Focus Your Music Marketing On Lead Gen

With everything that you do to promo your music business, the number one focus needs to be on lead generation. I know its bullshit to consider your fans leads or customers, but this is business.

Over the last few weeks with the BandWPThemes launch what did we do at each step of the way on the blog posts? We collected emails to give people more cool stuff and early access to get the themes and bonuses.

Guess what happened?

We got a few hundred new emails in our database and our top level of fast action bonuses sold out before I sent an email to my main mailing list.

For you as a musician it’s the same thing. The more fans you have in your data base, the more value you give them, the more they give you – either in the form of ticket sales (if you are collecting zip codes), music and merch sales, pre-sales, micro-funding campaigns and whatever else you come up with.

The opportunity to collect leads are so many:

Live shows. Have a hot chick (yes, being sexist, but it works way better than your sweaty and drunk homeboy) walk around before, during and after your set and collect emails with the promise of getting some free music or something cool (maybe a free drink ticket, a lighter with your website and logo on it, etc) if they signup.

From all your social networks. Instead of sending your fans to your homepage, send them to a squeeze page. Yea, its that genius. Want to see one in action? Check out my boys in Smash City Gauntlet.

Buy your leads. This is something I am about to go into overdrive with. At some point your usual tactics are going to stop working. It’s like doing the same workout for 2 years. Your muscles get accustomed to the actions and you stop growing. Buying leads from new sources can be a nice injection of new people into your network. Look at networks like Grooveshark, Last.FM, Jango and others where you can buy plays and direct fans back to your site after they listen to and like your music.

Leads (aka fans) are the lifeblood of your business. And remember they have a lifetime value. You get to email them everytime you have something cool to tell them, offer them or share with them. This isn’t a one shot thing.

Let’s start talking about how you are collecting your fans/leads. What are you doing in your music business? Let’s talk in the comments below.

-G-Ro

P.S. If you want to learn a ton more about this kind of thing, check out the New Music Economy. It’s pretty dope. Or you can always join our mailing list and I’ll hook you up with an hour long video on how this is working right now with indie musicians.

Photo above by ashley.adcox

Tags: email, lead gen, Music Marketing