5 Tools Used By The Pros To Kick Start Your Music Marketing Efforts On A Budget

SSo you’ve done it. You’ve spent countless hours writing and recording a stellar EP for your new band. You’ve picked a name. You’ve built a website and set up your social media profiles. You even have a handful of shows booked in your area in the next couple of months. You and your team are excited to get this musical endeavor off the ground.

Maybe you are a little concerned that the only interested parties will be your friends and your family, so you’ve been researching how to market your music to fans that will become devoted listeners and followers. And you hit a wall. Marketing your music is a daunting and time consuming task, with a lot of conflicting information on the best practices. Hiring out a marketing firm to take care of it for you can be rather expensive, and since your budget is limited, you’re not sure where to turn.

If this sounds like you, fear not. Here are five tools used by the pros that you can use on a budget to start marketing your music today:

1. Hootsuite

What it does: Hootsuite is a social media platform that allows you to easily manage and post from all of your social media profiles in one convenient dashboard. It enables you, your band, and your team to stay on top of your social media presence to engage your fans more regularly and build better brand loyalty. It also allows you to monitor and analyze conversations across social media to see who is talking about you, what is being said, and where the buzz about your music is taking place. This can give you a crucial understanding of where your fans are located geographically, helping you to better understand your audience, know when is the best time to post, and where you should route tours. Hootsuite even has a mobile application so that you can manage your social media in one app on your phone, rather than across dedicated apps such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

What it costs: Hootsuite also offers three tiers of its service to best fit your needs:

• Free (allows you to link 3 social media profiles (great for Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for your band, among other features)
• Pro ($9.99/mo)
• Enterprise (price varies)

2. Mailchimp

What it does: Mailchimp is a service that lets you take control of your email marketing by creating templates and designs, managing and growing your email subscription list (aka your mailing list), and optimizing your visibility allowing you to better grasp to whom you should send your newsletter and content and when you should send it to them.

What it costs:

• Entrepreneur (free!) – up to 2,000 subscribers, allows you to send 12,000 per month
• Growing Business (monthly price varies based on the number of subscribers you have)
• High Volume (most expensive – price varies based on the number of subscribers you have)

3. Bandsintown Manager

What it does: The Bandsintown Manager is an application that helps take the guesswork out of tour marketing. It allows you to post your show, event, and tour data and sync it all around the internet: from your website, to your social networks, to the search results on Google. Audiences using the Bandsintown app are able to track the artists and musicians they are eager to see on the road, creating another direction connection from musician to fan. Bandsintown’s website boasts that it is “used by 65% of all touring artists in the U.S. including half of Billboard’s Top 40 and 70% of DJ Magazine’s Top 100 DJs.”

What it costs:

• 100% FREE

4. Soundudes

What it does:  Soundudes is a newly launched tool that connects you with new listeners on SoundCloud. You sign up to the platform with your SoundCloud account. After that, their algorithm runs through your account and connects you with new potential fans that will hear your music. The website also has a great dashboard which allows you to easily see how your fan base is growing. The platform is free and its mission is to connect you with superfans and grow your audience. All you need is to have at least two tracks and 50 followers to get started.

What it costs:

• 100% FREE

5. Google Analytics

What it does: Rounding off this list is Google Analytics, a set of tools that can

universally monitor activity across all of your online platforms: from your website to your social media profiles. You can track engagement over time and compare how fan engagement and sales have changed with your various marketing efforts such as music releases, music videos, and touring. You can even learn more about the demographics of your online audience.

What it costs:

• Free version
• Premium (price various, and must be acquired through a partnership with Google directly, or with one of its resellers)

Using these tools in conjunction can be a great and affordable way to organize your music marketing efforts. However, if these tools and all this information feels overwhelming, feel free to start with just one and expand your creativity and get your music and brand out in the world for all to see!

By Jack McCarthy, featured writer for Dotted Music.

Jack is a singer and songwriter living in Philadelphia, PA; though you may have more luck finding him in the studio or on the road. He has worked with many artists, producing and playing on a variety of tracks. Follow him on Twitter @_TEAJack