A Marketing Campaign Plan for an Online Music Service Launch

Wow Matt I hear you’re getting ready to launch your new artist community.

That’s right. I’m launchin’ it good and proper!

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:

As I’ve already mentioned, expect plenty of posts like this, framing my new product.

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

Ad supported music revenue rampage: Amazon associates etc.

Interested in making money off your music or other digital content? Kurb provides online promotion and revenue management services for musicians and artists internationally And the best value fast turnover physical media services in New Zealand including CD / DVD printing and duplication and poster services.


I WAS waiting to post about a bunch of stuff thats going on including youtube promotion and stuff but coming off the back of my big time $10 Adsense earnings this month as a blogger I've just embarked on an ad supported revenue rampage. I'm sure me being proud as punch of my $10 raised a few sniggers of indifference but now I've got my foot in the door I'm going for the jugular!

I earnt this money doing nothing other than what I'd do otherwise. Write on my blog. I'm wading into this big time to help musicians and other content creators get paid for what they do.

It's a brave new world.

Monetizing free content people. That's the name of the game. No money changes hands between you and your fan base theres no hard sell because theres no sale! Attention is the value that artists and creators offer advertisers.

So my first effort in ramping up my ad supported revenue earnings as well as knowledge and experience was taking the next step - into affiliate marketing, and signing up as an Amazon associate, so I can run their ads on my sites and blogs, and if any one clicks through the ad and amazon makes a sale I get 10% as commission!

you can check out my ad units here:

http://kurbpromotion.blogspot.com/

http://www.kurb.co.nz/

Now this code is 3rd party javascript which a lot of sites like myspace won't allow, not only because its easy to slip in something nasty but also the last thing myspace wants is YOU making advertising revenue of their site, because their site is designed for them to make revenue off you!!!!

And so similarly now AGAIN we're having a problem on wordpress!!!! Blogger is an immensely popular, useful and basic platform which allows pretty straightforward integration of this advertising stuff but all the action is on wordpress!

What's to be done? What I've done for myself and most of my clients is signed up for a free wordpress blog, when what I really need to do now is learn the free wordpress software platform and the technicalities of maintaining wordpress blogs myself because by using the software platform instead of the free online platform it allows you acces to a endless host of awesome free designs and plug in applications - just like facebook - yknow - that will allow you to add all kinds of functions to your wordpress and all importantly java boxes for us to ram full of ads!!!! arhahaha

Okay so back to these ad units.

Google serve thier ads based on relevancy to the content on your page and the demographics of the person viewing the ads it's all very clever, I guess it's why they're the biggest generators of ad revenue in the world - theyre very good at it, and of course they have all the data.

We have to recognise the expanding role that such data will play in connecting users and consumers with content and products. Yes big brother is watching. But he's really only interested in selling you something.

So like Google, Amazon offers a whole range of ad unit options and I chose the "Omakase" unit because it runs on the same premise of responding to the content and the user in selecting which products to display, and also like Google, you have to cross a $100 threshold before you get your first cheque, so if you're starting from scratch thats a good 6 months away as they only pay directly on $10 threshold to US based partners.

This was the point I started rampaging and adding google adsense and amazon associates to every blog and decided with the Kurb site doing so well as a result of my SEO work, it was time to tool that up too.

You see it's important to build and mainatain your relationship with your "true fans" over time but for every true fan - especially if I do my job well - theres going to 10 or maybe a lot more people who are only passing through or who are casual fans, who are not there to make any kind of investment in what you're doing, and if while they're checking you out there's an opportunity to make 20c, I'd suggest thats opportunity, because its only a matter of perserverance over time before thats happening 100 times a day.

That way the work I do, and other promotion spends you employ to promote your website - such as adwords for example which has become a marketing staple here at kurb - not only builds your exposure and brand, not only gives you the opportunity to connect with those few rare fans who will support you directly by purchasing your music and other related products and services, but allows you to recoup from less accurately targeted traffic who click away through ads.

Now Google is what I'll be using on my website because theyre excellent at connecting your traffic with little ads just for them, but for Amazon, and Ebay which also has a similar program which I will be checking out - to make you money its about connecting your audience with stuff theyre actually likely to want to fork out for and in the future I think smart bands working with smart people (like me! haha) are going to be able to put together offers featuring the kind of products (I mean just imagine anything on ebay) that the kind of people who love your music are just going to be snapping up!!!!



Andrew Dubber from new music strategies has just gone and opened his own online music store - why wouldn't it be an excellent idea for you to sell other music from your site and recieve a commission? THEN what you're actually doing is creating value as an OPINION LEADER!!!!

This is basically ad supported revenue madness!!!! Let's crank that content people, lets get thos platforms rockin' and lets monetize!!!

Now that we're stepping up the ad supported revenue onslaught delvinging into the affiliate game, you gotta realise theres still much more to come! Learning about CPM and CPA adds, lets not forget about paid leads like myfuncards that I discussed earlier that could be used to seriously leverage a committed fanbase into a decent earn.

I still don't know what a chitika minimall is nor have I checked out clickbank but once you can show decent data for the traffic on your site (100+ unique visitors per day) even more options become available from using more specialised and high reward programmes like and even selling advertising space on your site or blog to a locla business or auctioning it online!!!

Okay. I'm excited. I'm not saying cover your sites and blogs in huge ugly ads so they look cheap and nasty. I'm not saying ad supported revenue will create a windfall.

But for musicians who are willing to persevere with creating regular consistent content it might just be a lot more rewarding and a lot less painless than pushing those little plastic discs or hauling your show around every watering hole that will take you.


AD SUPPORTED MUSIC REVENUE IS SO HOT RIGHT NOW!!!

For more, check out Marc Cohen's Ad supported music central:

The Ad-Supported Music Central blog provides news, analysis and opinion about the market for free, listener selected, recorded music that is supported by advertisers. The blog is written by Marc Cohen, founder of Lirix, Inc., www.lirix.net, the developer of on-device dynamic ad insertion and a pioneer in the field of advertising supported music.

He JUST blogs about ad supported music. His bag is more about integrating and including advertising into the download of digital products such as mp3's but i'm telling you, it just shows the scope of this new paradigm!!!




Kurb is a media promotions company providing a regular blog on digital music promotion, marketing digital content and creating revenue from new media online.

Kurb also provides online promotion and revenue management services for musicians and artists internationally

And the best value fast turnover physical media services in New Zealand including CD / DVD printing and duplication and poster services.Our physical media services come with free graphic set up and support, free delivery, and free promotions advice and support for musicians.

All the best with your project, from KurbFor direct enquiries get us on gmail as kurbpromoDIGITAL COACHING AND ONLINE MANAGEMENT STARTS @ $NZ250