The 4-Ps of music marketing for your band

Marketing, in general, is often used synonymously with advertising. However, marketing is actually so much more than that. For your band, marketing will mean a whole host of ideas and planning that you will be executing through your entire career. There are 4 basic concepts in marketing that you will want to know and focus on at every turn. These terms are referred to as the 4-Ps and are:

• Product
• Price
• Place
• Promotion

Each term is pretty self-explanatory on the surface, but there are many nuances to them you should be aware of.

Product can refer to many things for your band. A product is the thing or idea you are looking to produce and sell. Your band, as a business, is a product. There are a whole host of other products that you will be selling over your music career:

• Your music – both live and recorded, you are selling the emotion and talent you portray through your tunes
• Merchandise – T-shirts, hoodies, stickers, buttons, and whatever else you put the band name on
• Your tour – selling tickets and the excitement you bring to the crowd
• Your selves – you are going to have to market your selves to the crowd and possibly record companies

For every product you market, you will need to come up with a price. There are two basic ways you should look at how to price your products. One way is to come up with a price based on the products cost to you, plus what you want to get out of the product. One thing to remember is that a lot of your merchandise doubles as advertising for your band, since fans wear or use the merchandise around town.

The other price strategy you are probably going to use will be competitive pricing. Using this strategy is a bit easier as you will basically set your prices similar to other bands in your genre. When dealing with companies like iTunes or record labels, the price for your music is more than likely fixed, but if you’re selling independently or at shows you should find out what price similar bands are selling their music or merch for.

The third P of marketing is place. The places to sell your products in the music industry is expanding in some areas and contracting in others. As more digital delivery systems present themselves on the internet and over your phone, your music can find sales growth through these avenues. It is hard to get into the big box retailers like Best Buy and independent record stores are closing around the country. Getting into the independents is a good way to sell CDs, but you are going to have to be vigilant in both advertising that your CDs are there as well as keeping track of where you have CDs, how many are there, and how many are selling. Of course, one of the biggest opportunities for you to sell your music is going to be at shows and on tour. So, plan your “place” strategy well.

The final and probably most familiar aspect of marketing is promotion. This, of course, is the advertising aspect of marketing. More than likely this is going to be the biggest part of your marketing efforts and take most of your time. If you have planned out the product, price, and place properly your band should feel pretty confident in selling and promoting your music. Advertising can be done through many media outlets these days:

• Internet – your band website, MySpace, Facebook, Pandora, in-dio.fm, etc.
• Radio – getting radio play in your hometown or the towns you are touring in before the show
• Street – having a street team put up posters and flyers throughout the city
• Stores – drawing attention to the fact that your band has a CD in the store
• TV – might be hard to get into, but with licensing opportunities for an ever-expanding array of TV shows, it is something to possibly pursue
• Print – Magazines and newspapers are good ways to get free publicity, so try and set these up; invite writers and journalists to your shows and make sure they are on the guest list or you get them a couple free tickets

With everything else you do when it comes to marketing, plan your promotion very carefully. Make sure you are setting money aside to pay for posters, flyers, your website, and tickets. You also may need to hire a web designer or graphic artist to make your posters.

Sit down with the whole band to talk about the 4-Ps of marketing before you get in over your heads. It will really help to make sure you are not wasting money on products your fans don’t want or advertising that won’t work. Build your network with other bands or even venues and promoters and find out what other people are doing in the industry that is working. Marketing your band correctly and taking time out to think about the 4-Ps will hopefully put you on the right path during the early stages of your career.

Image by Flickr.com user Plutor / Logan Ingalls.