Becoming a Musicpreneur: Marketing Basics
No, it’s not just about social media
What comes to mind when you hear “marketing?”
Most people today think marketing is about posting on Facebook and Instagram. And yes, those are marketing tools and channels that are incredibly useful and can be part of your strategy, but that’s not really what marketing is about.
Before you can launch a product or service, create a digital ad or build out a social media strategy, there are a few key points about your business, your product, or your service to determine. Without these, you’ll be throwing spaghetti at a wall hoping it will stick. And that’s not how you want to spend your hard earned money, right?
So let’s get down to a few marketing basics.
Who is your audience?
Who is your customer? What do they like? What don’t they like? Where do they live? What’s their income? How old are they?
Before you dive into ANY kind of marketing strategy, you need to understand who it is you’re marketing to.
By knowing who your customer is, you’ll know how and what to communicate to them, where to engage with them online, what they value and how your music, product, or service can benefit them.
When I started to develop a plan for the Musician to Musicpreneur course, I carefully considered my target audience and created a customer avatar.
18 - 45 year-old female musician who has started her music career and is ready to become serious about music as a career. Spends time on Instagram and works a 9-5 / other type of job while supporting her music career.
Now, I’m sure you’re thinking “Hey Kristi, I’m a young male musician looking to build my career! Is this for me?”
While my ideal customer avatar is female, I’m not excluding men from my products and services. In fact, I would love if everyone had access to and found use of my products and services. An ideal customer avatar gives me direction on marketing the products and services, it lets me know how I can reach my target audience, where to find them, and what to tell them.
What Value Do You Provide?
What value does your brand, product, or service provide to your target audience?
Your value proposition tells your audience what you promise to deliver to them, should they choose to buy your product or use your service. You want to convince your audience why they should use your product or service over a smilier product or service.
In your value proposition, you’ll explain how the product or service serves a need, communicate the specifics of its benefit, and explain how it is unique and better than other products or services on the market.
Your value proposition can be a few words, like Spotify’s “Music for everyone” or Apple’s MacBook Pro 16” “The best for the brightest,” or you can create longer copy, like Starbucks:
[insert screen shot]
However you decide to write your value proposition, make sure you keep it on brand, highlight the benefits, and let your customer know why they should choose you and your products/services over the competitor.
The Four P’s of Marketing
Typically called “the marketing mix,” these four P’s (product, price, promotion, and place) will help you develop a strategy for releasing your product or service to the market. You’ll understand how to promote your product or service’s unique benefits that differentiate it from others in your niche.
Product - Define your product or service and how it is unique and the benefit it provides to your audience.
How many variations or product lines will you sell?
How will you package or present the item to your audience?
What need does it satisfy?
Price - This is all about price of your product or service, taking in to consideration any costs you incur to produce the product or service, what the going market rate is for such a product or service, and what image that price will project (is it far below market price, making it look cheap? Or is it above market cost, making it look exclusive?)
Will you put the product on sale at any point during the year?
Will you give your customers options for payments, or just charge one flat fee?
Promotion - Promotion is about the marketing techniques you are using to 1. let your audience or fans know you exist and 2. Show them why they should care about you, your brand, and your product or service.
How are you informing your target audience about the product and it’s price?
Are you advertising, using social media, email marketing, video marketing, or using offline marketing techniques?
What message will you communicate to your audience?
Place - Place is all about the “where.” In this piece, you’ll determine the process of distributing your products or services where your audience or fans are most likely to find them and buy them.
Will you distribute the product or service online or offline?
Are there particular areas of the world that will receive your product, or will it be global?
Analyze Your Business and the Market
A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis is a traditional marketing tool used by businesses around the world, and in the ever evolving music industry, it can be very useful for musicians.
By doing this type of analysis of both your internal and external environments, you’ll have a clear understanding of your position in the industry and what you need to do to continue to grow and be successful.
Internal:
The first part of the analysis, is to consider your own strengths and weakness. Yes, this is like those dreaded interview questions but it will help you to identity what skills and resources you have available to you, and how you can turn weaknesses into strengths.
External:
Next, you’ll review what opportunities exist for you and how you can utilize your strengths to go after those opportunities. You’ll also identify the threats in the external environment, what’s keeping you from going after the opportunities.
(Social Media) Marketing Channels
This is probably what you were expecting to read when you came here (am I right?). But don’t worry, we’re tackling this one on next week’s post!
Here’s the main gist though: the marketing channels, especially social media, are what come after you’ve determined your target audience and ideal customer avatar, written out your value proposition, created your marketing mix, and analyzed the market.
You need all those pieces in place before you optimize your social media accounts and dig into the various platforms, because while that’s the fun stuff, the marketing basics are what can make or break your marketing plans.
Looking for More Business Know-How?
I’m putting together an eCourse to help take the overwhelm out of becoming a musicpreneur, with mindset techniques, business for the artist, marketing and social media, and more. Join the wait list and be the first in line to gain access!
Hi, I’m Kristi!
I help busy music and creative entrepreneurs ditch the day-to-day tasks so they can grow and scale their business and careers.