Finding work as a musician can be fun and exciting, but it can be challenging and competitive too. Marketing yourself as a musician takes confidence, motivation, and a desire to succeed. There can be many different things to balance as you put yourself out there in the music world. It can take time before it feels like your hard work is finally paying off. Here are some top tips for marketing yourself as a musician.
- Promote Yourself Online and Offline
When you’re performing to a crowd, make the most of the opportunity to advertise your skills and talents. Always encourage people to follow you on social media or visit your website. Create playlists on YouTube or Spotify and find websites that allow you to promote your music.
While on the internet, build and grow social media pages and promote yourself in relevant social media groups with likeminded musicians and others who are interested in the type of music you play or create. Release a regular update or newsletter and invest in email marketing trials to see whether this brings success among your fan base.
- Build Relationships with Your Fans
As a musician, it’s important that you keep building your audience and reaching new people. It’s also important that you spend time building relationships with your existing fans. You will often reach new audiences through existing audiences, so putting some additional time and energy into those who love your music can pay dividends in the future.
Let your fans know how much you appreciate their support and encourage them to share your social media and website with other people they know. Keep them updated about any new music, gigs and performances, or new videos you are releasing. Hold competitions and give your fans the chance to win a copy of your new album or free tickets to your next gig.
- Tell People About Yourself
Take time to create some content that allows people to find out more about you. In order to build your fan base, people need to know what makes you interesting and why they should be interested in you and your music.
Write a biography about yourself which includes details about your childhood, how you became interested in music or learned to play a musical instrument, what your favorite styles of music are, and what you enjoy playing. You can also record a short audio or video clip at a rehearsal studio like PIRATE to give your fans an insight into what you do. You can find out more about how to write a music bio and some of the key things you should include when marketing yourself to your target audience with PIRATE’s blog page. Useful tips can be found in this article: How to write a music artist bio.
- Be Proactive with Sharing Your Work
You can make lots of music and post it on your social media pages, but if you’re not reaching many people, you will struggle to become more well-known. Share your music and performances with other websites, local news outlets, larger social media groups and pages, and blogs which may be interested in resharing your content. The more proactive you are about sharing your work, the more chances there will be for other people to become interested in promoting it further.
You should also be open to taking interviews or writing guest posts for other websites. While this type of work will not always be paid, it can be an essential part of building a more influential presence and a larger fan base.
- Promote Your Personality Too
Many musicians get to where they are because of their talent, but their personality plays a massive part too. Coming across as a friendly and approachable person is a big factor in promoting yourself in the music world and can help you to build stronger relationships with other musicians, agents, fans, and investors. You can allow people to get to know you better by producing videos talking about yourself and your work, allowing fans to ask you questions, or maintaining a blog or vlog online.
If you have a budget to help with promotional material, hire a freelancer or agent to help you. This can be a worthwhile investment if you are able to reach more people and make the most of some professional marketing skills and advice.
- Work with Other Musicians
Going solo is often harder and lonelier than collaborating with others. This doesn’t mean that you need to join a band or other group in order to be happy and successful, but focusing on creating strong partnerships with other musicians can go a long way and make your job as a musician more interesting.
Not only can working with other musicians provide you with access to rehearsal spaces and studios, it can also bring performance opportunities and open doors to new connections and contacts. You never know where networking events and new connections could take you next. Be open to new things and consider all the factors carefully before turning down professional opportunities.
- Stay Focused on Your Brand
It’s important to build your own brand awareness as a musician, whether this is your name, a motto, or a logo. Keep pushing the same messaging and brand among your audience to help build awareness and profile. Include your brand in everything you publish, including music, blog posts, photos, and videos.
Hire a freelancer or other design professional to help create a solid brand that will resonate with your audience and increase your fan base. Take time to choose exactly what this should be and invest in market research if your budget allows.
Promoting yourself as a musician requires time, confidence, and dedication to your work. It can take months or even years before you see the results of your efforts, but if working as a musician is your passion then you could be on the road to success. Place emphasis on working with others, valuing your fan base, and building brand awareness over time. If you enjoy what you do, it will be easier to make the most of opportunities and boost your marketing success as a musician.
