At a certain point in every musician’s career, they will need to invest in some publicity. It’s rare that a massive audience will just start showing up at all of your shows, people need to know you’re out there making music in the first place.
What you need is a solid PR Campaign. Like most other investments you’ll make during the course of your career, you get what you pay for. Good public relations campaigns are expensive and require planning and coordination. Before spending your hard-earned money on a promotional campaign for your latest creation, it’s important to get to know realistically what good PR is and what you should and should not expect from a campaign. I’ve answered some commonly asked questions below to help you spend your money wisely.
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How Should You Prepare For A Campaign?
While a PR campaign can help grow your social media, having a solid presence in place before starting a campaign is important. For example, bloggers will check your socials before writing about you. This helps them get to know you and also what kind of promotion they can expect from you in return. You will also be asked for professional photos and whether or not you have a professionally written biography.
What Are You Actually Paying For?
It’s reasonable to want to know where your money is going. And in the entertainment business, it’s important to be able to find people who can actually put their money where their mouth is. What you should not expect, however, is metrics. In other terms, numerically measurable results. You are paying for the effort, strategy and expertise of your music PR professional. Media placements should absolutely be expected, metrics should not be.
What Should You Expect From Music PR?
There are a lot of different ways to promote your music but they do NOT all fall under the umbrella of public relations. So what does? Public relations exist to attract public interest in a positive manner by means of promotional material and information. Basically, a music publicist is meant to represent you and your brand to the media. Generally, blogs, podcasts, newspapers, magazines, and TV shows are what make up media outreach.
Will Publicity Help With Sales?
Nope. There is potential for your audience to grow, which could have the added benefit of helping you make more money but that is not the purpose or focus of a pr campaign. The main point of investing in publicity is to create awareness of your brand and educate your audience about why you’re so great.
What Can Be Guaranteed?
It can be scary to invest in something if you’re not guaranteed a financial boost in return. Naturally, many musicians let this fear guide them to companies that will “guarantee” a certain number of streams on Spotify or a certain amount of viewers per article, instead of toward reputable companies that can help them to create realistic goals and strategies. Anyone guaranteeing that you will get a specific number of streams or views is LYING TO YOU. I’m going to say that one more time in case you weren’t paying attention: unless they are truly psychic, there is no way for anyone to know, let alone guarantee, that a certain amount of people will listen to your music. A legit company will, however, be able to tell you approximately how many publications or streaming channels they can get your music onto based on their experience.
If you’re an aspiring musician wondering how to monetize your passion, you can check out the insightful blog post on “How to Make Money with Music“. It’s filled with valuable tips and strategies to help you turn your musical talent into a profitable venture.