The 6 Phases of Music Marketing

Dexter Bryant Jr.

1. Distribution
2. Awareness
3. Discovery
4. Credibility
5. Engagement
6. Sustained Attention

Distribution

Configure outlets where your music can be downloaded and/or purchased online. iTunes is the most popular choice for retail digital distribution, followed by Amazon. Once your music is plugged into these distribution outlets, customers are able to acquire your content/product. If you foolishly skip this phase your marketing will inevitably fail because no one will have any way getting your music.

Awareness

Awareness goes hand in hand with discovery. Discovery involves making it easy for interested parties to find your content during the discovery process. Awareness requires giving people a reason to seek you out in the first place.

Awareness is tantamount to market penetration. An effective brand strategy, strong brand positioning, and PR are how you make people aware of you and your music. Awareness is created through word of mouth, PR, digital PR, online buzz, touring, radio promo, sales promotions, activism and cause-based marketing, street marketing, and features & credits on outside projects.

Discovery

Discovery involves any destination where your music can be found, shared, and recommended, and thus gain an audience. To amplify the spread of your music you have to make it easy for people to find your music during the discovery process. Music-based social networks are vital to gaining exposure because that’s where huge databases of music are shared online. At every point of discovery, make sure you provide direct links to your distribution outlets in order to increase sales of your music.

Credibility

Third parties co-sign the awesomeness of you and your music through reviews, features, endorsements, cross-promotions, and the like. The more that sources like these support your music, the more credible you become in the eyes of your market and the more backlink s you’ll get— leading to increased web traffic and exposure. High-profile partnerships, endorsements, co-branding, and sponsorships are terrific ways to establish credibility with your audience. Famous people, experts, DJs, promoters, managers, booking agents, label executives, social media buzz, and award nominations (not to mention wins) can all help you establish credibility.

Engagement

Direct-to-fan (DTF) engagement and the cultivation of relationships are central to this phase. Collect fan emails and pull their info from social networks. Research, document, and learn your fans’ tastes, preferences, desires, spending habits, demographics, psychographics, etc. Communicate with fans and solicit feedback. Encourage community contributions from fans--remixes, fan art, fan made music videos, etc. Use crowd-sourcing to determine your best-loved songs and apply that knowledge to your marketing. Use buzz monitoring, social monitoring, and web analytics to gauge brand sentiment and respond in real-time to conversations around your brand.

Sustained Attention

New content must be released at intervals that create sustained audience attention. Balance is key. Provide just enough content so that fans are always begging for more. Daily or weekly song releases? Weekly/monthly/bi-monthly mix tape releases? These choices are yours to make.

Release too much content for a sane person to keep up with. In other words: feed each niche market you serve with so much content that diehard fans are forced to stay active and engaged to keep from missing something or falling behind.

In marketing, every play is a chess move. Move the game towards an explosive climax so that your audience is always on the edge of their seats anticipating your next move. Feed audience frenzy and exceed expectations with every climax. Follow-up by rebuilding tension. Roller coaster tension build-and-release is the cycle that keeps fans engaged.

Ongoing email marketing campaigns and digital PR campaigns will sustain audience attention IF communication is regular enough that your audience doesn’t have room to forget about you. However, keep in mind that contact with fans also has to remain scarce enough that your audience still seeks you out online for more content and information.

It’s all about managing supply and demand. When crafting your fan communication schedule, make sure to factor in the differing attention spans of your market segments, especially if your customers span across multiple generations. Sustained Attention is achieved through email marketing, digital PR, press releases, advertising, a steady stream of content, the element of surprise, and word of mouth.

This article is an excerpt from Dexter's latest eBook The Record Label's Guide to Digital Branding & Music Marketing 2.0. Download Dexter's free eBook @ http://hitmusicacademy.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/free-ebook-guide-digital...