The 6 Mainstays of Webmarketing

This is a guest post by Virginie Berger. With more than 15 years of experience in the music industry, Virginie is the former marketing and content director of MySpace (France and French-speaking territories). She is also the founder and CEO of DBTH; an alternative management firm, and the publishing editor of Don't Believe the Hype (virginieberger.com); a website specialized in music marketing.

This blog post is an excerpt from her new book “Music and digital strategies” which is available on Amazon and iTunes.

The six mainstays of webmarketing

“You create attention to attract attention”, Kurt Cobain

Marketing allows you to optimize your music strategy and apply it as appropriately as
possible. It doesn’t interfere with the artistic creation, its goal is to broadcast your music.

Marketing: make yourself known

Marketing concentrates on how to get your public informed of your existence. A key
marketing objective is therefore to make the audience you focus on know you, love you and
trust you.

Indeed, your public can know you and like what you do, but what will push them into buying
your album or going to your concert? What will assure them you are as good as you say you
are?

You need to build a relationship based on trust with your current and future fans. In the case
of an established artist, the trust bond should be strong enough for them to be sure your next
album will be as good as the previous one. If you are still developing your fan base, you need
to convince them that your album is as good as the single they hear and that the live version
might be even better.

One can define webmarketing with these six basic steps:

1. Setting up a website
2. Creating profiles on social networks
3. Opening a channel on video platforms
4. Optimizing your web ranking
5. Producing content
6. Regularly broadcasting content through all these channels

In a word: you create a site and profiles, broadcast music and sell it. But, to achieve this,
each tool and each action must rely on these six fundamental points.

Content

Music must be heard, it is what the public seek and wish to exchange. You must therefore
have some proper content to offer: music of course, videos, photos, a blog, a newsletter...
Each title, each picture, each video posted on your blog is a way to commit your fans or to
be discovered by others. Such content also gives you the opportunity to create an impulse
purchase.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SEO is a way to optimize content in search engines and allow you to be found and singled
out amongst billions of search results. Indeed, each piece of digital content can be indexed
and ranked up as a result powered by an Internet search engine.

Social media

Social media is a site, a platform, a space allowing exchange, discussion and interaction with
other people also connected to the site: Facebook, YouTube are social media.

Here, you are addressing a prepared audience, ready to receive your information and pass it
on.

Social media are primarily tools that magnify pre-existent efforts. Obviously, without any
attractive content (music, video, contest, information, blog posts, humor, etc.), social media
will not be of much help in the spreading of your work on the web.

Data analysis

You can measure almost everything on the Internet where the slightest action may be
quantified. Digital marketing allows you to assess the success of your efforts in real-
time. Many tools are available to help you in developing campaigns aimed at building and
committing your fanbase as well as increasing your visibility and monetization. You can then
optimize and measure the impact of your actions.

Monetization strategy

You can now sell directly via your website, thanks to the integration of an external
platform or via external sites. Working from your own site will allow you to personalize your
offer and address your audience more precisely.

Knowing your public

Every artist is different. Each one has their own public, codes, communication methods,
media outlets... You must therefore develop the understanding of your public, of your fans so
as to offer the most adequate communication and contents.

The two keys here are regularity and coherence. This kind of strategy takes time: to get
visibility, to build and commit your fanbase and to monetize your content.