Whether you’re a singer, songwriter, guitarist, or drummer, music is definitely a passion that is in you. And, if you had it your way, you’d probably spend all day, every day, writing and performing your music.
But if you want to be a successful artist, you also need to think about your music as a business. And, running a successful business requires you to put down the guitar and do some of the legwork necessary to promote your business.
In the following article, we’re going to go over the 5 most important steps in promoting and marketing yourself on Soundcloud.
Craft a Marketing Strategy
In the business world, it’s a common marketing practice to start out by determining your goals, identifying your target market, and then creating a products that fills a need or solves a problem for that market in order for you to reach your goals. And, as a musician, using the same strategies is crucial if you want to be successful.
To do this, you need to determine your ideal fans’ personalities and traits. Things such as whether they go to small venues or music festivals, or whether they prefer listening to live music in bars or from the privacy of their own homes are crucial aspects in understand how you can reach them.
Ultimately, your going to want to create what is known as a marketing persona, which is simply a template or profile of your average listener. Then, once you know exactly who your target market is, you need to find out where to find your target audience.
Read more about creating marketing personas here.
Find Your Target Market
The next step involves learning where your target market is, both on and offline. In other words, you need to find out where your target market looks for their music.
There are plenty of places online where you can find your potential fans. This includes websites such as SoundCloud, YouTube, Reddit, and even social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
One of the best parts of looking for your target audience online is that most platforms are social networks, which means you can learn not only what potential fans like, but also other important factors such as where they live, what they do, and how they interact with these platforms.
Just make sure to dig around for as much information as possible. The more you know about your audience, the better you’ll be able to target them.
Use Social Media to Promote Yourself
Once you’ve set your goals and have identified your target market, the next step is to begin promoting yourself through social media.
But that doesn’t mean you need to be on every single social media site. And, neither does it mean you should only choose one and stick with it. The important thing is to choose a platform that you’re comfortable using, but it also needs to be a platform that your potential audience uses as well.
Dig into Analytics
The easiest way to get analytic data on SoundCloud is to upgrade to the Pro version, since SoundCloud has restrictions on their users’ free accounts, which won’t let them access any type of data.
With a Pro account, you get significantly more upload time, as well as having access to traffic and usage analytics. So, although it may cost you a bit more than using a free account, upgrading to Pro is the best way to gather data about your listeners.
On the other hand, if you don’t or can’t afford to pay for SoundCloud Pro, you can always use analytics from other platforms such as Google or YouTube.
YouTube only gives you access to analytics about your channel. However, this can be extremely valuable when it comes to learning what your fans like and how much of your music they listen to.
Check out https://buyplaysfast.com for more tips and information on how to successfully market your music with SoundCloud.
Start Reaching Out
Now that you’ve started generating a bit of buzz about your music, you’re ready to start reaching out to the influencers and tastemakers in the industry.
Back in the day, DJs were the only tastemakers in music. But today, more and more bloggers and online influencers are taking over the role of tastemaker. So, start looking around for bloggers, music curators, and even online DJs that you can reach out to.
There are practically no artists out there who can say that they’ve made it big completely on their own. Most of the time, although they were already making great music and generating a fan base on their own, they were picked up by someone who boosted them into fame.
These people are known as tastemakers, and are often producers, radio hosts, or A&R reps from record labels. And, there’s no end to tastemakers, both on and offline.
But don’t think that tastemakers are simply going to find you. That’s truly a rare scenario. In fact, that’s why most artists have agents and managers who contact people like this for them.
So, if you truly want to make it big in the music industry, you need to get out of the studio and start reaching out to these people.
