Successful promotional campaigns drive traffic and sales for independent record labels. Whereas majors have big budgets, resources and time, a smaller record company faces challenges. We have analyzed our campaigns to give indie labels an easy guide to successful promotions of your products or services. Our guide will help you to promote your music.
Let’s start defining key elements of a good marketing campaign:
Brand awareness, social media presence, connection with Digital Selling Points (DSP’s) and finding and using the right data.
Having a strong brand is of the utmost importance. Brands as Coca Cola, Apple or McDonalds all have one thing in common: their brand value is higher than the combined value of all their physical assets. What would be worse? Coca Cola losing all their warehouses overnight, or by some miracle all people in the world who know Coca Cola suddenly forget what Coca Cola is?
Let’s start by building a strong brand.
Here are a few tips:
An easy one to guess, but so important. Make sure all online impressions of your label are consistent with your brand policy. Same font, images and tone of voice.
Tip: use Kwettr Reports to determine the tone of voice that best fits your target group. It also provides you with valuable targeting tips for Facebook ads.
A good way to guarantee brand consistency is to create a corporate identity manual. Make sure all employees have a copy of this and make sure all moderators of your social media channels know how to follow the guidelines set out in the corporate identity manual.
Most important for any indie record label is a good A&R manager who understands the target group and has a talent of spotting and signing upcoming artists. Find out if there is an upcoming show of emerging talent nearby and watch them play live. A live show is a good way to see how the fan base interacts with the band and to find out what people love. Instead of playing countless demo’s in the office, live shows are a much better way to listen to music.
Creating a solid release schedule is a combination of good A&R, data collection and interpretation and planning ahead in time.
Online is the most important way for fans to discover new music. A strong social media marketing strategy should encompass the following:
Creative material: stories, video’s, backstage footage, user-generated content. The Kwettr app lets users create content with your brand image and post it directly on their Facebook page.
Where majors all have their own dedicated channels to streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music or Amazon, an indie label has to find the right path to pitch music. Here are a few tips:
What DSP’s like: a tour schedule, a biography and images of the band or artist.
A good thing about having competition is that they pave the way: you don’t have to figure everything out for yourself. We offer a wide range of piggybacking tools, tips and tricks to learn from your competitors. A solid way of doing market research. Here are a few tips:
Our goal is to help you make the most of your internet marketing through socials, portals, live events and data analytics. Modern marketing for the music industry. A carefully thought of strategy, fueled with the right kind of data is what defines marketing. Any record label that sells a product can benefit from our Music Marketing Handbook.
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