“Marketing” is a term that gets thrown around a lot in the music industry.
But it’s important to understand exactly what marketing is (and isn’t) if you want to drive results for your music. And one of the more important things to clarify is the difference between music marketing and music advertising.
Here’s a quick explainer for musicians.
What is music marketing?
Marketing is any series of deliberate actions you take to create awareness for your music, build a fanbase, and generate revenue.
It’s also the ongoing effort of sharing your music, or a part of your music’s story, in a compelling way, to the right audience, through the right channels, at the right time, so that someone will notice, care, and take action.
Because “marketing” covers so many possible channels, goals, and tactics, it’s really an umbrella term that can encompass many specific endeavors, including:
Many artists make the mistake of seeing these individual marketing endeavors as separate or even interchangeable. But marketing is the whole strategy, the game-plan that ties each of these efforts together into a larger journey.
It’s a more complete vision for how you’ll get your music noticed and move listeners from strangers, to fans, to customers, to lifelong advocates of your art.
What is music advertising?
Let’s face it. Your following on social probably doesn’t see everything you post.
So if you lean on organic social posts to do all your communication work, you’re leaving a lot of opportunities on the table:
Enter advertising, sometimes called “paid media.”
(Because you’re paying… for media… to get attention.)
The focus of advertising is to give you a fast and targeted way to reach the right audience at the right time:
Different forms of music advertising
Advertising — even within a single industry, such as recorded music — can take many shapes.
Want to run ads for your music? That could mean a full-page ad in a glossy magazine. A billboard in Times Square. Or a radio commercial.
But more often for musicians today we’re talking about digital ads.
The kind of sponsored content you see when scrolling Instagram or TikTok. The pre-roll ads that play before YouTube videos. The audio ads that free users of Spotify periodically hear.
Or the playable banner ads that appear when you’re reading an article on Pitchfork or NME:
Advertising cuts through the noise
When a message or objective is important enough that you’ll pay for people to see it, advertising helps your audience take notice.
Not only because it boosts the likelihood that your content will be served up in the first place, but because ads can be delivered multiple times to the same person.
And in a world of distraction where (by many marketers’ calculations) people need to see something between 7-13 times before they act on the information, advertising does a better job than most other forms of marketing at simply reaching people.
So advertising is a great option for reaching new listeners and growing your audience. But it’s also a good solution when you need to get important messages in front of your existing audience.
And when you factor in “retargeting,” which is the ability to send ads to people you know have already interacted with previous ads, tracks, or videos, then advertising becomes a powerful tool to move listeners from point A to Z.
The easiest way to advertise on major music websites
As you can tell from this article, advertising is just ONE component of the music marketing toolkit. So just like with organic social, you can’t expect it to do ALL the work.
But when used in conjunction with other marketing efforts (such as creating great social content, building and using your email list, etc.), advertising can help your music go much further.
Are you looking for the easiest and most budget-friendly way to get your music onto popular sites like Pitchfork, Billboard, RollingStone, MTV, and NME? Check out ReverbNation’s Promote It! You can launch your first campaign in minutes.
Special offer: From now through August 31st, you can even save $10 on a Promote It campaign when you set a campaign budget of at least $21. Use the code PROMOTEIT10 at checkout.
And be sure to read these tips on how to create an effective ad that performs well.
