When you think about what you have done to build your music business today, how confident are you in your efforts being effective?
Hopefully, the things you did today were aligned to your mission of connecting with your fans. If not, we have more work to do that you know.
It is amazing how many artists are not building programs to convert new fans.
Today, I want to introduce a concept that I do not see addressed when folks provide advice to artists – fan conversion.
It may not seem like a groundbreaking idea, but I rarely see people putting in the time and effort to really create engagement experiences that are designed to turn a passive listener into an avid fan.
If you think these statements are annoying because you believe the music should do the converting, then you can leave now. Best wishes on your magical music saving your career.
This is serious. You know that you need fans to survive. Fans pay the bills.
It is amazing how many artists are not building programs to convert new fans.
One-off campaigns do not count either. Fan acquisition needs to be a round-the-clock affair.
Let’s get basic here, let’s talk about the ABC of music marketing.
Always Be Converting
As the head of your music business, you should know your bottom line is affected by your ability to keep your fan base happy and growing.
That is why it makes sense for everything you do to be motivated by your fans.
When you build your website, you should be envisioning the fan experience when you hit your site.
When you set up your Facebook page and you begin to beg for likes, you should make sure you are providing them something of value there as well.
Your merchandise should be items that your converted fans actually want so much that they are willing to tell their friends about you, which is another conversion point.
Hopefully, you see where I am going with this.
No idea is original. I did not come up with “Always Be Converting” by myself. In fact, it was only when I saw a great marketing copy blog on the need for all copy to be written to convert did I think I was onto something.
Here is a quick story of how important conversion is.
This website gets solid traffic, due to search. FiV is always optimizing for particular keywords, so they can be found by the people that need them.
Yet the green “Subscribe” button in the header rarely gets touched; even though, it is quite visible.
The FiV email list is a measly number of subscribers.
Something had to be done.
Unnecessary elements on the page have since been removed that were deemed distracting.
In the last two posts, an email signup form was added to the end of the copy.
I bet you can guess what happened. Yep, email subscribers increased.
Here’s the crazy part – email subscribers increased by 100%!
That is why it was clear that it is time to get serious about conversion.
I want to help music artists become better business owners.
The only way I can do that is by making sure I am optimizing for your attention.
In the coming weeks, I will share how you can begin to optimize for your target consumer. Hopefully, you will stick around for that.
As you re-consider how you handle your music business, where do you think you can better convert listeners into fans? Let me know in the comments.