Music Promotion

The Single Most Important Marketing Strategy

That No Music Marketing Company Would Ever Understand

While I was researching what information there is out there for young budding musicians trying to market their music properly, I came across a few different music marketing companies that offered various goods and services to help up and coming bands promote themselves.

Without being rude, I found most of them to be quite lame in what they offer and seemed like a total waste of money given the actual service they deliver.

I’m not sure if it’s just me but why would any young band really need to hire a music marketing company to help them anyway? Generally speaking common sense and plain intuition should get you through at the end of the day.

A few searches on Google on topics like “writing a press releases” and “preparing a press kit” would get you most of the info you need, all for free…..

Additionally, I’ve always been of the opinion that the only way to really learn and understand something is to get out there and do it yourself. Paying a music marketing company to do all the hard work for you will not even guarantee any results.

However most importantly, you can almost be guaranteed that any music marketing company out there will never ever tell you or help you figure out the single most important marketing strategy that every band must have to ensure that they have a shot at breaking through to the other side.

Figure Out What Your “Story” or “Hook” Is and Milk It!

The first and foremost point to note is that the music industry is built on having a great story to tell. Being able to spin a good story and talk your band up for any particular reason is without doubt the most valuable marketing ploy any band can adopt in this business.

Whether it’s trying to get more gigs or trying to support other bands or trying to get a guy at a record label or booking agent to show interest in you, you can be assured of one thing, if you have a great story to tell, they’ll always show more interest in you over anyone else.

Whatever your story is, it needs to either wow people or make people so curious about what you’re telling them that they want to know more or hear your music immediately.

Think about it for a moment, most massive bands and artists are sold on the back of having a hook or a great story to help arouse attention and get you to buy their music. Sometimes if the story is good enough, you’ll go out and support the artist just out of curiosity.

How much easier are you making the media’s lives when you hand them the story on a platter. They don’t even need to think because you created the story for them. The media love it.

This concept cannot be written about enough. If you’re really serious about breaking into the music industry make sure you start thinking about what your bands story could possibly be based around. Because no-one else especially a music marketing company will help you craft this strategy for you.

Different Types Of Stories To Craft

There are so many different types of stories that a band can craft. Most of the time it takes a while to build a story and generally speaking the story out aloud over and over again creates itself however there is nothing wrong with carefully thinking about the concept of storytelling and slowly trying to figure out how your band can start to create it’s own story or hook around your music.

1. Stories Based On Success

Success is obviously relative and no-one would expect a band from a small country town in the middle of America to of sold 1 million albums to make a good story, however imagine a band from that same small tiny country town being able to tell a record company that they just sold over 50,000 CD’s on their last summer tour and grossed well over $100,000 in merchandising from that same tour.

Now that’s a story!

That would make any record company exec fall of their seats. Even if those numbers were halved you’d get a good response and much more interest simply because of the numbers.

Numbers speak much louder than words. Those numbers are telling a smart business man that there is a vibe on your band, people are buying your music and that you’ve been able to create some traction around your music.

Main example in this category would be REM in the mid 80’s when they started out. They toured the college scene for years before they signed their first major label deal. But their success came as a result of such strong success on their own accord.

The Offspring were no different, they toured for 15 years before their album Smash broke through to the other side and landed them a deal with Sony. Green Day were in the same boat, they toured heavily around the San Francisco area and got a name and reputation for themselves as a successful live touring act that kept building traction off each tour they did.

On a different note, getting one of your songs placed in a major TV commercial or a movie soundtrack or a TV show would also be considered a great story to tell based on success.

Imagine you could tell a publishing company that your music has been placed in a movie already or on the latest TV commercial.

Not an easy task to pull off but given some creativity and motivation, anything is possible.

Take Dido as an example here career was launched off the back of having a sample of her first single in an Eminem video clip - Now that is a great story!

Do you think a music marketing company conceived this idea? Definitely not! Good management and a clever record company who understand the power of having a great story to tell to launch an artists career.

2. Stories Based On Location

This is an easy no brainer that is used time and time again as a conversation starter for a lot of bands stories.

When the Killers first broke in the US, every single story touched on the fact that they were from Las Vegas. Why does that make for an interesting piece? Because Las Vegas is the last place you’d expect to find a hot rock’n roll band.

Apart from totally ripping off other artists before their time, The Strokes broke into the mainstream for being the new “it” band out of the Village in New York City. Let’s face it the village in NY is cool and they cashed in on that angle big time. All their press shots were taken in bars in the village and all their press clippings talked about NYC

However the most obvious and vivid story in the past 15 years is the whole Seattle scene that gave us Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Mudhoney and many more. These bands became famous for being part of a scene in a particular town of America.

What about the Beastie Boys - they have become just as known for being called “The Boys From Brooklyn” Great story.

3. Stories Based On Relationships

This one is pretty straight forward. Kings Of Leon, White Stripes, The Carpenters, Spice Girls, Oasis and tons more. A really cheesy English duo from the 80’s just came to mind aswell called Bros. Come to think of it, they were actually gay lovers, which really makes for a very interesting read!

However think about all these bands and groups and think about how they all have created some sort of dynamic within their “relationship story” that makes it even more interesting.

For example - are Meg and Jack from the White Stripes ex-lovers or brother and sister?

Anyway, I think you get the drift….

Could you imagine a music marketing company really helping you figure this stuff out?

The bottom line is that there are so many more ways to create a story around your band other than just the boring old press release and media kit which is the extent to which a music marketing company would help you.

Jump outside the box and have a good long think about what you think your band is capable of creating in terms of your own story, because let’s face it, every band needs one…..

What’s your bands story?