Why Every Artist Needs a Marketing Budget for Pushing Their Music
Marketing your music before and after its release is crucial to helping its success once it hits the DSP’s and music streaming platforms. After all, who is going to listen to your music if you don’t tell people why they should, or let alone the fact that you even put it out in the first place?
Promotion and advertising are key parts of marketing, and begin the minute your music is ready to go public and you have your release strategy prepared. However, once you have all of that, the next question you may be asking (or should be asking) is how much should you invest in marketing, and what should your budget look like? What kind of budget should you prepare? Having these questions answered in advance to you actually taking the steps to put your marketing strategy into action will mean the difference between an extremely successful campaign, or a flop that could potentially leave you bankrupt.
The first thing that having a marketing budget can help you do is determine the length of your music campaign. One of the highest priorities when developing a strategy is choosing whether you want to budget for a short term, medium term, or long term campaign. Deciding this will be largely dependent on how much money you can actually spend. You don’t want to plan for a year full of promotions if you do not have the budget to support the plan. Knowing your budget will automatically help you decide if you can afford a few months of promotion, or an entire year.
The next thing to decide when developing your marketing plan is on what exactly you will spend your money. Promotions for music can be accomplished across various channels, such as press releases with news outlets, radio promotion, sponsored Facebook or Instagram ad campaigns, and even influencer campaigns. These services will definitely come with a price, and it is important to spread out your budget appropriately to accommodate all the media channels that you feel are necessary to help your audience grow. For example, Facebook and Instagram ads price their campaigns based on how long they run, the amount of reach you want, and even the content itself. Some news outlets have a standing fee for features and press releases, and influencers set their own prices in their services that are outlined in their media kits. If you alot $100 for all of these services, it would not be a good idea to blow 80% of it just on social media ads. Therefore, budgeting not just for your overall campaign, but the individual elements is incredibly important.
However, it is important to acknowledge that there are many cheap and even free ways to promote your music. Simply posting to your personal social media accounts and asking your friends to share it is marketing, or posting a Tik Tok using your sound as audio is free publicity as well. While these acts are small steps towards a bigger goal, it goes to show that you definitely do not need thousands of dollars set aside for marketing. Many scammer services can charge up to $2000 for services that you can get either for free, or for a small fee that is less than $50. Knowing how to avoid these scams will help you save your budget, which we go into more detail in a previous article.
EAR is dedicated to helping artists know what they are working with when it comes to budgeting for a music promotion campaign, and we also help provide more resources and information that can take your plan further! If you are struggling with developing a marketing strategy or a budget for your plan, or you are lacking the resources you need to give your music the publicity it deserves, we are here to help. Feel free to check out our management, press, and other marketing services for more insight on what we can do for you!
