How to Market Music Online the One Two Punch

While it's important to properly design, prepare, and optimize your web site for the search engines, search engine placement is only the very beginning of your music marketing plan. The first audience you need to target is your existing fan base. As I will demonstrate shortly, your fans are going to play a big part in how you lay the groundwork for future marketing strategies.

If you're just starting out in the music business and feel like "I don't have a fan base," think again. You have family, friends, co-workers, classmates, former classmates, church members and neighbors all around you. If you sit down and start writing down the names of every person you've ever known in your life, you'll be very surprised how quickly that list grows without much effort. Don't underestimate the power of your friends, family, and immediate circle of acquaintances. You've heard of the fabled 'six degrees of separation.' Well, you really only need two of those six degrees to start building a pretty large mailing list.

The Internet is a fantastic tool for finding old friends and acquaintances. One of the first things I recommend you do when building a mailing list is pull out your old high school and college yearbooks. Remember Fred? Sue? Or Tom? I'll bet you forgot about all those old chums of yours! Go through the class pictures and write down the names of anyone you think would be interested in your music career. Now you just need to find them!

There are a large number of resources on the Internet you can use to research old school pals. Most everyone knows about Classmates.com, which charges a fee to join, but there are other resources, many of which offer free registration.

Make Contact - Newsletter

Whether you are a performing musician or not, mailing out a printed newsletter to your fans twice a year is one more way to drive fans to your web site. Your newsletter is your key to getting inside the home of each of your fans on a semi-regular basis. While many suggest e-mail is a good, inexpensive substitute for postal mail, in reality, you should consider using both methods.

E-mail is too easy to discard and people change e-mail addresses all the time. Not only that, but not everyone has a permanent e-mail address or Internet access, and for those fans, your newsletter may be your only means of keeping in touch. For the fans that do have Internet access, your newsletter is a great way to stir up curiosity about your web site.

Your newsletter should include much of the same information as your web site: band photos, a performance schedule, product reviews, news, articles, contests, song lyrics, merchandise info and, of course, contact and booking information. Newsletters have several benefits:

• A newsletter keeps your act fresh in the minds of your fans.

• A newsletter keeps your mailing list up-to-date. If you include the phrase "Return Service
Requested" on your newsletter just below the return address, the post office will return
undeliverable mail to you with the correct new address so you can update your mailing list.

• A newsletter is a great source of information for those fans of yours who do not have Internet
access.

Information and news about your web site should be a main topic of your newsletter. The objective of your newsletter, much like live performance, is to drive your fans to your web site where you can sell them your product.

So, in your newsletter use some of the same methods to promote your web site that you do when performing. Announce contests, offer coupons, give away free stuff, whatever you can think of. The more your fans visit your web site, the more opportunities you will have to sell them your merchandise.