Wow Matt I hear you’re getting ready to launch your new artist community.
I have to, my clients probably think I’ve bagged off with their cash and I’m hiding out in Zimbabwe til the heat dies down.
So you’re going to be doing a campaign, a launch campaign?
Sure. I’m pretty confident with my strategy so I’ll let you know how I ‘m going to be doing my launch campaign:
Firstly you got to remember the product I’ve created is strictly limited to 100 people so it’s kind of exclusive – y’know instead of just trying to sell heaps of little plastic discs you’ve got to think of new ways to bring value to people and what that’s worth.
With the new artist community I just wanted the value to be exceptional in addition to the fact it is still a scarce commodity and that’s the main marketing point – persuasive value.
That’s not to say I’m stupid enough to let the thing try and sell itself.
Wait. Consider this. What if you as a musician did what I’m doing and decided to charge $40 per month to complete access to your work?
Limiting it to 100 people would be silly wouldn’t it?
Maybe Charging $40 would be a bit steep?
I mean if you had 1000 people paying $10 p/month to download everything you have and continue to do, as well as getting to make chit chat with the illustrious artist . . . well I wouldn’t be complaining.
That’s only one way of making money from content!
Lets get back to my marketing plan:
Email: Emailing all the contacts I’ve built up and discussed online promotion with.
Yes it’s going to take a whole night to organise my email list but I’m pretty sure this will be a cracker just in itself. Contacting at least a couple of hundred people who I’ve discussed providing service for to tell them we have a new service available at $10 per week AND we’re bringing back the $100 p/month deal and it’s sweeter than ever.
Of course I know what I’m doing with this whole “creating value” thing so I’m just going to be inviting people to join for free at first.
So being that this is my main strategy you can see the value of having a large amount of email contacts who are identifiable as already having expressed a direct interest in my work and then respecting them enough to allow them to check it out at first without paying.
Blogging:
If your product is good you should be able to talk about it and tell stories. Stories that engage, like this story I’m telling right now that sort of compares my online service launch to an online album launch campaign but its not an album is it because albums aren’t worth anything and no one wants them so you better figure out what it is that YOU’RE launching that people actually want to buy!
Myspace:
Yup we’ll give myspace a go. If there’s one audience still on myspace its other musicians. And I have a rule with myspace that I only do a campaign if I’m really promoting value.
Facebook, forums and online PR
Publicity is a dark art and I will be happy with some neat, short little posts around some of the relevant gather points online – a few facebook groups, forums, local music communities, that should do it.
I might consider an online press release or maybe I might save that for a second launch once I'm happy with the initial user testing.
I’m actually trying to keep it low key because I can see some people thinking I’m trying to act like a scammy guru selling my secrets or something when I’m just trying to develop a more effective system that addresses problems artists are having right now – cheaply - but I simply don’t have the capital to go . . . look! All done! $37 p/month, all your problems are solved!
Adwords
Adwords is . . a perfect system, as I’ve said, it’s the beginning of the future of advertising.
Often I have compared the power of digital promotion to the Death Star. Awesomely powerful, but only to be deployed in operations once every preparation has been made.
And a perfect system demands a perfect product. A perfect target.
It’s like this. Until we’ve learnt how to make 10 clicks into 1 sale, I don’t want you to pay $5 for 10 clicks. There’ll be plenty of time for pay per click, Google’s not going anywhere.
Video:
Gotta do a video. I’m a hypocrite if I cant just push record and tell people what I think I’m doing and I expect that’s something an artist should be able to do each week.
What I wont be doing:
poster campaign: There’s probably about a million committed music acts in the world.
Probably only about 50 walk around up town Auckland.
CD promo: I’d love to write a song for the launch and treat it like a faux single release. But I’ll be struggling just with a video.
Affiliate marketing: My goal is not to become some rich dude reaping in profits from my “system”, it’s actually because I believe I can create a system that puts the artist in control of their online promotion and revenue management, with all the support they need.
If I can make it work, or actually any way of making a new band famous that doesn’t involves a reality tv show I’m sure I’ll be fine for cash.
Mainstream media: Sure you gotta spend money to make money. But I'm not that stupid!
Kurb is an online promotion company specializing in digital music marketing and artist management.
Follow our blog at http://musicmarketingblog.info for cutting edge web promotion as we launch http://newmusicmarketing.com - the exclusive artist community putting artists in control of their online promotion and revenue management.
Within New Zealand we also provide low cost and hassle free CD DVD duplication and printing as well as poster design print and placement in Auckland.
kurbpromo@gmail.com
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