A music marketing plan is an integral part of a musician’s toolset.
Writing music, rehearsing with bandmates, recording in the studio, and performing tend to form the foundation of a musician’s career.
But marketing isn’t any less important. Many musicians digitally distribute their music to all major platforms, only to realize they don’t have many listeners, and that can be very discouraging.
A music marketing plan will not only give you a high-level view of what you’re out to accomplish as an artist, but it can also provide you with concrete action steps you can take to get to where you want to go in your career.
Here is how to create an effective marketing plan for your music.
In working with artists, I often emphasize that defining your brand makes all other steps a near triviality. Why is that? Because knowing your brand makes every other decision easier if not a complete no-brainer.
I like to think of branding in two parts. The first is your visual brand – colors, fonts, logos, costumes, and the like. The second is your purpose. Why do you exist? What grand mission do you intend to accomplish? What will you be remembered for?
Your purpose can (and should) extend into the type of music you write, all the way over to how you communicate.
But your purpose is rarely “made up” or contrived. Usually, it’s something you already are, something you stand for and believe in. It doesn’t matter whether it’s as juvenile as throwing the best college parties, as zeitgeist as female empowerment, or as mission oriented as Christianity.
Aligning your brand with your identity makes it easy to stick to. After all, you want to be consistent with your brand for it to be remembered.
Now that you know what your brand is, figuring out who your fans are and where you can find them is much easier than you might think.
Given that your audience has probably been built already, there’s no need to start from scratch. You can take advantage of a variety of free and low-cost online tools to extract the demographic and psychographic data you need. For instance:
Pro tip: aligning your brand with audience interests is sneaky and powerful. For instance, if you know your potential fans love video games, you could drop the name of their favorite game in your next song (in some rare instances, the company may come after you for using their trademark, so user beware).
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Now we need to think about what we want to accomplish. I like to think of goals in terms of 90-day periods. Each year only has four of these (they’re also called “quarters”), and during each of these 90-day periods, realistically, you can only accomplish one thing.
Sure, you could go after a lot of small goals. But what if you could only do one thing next quarter? This type of thinking forces you to think in terms of what’s going to make the biggest difference in your music career.
(One thing you can do, though, is consider what you’d like to have accomplished at the end of a year and break it down into quarter-sized chunks.)
Either way, here are a few examples of good 90-day goals for musicians just getting started:
Now that you know what your goals are, it’s time to map out how you’re going to approach every aspect of your plan by choosing which music marketing strategies to use.
It’s all well and good to have “increase our TikTok following by 300 followers” as your next 90-day goal. But if you have no idea what your next steps might be besides making more content, chances are you will not reach your goals.
When it comes to reaching goals, I like to think in terms of the following:
Conversations form the foundation of results in the real world. Don’t forget this!
And, when it comes to achieving goals, you must be able to monitor and evaluate your efforts ongoingly. The best way to do that is with built-in accountability.
Not everything has to cost money. But let’s be realistic. Whether it’s setting up a domain name and creating a music website, distributing your songs, or buying a pack of guitar strings, there are plenty of small costs that can add up over time.
You may even want to leverage advertising to reach your goals, in which case you’d want to create a budget, set a goal for your campaign, and create a mini action plan for it.
But let’s take an example from earlier:
If you’re going to be booking and performing 12 shows, your primary costs will probably be gas, PA or gear rentals, accessories (drumsticks, batteries, guitar strings, etc.), and advertising if you’re thinking about promoting the shows more broadly.
Hopefully, these costs will be offset by guarantees, ticket sales, merch, etc., but it’s always a good idea to work out the costs in advance.
Pro tip: when it comes to marketing and advertising spend, always consider what will make the biggest impact based on the size of your investment. Not all channels are created equal. This is where knowing your audience and where they like to hang out will really pay off, because you can show up where they’re already spending their time.
Every artist and band must create a music marketing plan if they intend to use their time wisely and take decisive steps towards their goals. But music marketing for musicians doesn’t need to be hard!
To set yourself up for success, ensure that your marketing plan matches your goals. Measure your efforts as you progress, and tweak as needed. Your plan is there to serve you – you aren’t there to serve your plan!
David Andrew Wiebe is the Founder & CEO of The Music Entrepreneur HQ and author of four books, including the much-praised The New Music Industry: Adapting, Growing and Thriving in The Information Age. Wiebe has built an extensive career in songwriting, live performance, recording, session playing, production work and music instruction.
