Sales and Marketing

How to Create a Fanbase From Scratch

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Artists MBA, Professional ProgramBack in February, I interviewed Ariel Hyatt about how to create a successful crowd funding campaign.

The first thing you need to build a successful crowdfunding campaign is, well, a CROWD!

It seems obvious, I know – and yet you’d be shocked how often I get this question from people who have 150 names on their email list and want to know how to use kickstarter raise $10,000 to record a CD!

But a fanbase is more than a crowdfunding necessity!  A healthy fanbase will help you to:

  • Fill the seats when you play a venue
  • Buy your CD’s, downloads and merch (also known as making a living)
  • Spread the word about how awesome you are to all their friends and family (take you viral)
  • Build a successful, profitable and sustainable business doing what you love!

So, how do you create your crowd from scratch? In this class you’ll discover:

  • How to use live performance to build your fanbase
  • How to use internet marketing and social media marketing to build your fanbase
  • The 3 mistakes that artists make in creating their list
  • Now that you’ve got fans, what do you do with them?

By the way, these techniques will also work to expand your fanbase if you’ve already got one started!

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7 Secrets to Get Booked on Corporate Stages with Tiamo De Vettori

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artists-marketing-business-academy-interview-with-expertsAt the Artists Marketing & Business Academy, we’re all about making a prosperous and sustainable living doing what you love. Are you sick and tired of playing small gigs that pay you next to nothing for your musical talent? What if you could play on huge stages in front of hundreds, if not thousands of people, and get paid like a rock star for it? Would that interest you?

Then it’s time that you discovered how to get booked on corporate stages! We’re thrilled to host guest lecturer Tiamo De Vettori. In this class, Tiamo will teach you:

 

  • How to get booked on the biggest and highest paying corporate stages that 6-FIGURE musicians don’t want you to know about
  • How to make career income from just a few gigs per year
  • How to use corporate gigs to grow your fan base
  • The 3 biggest mistakes musicians make when trying to break into the corporate market.
  • The #1 secret to getting paid like a celebrity in the corporate market

Tiamo’s class could change the path of your career!

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Debra Russell, Artists Marketing and Business Academy, Tiamo de Vettori, outsourcing, music business, music promotion, relationship building, team building, Contact Management, Time Management, OrganizationTiamo De Vettori

For music fans who want to feel connected, inspired, uplifted, and part of something bigger, we’ve found the artist for you. Often described as a cross between Jason Mraz and John Mayer, motivational acoustic-pop singer/songwriter, Tiamo De Vettori, was recently named L.A. Music Award’s “Male Singer/Songwriter of the Year” & San Diego Music Award’s “Best Songwriter”. Tiamo has been featured on FOX, CBS, NBC, and MSNBC and recently performed on stage at the Jimmy Kimmel Show. With a powerful voice, captivating stage presence, compelling lyrics, and melodies impossible not to sing along to, fans around the world have gravitated to Tiamo’s positive vibe and love for life.

Something that makes Tiamo so unique is that he is also a motivational speaker who combines his on-stage charisma with his inspriring personal stories, orginal songs, and acoustic guitar. Tiamo has performed and spoken to over 32,000 people around the country at seminars, trainings, colleges, and conferences, and has shared the stage with best-selling authors and speakers such as T. Harv Eker, Les Brown, Lisa Nichols, and Dan Millman. Tiamo has moved audiences since he was seven years old. During his childhood, he had the extremely rare opportunity to perform and tour the world with his Italian father, Franco De Vettori, an international opera singer.

Despite growing up on stage, Tiamo’s career as a singer/songwriter didn’t quite materialize until he intuitively hopped on a Greyhound bus headed for Virginia…just a few days after graduating from the University of Arizona. Shortly after, a close friend who had read Tiamo’s poetry and heard him sing, insisted that he explore the combination of songwriting and performing. Needing a friendly push, Tiamo had a hard time turning down his friend’s eventual offer to buy him a guitar as long as he kept one promise to his friend — get the guitar, let it sit in your living room, and as Tiamo’s friend put it, “the songs will just flow out of you”. Surely enough, Tiamo looked at his new guitar one rainy night, picked it up, and without any previous guitar experience, “accidentally” wrote his first song.

Tiamo has climbed to #4 and #18 on the Australian top 40 radio charts and is receiving radio play in 12 countries including the U.S. Aside from his international success, Tiamo can be found performing at some of the most popular venues in his home town of San Diego such as the highly celebrated Humphrey’s by the Bay, large college campuses including the University of California San Diego and San Diego State University, and other highly regarded venues such as the House of Blues, the Belly Up and Hard Rock Cafe. He has also performed live on San Diego’s most-watched morning news shows, News Channel 8 and News Channel 10, and and has been featured on some of Southern California’s most popular radio stations such as KPRI 102.1 FM.

