the brains of people looking at print materials and digital materials.

You can read the linked PDF, but here are 3 of their takeaways from the study:

  1. Tangible materials leave a deeper footprint in the brain.
  2. Physical material involves more emotional processing, which is important for memory and brand associations.
  3. Physical materials produced more brain responses connected with internal feelings, suggesting greater “internalization” of the ads

Even the researchers say that this is in no way to say you should stop using virtual communications, they absolutely have a place.

So… ?

I know this recommendation is going to come across as bizarre, but what if you sent out a print version of your newsletter to fans?

We already have evidence that print materials affect the brain more deeply than digital/virtual materials. So would a greater emotional attachment to your Attractive Character that you built up in your newsletter benefit your career?

Maybe it would get you more gigs if you sent it to someone who books a venue. Maybe your fans would support your new release or crowdfunding project. Fans could have a paper calendar of your gigs to supplement your website and emails.

Conclusion

Again, I know this idea is probably a lot to process, but think on it for a little bit.

In a future post I’ll lay out how I envision putting this process into play.

What do you think? Crazy? Interesting? Have you ever tried it?

Let me know in the comments.

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Filed Under: Marketing

5 Reasons Musicians MUST Use Email Marketing

March 31, 2017 by Mattie Leave a Comment

“But I have a Facebook Fan page.”

“I have 1000s of Twitter followers.”

All that’s good, but if you can’t communicate directly with your fans, then you don’t have anything.

*Disclaimer – None of this is new or groundbreaking information, but I still thought it was worth writing about. The more times bands and musicians hear this, the better.

In fact, I had to remind myself of this a coupe of days ago and send a quick email out to my list!

So why is this a necessary step in a world where everyone is completely glued to social media?

1) You don’t “own” your social media profiles.

I was a musician even back in the days of Myspace. That was the end all be all of the indie music industry at that time! People judged you by how many Myspace friends you had. In fact, I’m sure people even got record deals based solely off of these numbers.

But now?

People under a certain age don’t even remember that Myspace existed!

And all the time we spent building up our profile is pretty much for nothing.

I know it’s difficult to fathom, but the same thing could absolutely happen to Facebook or Twitter or whatever social network.

And if that happens and you don’t have any other contact information for those people then your communication has just been cut off.

But you know what?

2) You can’t control what Facebook shows people.

Even if you have tons of likes on your Facebook page, there’s still only going to be a small percentage of people that the Facebook algorithm will show your post to.

Now that Facebook ads have blown up, Facebook has no incentive to help you promote yourself for free to people that they think might not be interested in your content.

You can buy ads, but if you go that route you need to have a solid strategy for making money off them. Otherwise you’re just spending your cash on building awareness, which is probably a losing strategy for most people.

3) Twitter’s newsfeed moves too fast to keep up with.

Maybe this is just me. I’m terrible at Twitter.

But one thing i’ve noticed is that I can never seem to keep up with Twitter because of all the noise.

You tweet something, and depending on how many other people your followers follow, it might be gone in seconds. Then they have to go to your profile and try to find it again, if they even care enough to. And if you’re a prolific tweeter, that makes it even harder to find something.

So you can (and probably should) announce your gigs and album releases and whatever else you’re sharing on Twitter, but most people won’t see it unless they happen to be looking at just the right time, or you tag them in the tweet.

4) Email let’s you target exactly who to send your messages to.

Unlike Twitter’s crowded, fast moving newsfeed and Facebook’s alogrithm, with email you can decide who to send your messages to.

You can segment your lists, send to everyone or even just select a few people you know will be interested.

While you can’t be guaranteed that people will read your email, you can be sure that it will get to their inbox. It might go into spam or the promotions tab, but at least it will get there. And I think it’s a lot easier to search for an older email than it is to search for a tweet or Facebook post.

If you have fans spread out over large geographic areas, you can just send to people in the area that you are playing. Or you can email everyone to let them know about your online concert, or crowdfunding campaign or whatever.

You can drive traffic to your website or a video or even a Facebook post!

5) If your email service provider is going to shut down, you can just export your list and carry on.

If Facebook shuts down, it’s taking your audience with it.

If Mailchimp shuts down, you can export everyone on your list to a spreadsheet and add them to another provider and still be able to communicate with your fans.

Conclusion

In much the same way that you need to have a website in addition to your social media presence, you absolutely have to have an email list to go along with that.

You need to OWN all your internet properties and be able to communicate with people in whatever unrestricted manner best suits you and your fans.

Please, please, please don’t make the mistake of not doing this. It will come back to bite you at some point, I promise.

If you have questions on how to get started with email marketing, hit me up in the comments or send me an email. I’d be happy to talk it over with you.

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Reposted from MattieRocks.com

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: aweber, diy musicians, email, email marketing for musicians, indie musicians, mailchimp, marketing

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