So yeah I was like, totally offline!
I was back in the dark ages where I couldn’t just scroll my reader and check email every 5 minutes when I got distracted.
Just like you! I’m sitting there like . . . man.
I’ve GOT to get that new content ready.
My videos. My ebook.
But of course, I’m a marketing guy. I sell stuff. What’s the point of making a new album when you aren’t ready to sell it?
You could give it away free but like if you want to sell it . . . you kinda should know how to like. Sell Stuff!
So I really got stuck into developing my content platform and kinda working on sculpting my funnel. Yes I kow I’m talking about Kurb again, but when I do this it all applies to artists. I look at a lot of my clients and they’ve got good music but they’re NOT bringing that together with rock solid internet marketing principals. Oh yeah that’s right, that’s what they pay me for.
I put the fun in funnel.
A funnel. What’s a funnel? It’s the motion of sucking those fans into your twisted web of musical genius! Muahaha!
No seriously. There’s a series of stages that your potential fans are going through to turn them into “true” fans. I’m quite reductive and I often reduce it to the importance of securing email adresses and managing them on an email list, but there’s a series of stages that fans/buyers are going through before they sign up and I’ve been talking a lot about it: Engagement. Connection.
Fans seeing videos, hearing music, and reading blogs that contain ideas that they connect with and say yeah - I Identify with this. there’s something here about me, or what I aspire to be, or values I share.
Then there’s another series of stages - and this is generally after you get them to give you their email address - where you get the money.
People are going to find me and you on Myspace, Youtube, facebook, they’re all doing google serches and obscure terms you’ve used and tags you’ve used repeatedly are going to jumping up and the people are going to be interested and they’re going to be watching the videos, and hearing the podcasts and in your case obviously - the music! - And reading the blogs. And they’re digging it.
That’s the concept i broke in my presentation. That content IS promotion. Own more of the net. Be a larger chunk of it. Create more.
But you’ve got to remember if you don’t have a label, you don’t have a sales and marketing dept.! (But you can probably pick me up for a song right now, the NZ dollar is on a slide thats expected to last 12 months.)
Then we’re developing what I’ve talked about before: the proposition.
You see the problem can be reduced to the fact that web design is not web marketing. Web designers make your website look pretty, they probably don’t know anything more than you do about what makes someone decide that they need to buy. And buy now.
In fact it quite plainly shocks me how little web designers know about basic marketing and even basic internet marketing. You know - the part where you get the money. I guess that’s why they’re web designers. It’s like band photography. When you’re a success story you can pay for all the band photography and web design and street posters and publicity you like but right now we’re mainly worried about the part where you actually make some money, and for that to happen you want to give the money you do have to me so we can build something that makes money, not just looks pretty.
Check out what I’ve been working on here at http://www.kurbartistmanagement.info.
No, it’s not pretty.
This is called a “landing” page. The point of a landing page is to increase the chance of a desired outcome, a “conversion” - that usually means when someone buys something, or conducts the behaviour that is the desired outcome of the landing pages relentlessly persuasive sales copy.
It follows a lot of basic marketing principles, the main one being, it’s not confusing. The overall effect being that the visitor is being persuaded toward ONE DIRECTIVE:
Email me, Matt Turner - kurbpromo@gmail.com
. . . so - I get their email address - and we can talk about them paying me money to do their music promotion online. The result of that, somewhat unsuprisingly, is that a lot of the people who email me have already decided they want to give me money. I just have to explain how it works.
Another basic marketing principal is at work. The longer I hold the readers attention, the more persuasive the proposition becomes. That’s why there’s so much there and I have been unconventional in providing links (diverting attention) to my blog etc. - because if people are wanting to make a purchase because they are continuing to award you their attention, then there’s got to be as much content ready for the user/fan/client to absorb as they need to to be ready to buy into the proposition.
One thing I’ve also done now is removed advertising from pages like this where serious business is taking place. On my blog and various random pages on my site it’s fine, but when it comes down to the serious business of having a potential fan or client commit to the proposition you don’t want any distractions. I mean seriously. Do you want to sell music products and services and grow your network of fans/customers or do you want to sell clicks for .50c?
Now we’ve got to step back. Because the proposition you’re most likely to be using for a landing page is the email sign up. From an artist management point of view - in my job I find it crazy enough dealing with a dozen guys who give me money regularly for stuff. How are you going to deal with it when you’ve got 500 people all over you that you’ve got to maintain and manage some kind of relationship with because they buy everything they ask you them to? Because they all pay $1 per week so you don’t have to gig constantly?
You see because I’m only dealing with a dozen or so guys that I promote and put food on my table, it’s manageable that I rely on a bare minimum of digital tools to maintain those relationships, it’s why I don’t rely on a mailing list solution You need at least 100 people on that list before you should even think about developing revenue.
You want to release a cd but you dont have a mailing list? who’s going to buy it? How are they going to know it’s out? Your 6 figure TV ad campaign?
Hopefully you can see why I talk about online “management” and fan management, managing interactions and managing relationships as being so important now. Of course it’s not important at the beginning when you’ve only got your mates behind you and you can “manage fan interactions” with your phone, but as I say how good you do this is basically a measure of how long you’ll wait to go full time. Because you can’t be a full time pro muso without a fanbase - not one that you can’t manage.
You can’t manage a relationship with more than 200 people without software, online platforms and digital solutions. That’s kinda what I meant when I’ve been talking about preparing artists for the future. Because the future as it looks right now is managing your fan database, distributing content to those who have asked for it, and then developing the propositions that will engage them into purchasing or attention based actions from which you profit at quite a high margin, which of course is constantly accumulating as your content spreads - both by your hand, and as you grow, your marketing guy, your marketing team . . . and word of mouth by your fans.
So in the same way I’m putting up my landing page and pointing people to it with the sole, focused intention of “converting” them, that is, getting them to email or call me, you’re probably wanting to be really zeroing in on building your email list and using software systems to manage your relationships with those who sign up for it.
Why even try to sell them your album until you know they’re interested? We know that most people - and it’s a way of life on the internet - are just out for free stuff. So you pull them in with stuff that’s free and good, free content that is worthwhile and builds your brand, and as I mentioned, the more of their attention you get the more persuasive and influential the connection will become as you start to develop your propositions.
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