Roadmap for Success
Posted on | October 25, 2009 | No Comments
I recently had the opportunity to pull together some notes for a casual friend of mine, a college student who is an aspiring musician — one who actually seems to have the talent to pull off a career in music. He has been stressing a bit about how he will pull things together so that his dreams and his reality will converge with all due speed, so I agreed to give him some advice.
We haven’t been able to connect in person yet, but the prep work I’ve done is useful enough to share in general form. For aspiring entrepreneurs, or anyone who wishes to move to the next level in their small business or non-profit activity, completing a few essential steps may mean the difference between a recording contract, and middle-aged regret about what could have been. This template will focus on the “college musician movin’ on up” paradigm; as always, we stand ready to help any enterprise find its voice and its success.
- Research the Market. Start by understanding the market you’re starting in, and the market you ultimately wish to service. In the context of a local college musician, he needs to understand the kinds of music he is capable of providing — by modalities (voice, instrument) and genres (emo, soft pop, deathcore, salsa) — as well as how saturated the market may be with musicians with similar skills. You cannot sell yourself as a unique experience worthy of the price of an admission ticket if you first lack a clear understanding of what everyone else is doing. This is the “market research” part of the process, and it’s essential to drive down to measurables and not just rely on gut estimates.
- Find Your Place in the Market. This is a process called “segmentation.” Essentially, for this musician, he needs to take his market research and contrast his findings against his unique skills, and then sell his skills based on gaps in the market. For example, if he is fluent in Spanish and English but most singers in his genre are not, he could target the bilingual market if he wishes to make some cash as a DJ or headliner for local events. Or, if he has experience in an obscure instrument like the oboe or coronet, he could emphasize this in his promotional materials, and perhaps find opportunities to cross-perform with, say, the Grand Rapids Symphony or with other local artists. The point is to emphasize his unique strengths against the weaknesses or opportunities in the target market instead of just blindly throwing himself out there and hoping that venues and agents will pull his face from among the sea of other wanna-be musicians out there.
- Identify Your Core Brand. Having segmented the market and settled on a marketing approach, he should consolidate a core brand. This process has several aspects. First, he needs a distinctive logo and tag line — something recognizable, unique, and capable of resonating with the target market. Second, he needs his marketing materials (from business cards to Web sites to promotional posters) to have a uniform style, typography, and color scheme. Consistency is key for brand reinforcement. And he should have some options — perhaps a pair of complimentary color schemes, and one core logo rendered in different styles (horizontal, vertical, image-only, image+text, etc.) so the right logo can be used for targeted campaigns or materials.
- Consider Your Business Model. As with any major endeavor, the big question needs to be asked: Why are you doing this? Where do you wish to be in five years? Are you willing to make the sacrifices and deal with the rejections just for a chance to make it big? And why are you in it? For money? For the art? As a hobby? These questions need an answer, for they will guide the “what and how” of future marketing activities. And if profit is a genuine motive, this implies some additional work — perhaps creating a legal business structure, retaining an attorney or agent, and establishing a legal and financial presence for the band as an autonomous entity.
- Harness Social Media. Musicians and artists are more dependent on social-media marketing than many other business lines. A college performer looking to capitalize on his talents will use Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, and Flickr as his primary tools, as well as a consolidated Web presence that pulls everything together and provides fans with an opportunity to build a micro-community dedicated to the performer. The key, though, is segregation — the music business side should be separated as much as possible from the personal side. Social-media tools should have the goal of driving traffic to his Web site, which should be the hub of his online marketing efforts. All YouTube videos, blog posts, photos, performance calendars, gratis tracks, and public messages boards should be consolidated under a single domain name, with SMM efforts serving as hooks to drive traffic back to the home site.
- Deploy Traditional & Viral Marketing. Despite the hype of Tweeters and marketing-guru-wannabes, traditional marketing is far from dead; indeed, it’s critical to success. This musician needs to work the market — he, or his helpers, should make contact with bar/club owners, local studios, local musicians, and others associated with the local-music scene to put out his name and get a list of solid gigs going. No Web site is going to substitute for good, old-fashioned shoe leather. So things like high-quality glossy photos, artist biographies, a CD portfolio, a resume, and a demonstrated ability to perform will be essential. He also needs to be ready to do the heavy lifting on behalf of the venue, with posters, signs, and giveaways at the ready and a plan for making a bar/club gig worth it to the venue manager. In addition, viral marketing may have some use with the college scene. Whether he does something like a wild YouTube video or something more creative like a heavily publicized local geocaching game to get tickets to a performance with backstage rights, he should settle on a few unique approaches for generating buzz, then pursue them with gusto. It helps, as well, to cultivate relationships with entertainment journalists or media personalities in the area, and to do press releases for free media to local newspapers and radio stations.
- Rack Up Small Successes. It’s unlikely that a major studio is going to sign this talented young man unless he can point to a series of successful small-venue performances that generated good publicity and a local following. So, targeting bars and clubs and college events is an excellent first step. A reasonably active booking calendar for a year or so sends the message to the bigger fish that he’s ready and willing to do the work that might justify their investment.
- Identify a Development Plan. Where do you go from here? Trying to build a band and a musical career without having some sense of what the final destination ought to be, is like trying to drive from New York to “the West.” Yes, you can drive west, but where will you end up? A specific goal, or series of sequenced goals, helps keep everything on track and provide a milestone to keep up motivation and focus.
- Monitor & Adapt. Watch the numbers. Keep track of the market. Watch Google Analytics to observe Web patterns. Don’t just be content with a measure of success; scan your metrics (revenue per CD, daily Web visitors, attendance at bar gigs, etc) and trend them. See what your data tells you. Try new things and try to measure your experiment’s impact on your outcomes.
Building an identity as a successful local artist is tough. Doing it without a clear marketing and development plan is doubly tough.
The lessons I’d share with my young friend are applicable to so many diverse efforts. Whether you are a new business, or you wish to start a community effort, or you want to share your art across the city, there are certain essential steps that will make success much more likely.
So do the work. Research your market, find out where you fit in, identify a brand that meets your market, and engage in online and concrete promotional activities to get your effort some mindshare with your target audience.
It’s hard work, but if you have the passion for success, then the effort is well worth it. Of course, Gillikin Consulting stands ready to help you drive your outcomes to the next level — give us a call at (616) 929-0845 or send email to info@gillikinconsulting.org for a free, no-obligation initial strategy conversation.
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