Indie Music Marketing Strategies

Excerpted from our new guide, 10 Effective Strategies to Get Your Music Noticed: Promotional strategies for independent musicians.

While most bands would like to have a marketing plan and budget that would allow them to promote their latest album on TV, radio, and billboards, it’s more likely you have just enough to print up posters for your next gig. And yet, indie musicians can get the kind of attention that can build a real fan base and help make a career in music with the right songs and the right music marketing strategies and promotional approach.


Here are ten effective strategies you can use now to get yourself noticed and win fans:
1. The Standing-Out Strategy
2. The Piggybacking Strategy
3. The Agent Strategy
4. The Multitasking Strategy
5. The Long Haul Strategy
6. The Street Team strategy
7. The Engage Your Audience Strategy
8. The Keep On Truckin’ Strategy
9. The Alternative Gig Strategy
10. The Stay-Tuned Strategy

#7 – The Engage Your Audience Strategy
No marketing plan today can skip social networking as a method to build a fan base. Think about it: each of your fans has hundreds of followers on Facebook and Twitter. If they start talking about your shows or your music, your fan base will grow. But you need to be active online and give them a reason to talk about you.

But most musicians want to spend time making music – not constantly checking their social networks, so here’s a helpful strategy to automate your use of social networking and start bringing fans to you.

First, use social media dashboard and syndication tools like Hootsuite.com or Ping.fm so whenever you post a photo, video, or blog, your update will go everywhere that you have a presence.

Next, use tools like Socialoomph.com to email you when your band name or Twitter ID is talked about anywhere in a social network. Also use Google Alerts to email you when your band, albums, or website are talked about anywhere on the web. (For a how-to, see How To Get Automatic Alerts When Your Band Is Mentioned Online) If you do this right, you will only need to post content once, and it will get sent to all of your web presences; and any responses from fans will come right back to your email. You will be almost psychic about staying on top of every mention, and can respond and engage with them with minimal effort.

Then, just remember to snap pictures or video with your phone when you’re backstage, or at the studio, and share little pieces of your musical life. Give your fans reasons to talk about you, and your fan base can grow out of what you do naturally as a musician while you spend your time on your music, rather than social networking.