The Two Key Aspects of Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Having a website is important. But what do you put on it? Obviously the goal of a site, especially for a musician, is to do one of two things.

First, it can generate a lead. for instance, you might want to make a central focus of your website getting students. If that’s the case, you want to gear your content towards making that happen.

Second, you can generate a “sale”. And by sale, I don’t mean literally a sale. You may want people to buy your CD. Or you may want them to sign up for your newsletter. Either way, you’re getting something of value ($$ or email or whatever) for something else. That’s a sale.

So what are the two key aspects of your online marketing strategy?

1. Having a Brand and Conveying It

A brand is the thing you’d like to be known for. If you’d like to be known as the guitar teacher in your area, you want to the first name on the list when other people ask about it. In other words, when people talk about you, what do they think?

Your website should line up with your brand. And it should be consistent. If you’re a performer, getting booked (or generating a lead to get a booking) is the goal of your website. If that’s the case, think carefully about how you can make that happen.

If your goal is to get students, what can your site look like to get a lead? If you want to trade an email for a few mp3’s, how can your site do that?

It’s all about lining up your content and look and everything else into a singular focus (a story) that generates the desired action.

2. Consistently Updating Your Website (& Social Media)

If you have your brand, talk about it. Update frequently. If you’re a teacher, write blog posts about teaching. If you’re a performer, update videos and recordings frequently, and spend some time tell your visitors about what you’re up to.

Why update frequently? Because a good social media strategy involves sending people to your site. Not replacing your website with an official facebook page.

Remember point one about gearing your site towards conveying a brand? You cannot really do that on facebook (or twitter or youtube or whatever). All of those things are important “outposts” for you, but a good online marketing strategy involves sending people to your own website where, theoretically, you’re better able to generate a desired reaction.

But I’m a Teacher/Performer/Composer/Everything!

Musicians do a ton of things to make a living, and that’s okay.

Start thinking about how you can unify or relate those themes. What is the central action you want people to take when visiting your site? It’s probably some sort of lead generation or opt in, no matter what the brand. If you do get permission to contact people, that’s an opportunity to market to them in a very personalized, relevant way.

Also remember that you can have multiple websites. Sometimes this is a good option, sometimes not.

It looks like Fridays have become “music business post” day. Are you guys enjoying these posts? Do you find them helpful?