Echoes of Audiences: Crafting Music Industry Buyer Personas

A buyer persona, or a customer or marketing persona, represents your ideal customer. We created this to understand our target audience better. We craft this persona based on research, data, and information gathered from customers within our industry.

Crafting Your Fanbase Buying Personas

In 2001, I was asked to develop street teams for a handful of bands performing at the Vans Warped Tour for the first time. These were pop-punk bands based out of California. They would be touring that summer, potentially in front of concertgoers who had never heard of them. These street teams were made up of young teenagers with similar music tastes. They would assist us in spreading awareness, introducing new people to their music, and driving them to see their performance in unknown markets. We had to expand their reach and make sure their shows were not empty. After all, if they performed well, they would most likely be invited back the following year. We had to start identifying their potential fanbase and promote early to ensure their show succeeded.

Gather Your Research Data

We started by doing market research with data that was provided to us from their record label and management. How many units had they sold? (There was no streaming music at that time). What was their music video rotation on television music channels? What was their fan base demographic? Was their fanbase segregated in a particular area? We took this information to create a buyer persona and target fans with similar tastes to spread awareness and apply promotion efforts in new markets. In today’s age, this data is much easier to obtain. The internet has a bigger reach, and data is gathered in the backend. Fans are also more vocal and interactive. Today, we can use social media to market more than ever.

Persona Creation:

It is essential to think of yourself as a brand. As an artist, you must create and carry out your brand throughout your career. This brand could be your name, logo, music, and merchandise. Dayna Young, founder of Fred & Augustus, offers excellent tips on creating Music Fans Personas as artists build their marketing plans. Your goal as an artist is to understand your fan base, tailor your content messaging, and begin to target your campaign around the likes and wants of your fanbase.

As we create our persona, we must give our fictional fans a name, age, profession, hobbies, challenges, preferred streaming service, purchasing tickets, and where they receive their information. To visualize the information we need to obtain, I have created an example of a buyer persona in the music industry:

buyer persona

creation

Spread awareness and measure success

As you can see, we gathered information on our idea buyer persona and targeted our promotion efforts specifically for this type of fan. We had a small budget when working for these particular bands, so we began by distributing stickers and postcards and canvassing universities and small-town coffee shops for our promotion. Word of mouth became our biggest and most successful tactic. Younger generations love free swag and started offering to help with local promotions in their town. We started to grow in Florida. Fans from Miami started spreading the word to Ft. Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, and Orlando. Eventually, the band gained notoriety in the state, and the success of these small street team campaigns started showing an increase in the data for those bands.

Keep up with industry trends

Shannon Hilson, Rock Content Writer, advises, “When used wisely and creatively, buyer personas can be a very accurate way to put yourself in your customer’s shoes, figure out what they want to see, and use what you know to sell your products.” When building buyer personas, knowing our industry's ins and outs is imperative, as it constantly changes. As marketers (artists included), we must adapt to new changes. We must go where our audiences are and continue evolving in the cycle.

Music producer and speaker Erik Mehlsen shares his experience as a touring musician and where the industry is heading next. Creating and targeting buyer personas in the music industry will help develop campaigns that will assist the parties with other aspects of promotion, such as merchandising and touring. If they know their buyer persona, they will know what items they purchase. Do their buyers prefer tank tops or shirts? Do they collect cassettes or vinyl? Narrowing down personas is just the beginning of getting to know your fanbase and developing an essential connection as you grow as an artist in the industry.