With the international release of his CD entitled “Back to Love”, a vision of creating positive change in the music industry, and a gravitating persona, you can’t help but cheer on this modest, rising star.

How to Prepare for a Successful Crowd Funding Campaign, an Interview with Ariel Hyatt

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artists-marketing-business-academy-interview-with-expertsIn today’s DIY Music Business, many artists are looking to crowd funding to replace the financing that a record deal used to provide. But the success rates of crowd funding efforts in the music industry are not all Amanda F. Palmer stories. It’s not the get rich quick solution to your financial woes.

Luckily for us, Ariel Hyatt of Cyber PR has studied this question and is going to share a few of her Crowd Funding Success Secrets with the members of the Artists Marketing & Business Academy Professional Program.

In this Interview with an Expert you will learn:

  • The 3 biggest Crowd Funding mistakes
  • What you must have in place before you begin your Crowd Funding Campaign
  • How to choose which Crowd Funding site to use for your campaign – Kickstarter, Indiegogo, where to start?

Is Crowd Funding the right method at the right time for your next project? In this interview Ariel will give you the criteria for making a sound business decision for your career.

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Ariel Hyatt

Debra Russell, Artists Marketing and Business Academy, Ariel Hyatt, Music Promotion, PR, Social Media, twitter, internet marketing, social media marketing, social networking

From left, Dean Krippaehne, Vikki Flawith, Ariel Hyatt, Derek Sivers, Debra Russell, TAXI Panel

Ariel Hyatt is the founder of Ariel Publicity & Cyber PR a New York based digital PR firm that connects artists, authors and filmmakers to blogs, podcasts, internet radio stations and social media sites. Over the past 13 years her firm has represented over 1,400 musicians of all genres.

Educating musicians is her passion and her philosophy is: combine social media with Internet marketing to help artists grow their fanbase and increase their income.

Several times a year, she leads sold-out workshops to musicians and music industry professionals looking to learn about Social media and online marketing. Her bi-weekly ezine and YouTube series “Sound Advice” has over 10,000 subscribers and she is a contributing blogger to Music Think Tank.

Ariel has written dozens of articles on how to navigate the “new” music business and her book: Music Success in Nine Weeks is available at Amazon.

Internet Marketing and Social Media –Waste of Time or Key to Success in the New Music Business?

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Artists MBA, Foundation ProgramThe internet has paved the way for the Artist Entrepreneur to create your own career without waiting for the record deal, the publishing deal or anybody to “discover” you.

But learning what you need for your business can be quickly overwhelming – do you need a website?  What should be on it?  What about Facebook?  Twitter? YouTube? GooglePlus?

In this class, we’ll explore:

  • Case Studies of Artists who are successful
  • What you need to know when it comes to Internet Marketing and Social Media
  • The fundamental do’s and don’ts best practices

Internet and Social Media Marketing, for the people using it correctly, their success is no accident. Discover how to apply it to your business and the best ways for you to use the power of the Internet to build the career YOU want!

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The Marketing Cycle with Music Marketing Expert Bobby Borg

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artists-marketing-business-academy-interview-with-expertsIn the old paradigm of the Music Business, the Record Company took care of the marketing and the Artist took care of the music.

Those days are dead and gone – It’s a DIY Music Business.

So what do you need to know in order to handle marketing your music?

In this class taught by Special Guest, Bobby Borg, you will discover:

  • Important marketing concepts and terms,
  • The Ten Principles of New Music Marketing,
  • How to organize your thoughts into a detailed Marketing Plan of Attack

Join Bobby as he shows you how to create and execute your marketing plan effectively.

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Bobby Borg, music marketing

Bobby Borg

As a Major label, Independent, and DIY recording/touring artist, Bobby Borg has over 20 years experience in the trenches working with some of the most respected management firms, A&R representatives, music producers, music publishers, equipment manufacturers, songwriters, and journalists. He is a graduate of Berklee College of Music with a BA in Professional Music, a graduate of UCLA Extension with a certificate in Instructor Development and Marketing Management, and a graduate of a number of UCLA certificate classes in business, writing, math, psychology, computer science, and music business.

Today, he is the owner of a thriving music consulting company where he speaks with clients around the country and is a regular guest speaker at major music industry events. As a music business instructor, Borg teaches at Musicians Institute where he held the chair of the music business department, as well as at UCLA where he sits on the board of entertainment studies and received the 2011 Instructor-of-the-Year award for his work in music publishing and music marketing courses. Borg was named Vice President of Special Events for The American Marketing Association and awarded the Volunteer of The Year Award in 2012. He is the author of:

As well the author of over 1000 music business articles published in journals around the globe.

