Planning Your Success: Navigating the Music Industry Marketing Funnel for Artists

Some may think that music is all fun and games, such as going to a concert or listening to an album at leisure. In reality, there’s a team of people who work behind the scenes along with the artist to craft every move meticulously and to ensure that everything goes according to plan.

The team behind every artist, consisting of agents, publicists, managers, and record label executives, works behind closed doors to carefully craft their client’s successful career. The artist has the vision, and along with their team, there’s a plan that should be followed to ensure a successful career.

Everything is done with intention. Behind every song and album release, merchandise design, and tour packaging, a collection of ideas resulted from a marketing plan.

The planning starts when the artist enters the recording studio, months before any announcement and release. It’s time to get to work, plan, and execute. It all begins with a simple tactic: The Marketing Funnel.

Building a Music Industry Marketing Funnel

“A marketing funnel is a visual representation of the steps a visitor takes from first finding out about your brand until they convert,” explains co-founder of NP Digital, Neil Patel. He details In his blog how marketing funnels help us understand how consumers interact with your brand, target efforts, and move them to purchase your product.

A marketing funnel is a visual representation of your fanbase journey. It starts with discovering your brand, engaging it, and converting it into a purchase.

When I worked as a booking agent, I often met with artist managers and publicists. We built campaigns around many different goals: Increase music sales, merchandise profits, public appearances, and sellout shows in key markets. We used a funnel that looked something like this:

Awareness - The public becomes aware of artists.

Acquisition - Album purchases, increased stream numbers.

Retention - Loyal fanbase, repeat customer purchases.

Referral - Word of mouth, sharing information with friends.

The greatest thing about collaborative work is that although everyone has a different goal and task to complete, it all comes together beautifully in the end. It feels like magic. If we succeed, the success shows in the numbers, the team is happy, and the client is happy. It means we’ve done our job correctly.

Get advice from industry leaders.

As you venture into your campaign, remember to align your marketing communication efforts with the strategies you have developed in your funnel. You must try to connect it to the personality that best fits your fanbase (target market). This will not only create loyalty but guarantee longevity. If you are just in the beginning stages, it can guide you in your journey.

Start working on your communication model from the start, as it will model how you communicate for your audience throughout your career. Make sure you get to know your audience, their passions, and hobbies to try to find the common interest that will form a bond from the beginning.

“There’s a lot of content we’re producing now that isn’t necessarily meeting its objectives,” explains Ann Handley, digital marketing pioneer. “We need to challenge our assumptions, challenge the way we’ve always done things, to create content that your customers want, that they'll love, that they’ll value.”

Handley believes marketers are not in the customer mindset. We need to consider what our customers value, start the content strategy with the customer in mind, and then develop our strategy.

Musician Jason Tonioli is another great example of how he used a marketing funnel to expand his music career, increase streams on Spotify, and start a subscription-based model to release music to his fans. He details in this video how he achieved a seven-figure music business by starting with building a marketing funnel.

Takeaways

Start with a piece of paper and draw your ideal goal. Go beyond the scope of wanting to be a star. You can have a hit music single today, but what about tomorrow? You need to create a plan and build an audience that will stay with you for the long haul.

The artist must study the ins and outs of the music industry and their branding and marketing strategy. They must look at the big picture and ensure it’s well-planned and carefully executed. Using a marketing funnel as a baseline, alongside high-quality content marketing, will ensure their audience receives quality content with intention and purpose.

We need to embed everything we’ve learned into our strategy and share our vision with our team so that every piece of the puzzle fits together nicely. In doing so, we can continue to achieve our vision and goal for years..