We all know by now that being an artist probably means you don’t have loads of money to throw around. Especially when in a band, there are many pressing issues that require a budget before you even get to the topic of music marketing. You know it’s something necessary to do in this day and age but somehow not sure what the best approach for your limited budget is? In this article we’ll do the opposite and tell you what not to do so you can at least avoid the most common pitfalls.

Putting all your eggs in a basket with advertising

At this point in time the audience is spread among all popular social media channels and being everywhere gives you more opportunities to be seen. Furthermore, there is a huge rise of influencers and their capability of driving audiences to a certain target is unmatchable. Last but not least, platforms like Spotify are also insanely popular among music fans. Instead of risking all your budget on one platform/option why not split it and do a bit of everything? This will also give you the chance to experiment and see what works best for your music.

Using the wrong targeting

Getting to know your audience is crucial information not only for advertising but also for understanding how to approach communication with your followers and what language/types of posts would yield best results. A big mistake many musicians make when spending money on marketing is not targeting their content to fit exactly their niche. Yes, you will reach less people but you have a higher chance of reaching the people that matter which in the end results in a bigger following for you. After all, much like there are hundreds of music genres out there, there are hundreds of types of people and the more experimental your approach, the narrower your niche.

Not adequately tracking your ROI

ROI (Return on Investment) is the way to figure out how many of your financial efforts have returned to you in one way or another. These are the 5 important areas you should look at:

• How much money you’re putting in
• How many leads (potential customers/followers) you get
• How many of those leads convert to customers/followers
• The customer lifetime value of each customer
• How much it costs to service those customers (be it time/money/any type of resource)

These may sound a bit scary but it’s just about spending a bit of time and looking at some figures generated by your analytics and trying to figure out if the current approach is correct or if something is not yielding the desired results.

Expecting fame right away

It’s pretty obvious that we’d all like to be rewarded in one form or another for our efforts. However, expecting things to change right away is, unfortunately, 99% of the time simply unrealistic and can produce a truly disheartening feeling if things do not go as fast as one would hope. Yes, putting money behind your musical artistry will give you a boost and potentially lead to an amazing record label deal, potential world tours and everything you’ve dreamed of, but all these things take time to materialise.

Using the same old marketing strategy over and over again

Ever heard the ‘beating a dead horse’ expression? It’s a well known idiom for a reason. We are wired to fall back into our old habits especially if said habits have once been successful. The problem is that marketing is such a fast-paced area nowadays that certain strategies that worked months ago could be completely obsolete now. This, of course, means we have to start fresh and figure things out again. However, better to try something new and to experiment a little bit before putting your money for certain somewhere, than to continue with the same old patterns that have proved unsuccessful.

Random advertising without consistency on social media

Last but not least, this one is tailored specifically to social media but something that we’ve noticed a lot of bands doing: random bouts of activity and boosting posts followed by periods of inactivity. Unfortunately these are not things that will help you in the long run, yes said post will get some more attention but the hype around them will eventually fade and that’s why if you do decide to revive something it would be ideal to pair this with periods of activity and showing your followers that you are sticking around.