Branding 101

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Artists MBA, Foundation ProgramWhat is branding?

Branding is a fundamental marketing concept that is often misunderstood by business owners.

According to Wikipedia:
“A brand is a “Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.”[1] Branding began as a way to tell one person’s cattle from another by means of a hot iron stamp.”

What does it mean in terms of your career, your creativity and your fans?

In this overview of of Branding we will explore:

  • The 2 facets of Branding that you must consider when designing your brand
  • Expressing yourself authentically through your Brand
  • Using your BOP* to establish your BRAND

*BOP – Bold Outrageous Provocative statement of who you are and what you stand for – see Multiple Streams of Art/Music Income for more information about the BOP.

In order to create success in the music business, film industry, show biz, or visual arts, you must stand out from the competition.  The trick is to intentionally design a magnetic brand that attracts your fans/customers/clients to you.

And then make everything you do in your website, your social media, your live performance and your product packaging an expression of your brand.

What is your Brand?  Do you know?

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Internet Marketing 101

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Artists MBA, Professional ProgramSEO! SEM! PPC! Oh My!

The internet has paved the way for the Artist Entrepreneur to create your own career without waiting for the record deal, the publishing deal or anybody to “discover” you. But learning what you need to know and figuring out how to apply it to your business can quickly become overwhelming.

In this class, Debra Russell will give you the basic, fundamental, what everyone needs to know to get started, primer on internet marketing. You’ll discover:

  • What all those initials mean AND what they mean to your business
  • The difference between black hat and white hat marketing methods – or what NOT to do
  • Three quick and easy ways to drive traffic to your website

We know the internet is here to stay. We know that if you don’t have a web presence no one will take you seriously. But having a website isn’t enough. You must learn how to get people to FIND you. And that means Internet Marketing!

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Websites and the Artist Entrepreneur

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Internet Marketing Part Deux

In last month’s Newsletter, I talked about the importance of not only having a presence on the Internet but having a presence that would be easily discoverable by your prospective customers, clients and fans. And that the trick to being found is through the use of good key words and SEO principles.

But first you have to have a website. It amazes me that there are still people who think they can get away with a MySpace, Facebook, or ReverbNation profile as your primary internet presence.  Using your Facebook page, or whatever, as your landing page on the internet is a mistake for several reasons including:

  • You have no control over your content – because you don’t OWN Facebook, MySpace or ReverbNation.
  • These sites can shut down with no notice or just shut down your profile/page with no notice and you will lose everything.

But beyond that – it communicates to the industry that you’re just not that serious. You aren’t willing to invest a few hundred dollars (or less) to set up your own website.

I also don’t recommend the template options that are abundant out there. For example, if you’re a musician or band, you can build a template website on Bandzoogle, Nimbit or Hostbaby to name a few. And it can be useful as a quick and dirty shortcut. But I don’t think you save money in the long run and you run the same risk as using Facebook, MySpace or ReverbNation for your website – you don’t own it.

I recommend using WordPress to build a site that you host on a web host like Hostgator. This way, you own it. And using WordPress will allow you to update it, edit it, and even change the look and feel of the site as often as you need to without spending thousands of dollars to do it.

OK, now that I’ve convinced you that to grit your teeth and create your own website – what should you have on it? I recommend 5-6 main pages – some will have more, but I don’t think you want to have fewer:

  • Blog
  • Bio/About
  • Store
  • Calendar of Events (If you never play out or show your work – you can skip the Calendar/Tour page)
  • Press Kit
  • Contact

You can use either your Blog or the Bio/About page as the landing or home page (I hate the flash entry pages). The store can also have music samples, your art images, etc. as long as it also has a way to purchase those items. You can call that tab “Store” or you can call that tab “Music” or “Art”, it’s up to you.

Some websites have “Video” as a separate section – but you can also just build it into your blog – which becomes a vlog. Actually I would recommend posting the video’s first to YouTube and then using the YouTube code to pull it into your website – but I digress…

I recommend that the Contact page be a form rather than your email – it’s still too easy for bots to steal your email and flood you with spam. I also recommend using your website domain in your email address (name@namemusic.com or whatever). This promotes your domain with every email. If you don’t want to use your host’s server for email – and there’s a lot of reasons why you wouldn’t, you can create a Google Apps account for free with 7 Gigs of memory.

In addition, the Theme or Frame must be built with a sign-up for your mailing list and links to all your social media, so that they appear on every page and post.

If you are tech savvy – you can probably figure out WordPress in a few days.  Several of my private clients have done it in a weekend.  But if you’re like me, NOT tech savvy or with other things to do with your time, I recommend hiring a designer.  Then you can get them to give you a quick tutorial on WordPress (I learned the basics in an hour).  And you can add your copy and blog posts yourself.

“The confused mind doesn’t buy.”

Andrea J. Lee, Author of Multiple Streams of Coaching Income and Money Meaning and Beyond

Here’s the bottom line about your website.  Less is more.  The purpose of your website is to engage, entertain, and develop prospects into customers, clients and fan.  If it’s unreadable people won’t stay.  If it’s too cluttered, people won’t stay.  If they can’t easily and quickly find what they’re looking for, people won’t stay.  So:

  • Use larger font
  • Light type on a dark background is impossible to read – if you want a cool dark frame, that’s fine – but use a lighter color for the background of the text box and a dark font
  • Make the navigation easy and simple to follow
  • Don’t be mysterious about what you do – be ridiculously obvious – state it in the frame, so it appears on every page and post.

What are your biggest questions about your website and internet marketing?  What are your biggest pet peeves when you land on someone’s site?  Please share with us!

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Music Marketing in the Real World – An Interview with Michael Brandvold

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artists-marketing-business-academy-interview-with-expertsKISS, yeah the band. The guy who spits blood and sticks out his tongue. The band that wears more makeup and higher heels than your mom. What can you learn about marketing from them?

KISS is alot more that just caskets and condoms.

Michael Brandvold will share with Debra Russell some of the marketing lessons he learned from working with the band. Lessons such as:

 

  • It’s All Branding
  • Not Everything You Do Will Succeed
  • Listen To Your Fans, You Work For Them
  • “The Secret To Success Is To Offend The Greatest Number of People”
  • If You Don’t Ask For It, You Won’t Get It

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Michael Brandvold

From working with up-and-coming independent artists of all genres to overseeing online marketing for major acts like KISS, Britney Spears, and Dream Theater, Michael Brandvold’s impact on the modern music industry is without question.

In addition to spearheading digital strategy creation and online social media management for bands, he has helped create marketing strategies that have made millions of dollars for clients.

Internet Marketing and the Artist Entrepreneur

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Whether you’re in music, film, dance, the visual arts or writing, the presence of the Internet has significantly changed your industry in the last 20 years. For many of the big corporations who in the past controlled your industry, these changes have been terrifying, threatening their very existence.

For the artist entrepreneur, the DIY artist, the internet is the great leveler. It has opened the doors of opportunity that were previously jealously guarded by the studios, record companies and publishers.

But the key question that should be on your mind is:

How do I use the internet to advance my career as an Artist?

How can you use the internet to:

  • Sell more of your work?
  • Connect with fans outside of your immediate geographic location?
  • Increase the size of your impact?
  • Make a decent living doing what you love?!?

The good news is that the internet is huge and it’s global. The bad news is that the internet is huge and it’s global… There are over 2 Billion internet users in the world.  And there are over 350 Million websites.  Google alone gets 2 Billion searches each day.

So, while it’s critical to have a presence on the internet – how is anyone ever going to find YOU unless they are specifically looking for you and already know your URL (web address)?

Think of it this way, imagine that you are a fisherman and you are fishing in the middle of the ocean in a spot that is teaming with fish.  You would think – well this is easy, right?  I’m surrounded by fish, I should be able to catch dinner, no problem.  So you throw a hook and line out there and wait and wait and wait.

Meanwhile the fish are swimming all around that hook and not a one is biting!  Why?

Because they’re not looking for a hook.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve got the prettiest, shiniest, most beautiful hook in the world.  If the fish aren’t looking for your hook, they won’t bite and you don’t eat!

So, the key is having bait.  Bait that the fish will see, will notice, will be intrigued by enough to bite!  So, it can’t be just any bait.  It has to be the right bait.  The only way to know what bait to use is to get to know your fish really, really well.  Not all fish.  Not any old fish.  But the particular kind of fish you want to catch.

What kind of bait are they looking for?

With internet marketing, the first key to being found is knowing what your fans/customers/clients are already searching for – what are their key words?  But it’s not that simple.  Because if you pick things that are too broad, too general, then you could have millions of other websites also using that same bait, I mean, key word.  And so when your prospective fan is searching, literally millions of websites could come up in response to that search.  And let’s face it, few people get past the first page of a search.

So, simply stated, the essence of effective internet marketing is to be specific enough with your key words, so that when your target market are looking for them, you show up on the top of the list.  In order to do that you must :

  • Know what your target market is searching for
  • Show up on the first page when they search for it.

So, how do you do that?

SEO – Search Engine Optimization – creating a website that the search engines LOVE.

I’ll be talking more about that in my next Newsletter Edition – stay tuned!