Tag Archive for: Squeeze Page

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I love artists, especially indie artists like you. I live every day to help them. Sometimes I’m motivational, inspirational, educational, and sometimes I’m all three. Today is educational and it’s all about contact lists.

contact-lists-savvy

Creating a life for yourself as an artist is going to require more than your amazing talent. It’s going to require a little business savvy. The business savvy ensures that, somehow, you get compensated for your creativity.

 

Sounds fair, right?

 

Contact List Crawl

 

You have to start small.

 

Crawl before you can walk.

 

 

 

Walk before you can run.

 

 

contact-lists-run-like-you-stole-something

Then run like you STOLE SOMETHING!

 

 

 

First get compensated in some way.

 

Then work towards a method to get compensated more often for your creativity. You got paid once, figure out how to do it again.

 

Now, you’re just a few tweaks away from actually making a living.

 

 

contact-lists-landmines-meme

 

 

 

There is a TON of mental landmines you’ll have to navigate (we ALL do, don’t fool yourself), but there are some common sense tactics that will point you in the right direction.

 

Step one to monetizing your fan base (or creating cash flow) is creating contact lists.

 

 

 

Most of you suck at contact lists so it’s no wonder you’re so frustrated.

 

You see, marketing at its most basic level requires REACH and FREQUENCY.

 

contact-lists-radio

 

This is EXACTLY how radio used to work for all the old souls out there reading this.

 

Contact lists allow you to reproduce the effectiveness of radio in a very DIY manner. It is slower but extremely effective.

 

Every radio station provided a certain amount of REACH within their market, and the rotational format of radio provided the FREQUENCY.

 

Radio promo required a “radio tour” visiting MANY different stations for the purposes of creating relationships that would result in spins at each station to maximize your REACH.

 

contact-lists-radio-tour

 

FREQUENCY costs money on the radio. Lots of money.

 

FREQUENCY costs money on TV too. That’s called ad space.

 

 

The power of frequency in radio to break an artist was so great that it was always going to cost money; the juice was worth the squeeze to the labels.

 

Think about frequency for a second. Today most stations are only spinning about 25-40 (ish) different songs per week.

 

Here’s the math: 12 songs per hour, times 24 hours, times 7 days = 2,016 spins per week.

contact-lists-record-spins-math-meme

 

That’s a LOT of frequency for 25-40 songs.

 

That’s NOT many artists, though.

 

Also, not as many people are listening to radio these days.

 

Get it?

 

 

Now radio isn’t as powerful. At least not in the same way.

 

contact-lists-power-radio-sinking-meme

 

You’re not going to break on radio.

 

Now consumers aren’t forced to endure the frequency because they have choices today that they didn’t have even 5 years ago.

 

 

Smartphones provide these choices.

 

 

As a consumer, you’ll find exactly what you’re lcontact-lists-radio-logo-choices-memeooking for with anyone of the 1,000 choices you have and you’re not looking to discover new music, are you?

 

No, you want to play your jam.

 

 

We all do.

 

All you indies need to be aware of that.

 

 

 

Here’s a really cool big picture SECRET: If you have contact lists, the FREQUENCY is free.

 

contact-list-frequency-is-free-meme

 

I know, I know, I KNOW exactly what the naysayers are vomiting up right at this moment!

 

“Email is dead therefore contact lists are worthless. Only .1% response rate.”

 

 

This makes it very easy for you, the one who is currently ignorant about the power of contact lists, to avoid learning that marketing skill.

 

These horrible response numbers are probably true: for email spammers.

 

Buy 100,000 random email addresses and you have 100,000 contacts but you DON’T have permission from an of these contacts.

 

contact-list-telemarketer-no-permission

You know, like a telemarketer has your number but not your permission. There’s a difference.

 

 

What’s the difference you ask?

 

 

Well, if you’re providing content that is relevant and personal to your contact lists, you can experience consistent email open rates that are as high as even 75%, or higher.

Contact Lists drip-email-image

The proof is in the pudding. Here is a real image of the email chain open rates that comes out from my free Twitter Book squeeze page.

 

Here is an image of a bunch of Bailey James email open rates from her contact lists.

contact-lists-bailey-james-email-opens

 

This is the difference between permission and spamming.

 

 

 

 

Too many of you immediately think of “sales” as “spam” or obnoxious. We ALL hate to be sold but we LOVE a good story and good information that can help us improve.

 

contact-list-hate-marketing

 

 

You provide the improvement information and it’s not sales, you’re helping them and building trust.

 

 

 

 

So let’s look honestly at the gifts that are easily and inexpensively available to you today for marketing.

 

REACH

 

Social Media: Not only do you get worldwide reachcontact-lists-reach for free on multiple platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube, etc. (that doesn’t require a radio tour or travel or even leaving your couch for crying out loud), but you get far better targeting than you would on radio or TV.

 

 

What do I mean by that?

 

 

 

Yes, think about it. Maybe you’re a country artist on country radio but some people like this artist or that artist, and some people like “old” country as opposed to “bro” country, etc.

 

 

 

By the way, this is true of ANY genre of music like jazz, rap, hip-hop, R & B, Rock, Metal, Pop, Ska, Reggae, etc. There are sub-genres. In the business world, they refer to these sub-genres as “Niche Markets”.

 

contact-list-better-targeting

Country radio doesn’t articulate between these sub-genres or niche markets. Nor does urban radio, rock radio, pop radio, etc.

 

Social Media does.

 

 

Social media can REALLY get surgical which is far more efficient.

 

contact-list-far-more-surgical-memeSocial media is so efficient that with a little knowledge, you’re only spending time building relationships with potential fans that YOU KNOW like your specific sub-genre of music.

 

Less time wasted.

 

You don’t want to waste time trying to sell awesome hamburgers to a vegan community.

 

contact-list-touring-is-best-way-for-lists

Touring is another excellent way to target an audience that you already know absolutely loves YOU.

 

 

 

Every freaking show, you should be collecting contact data. There is no better way for an artist to create a relationship with a fan than by blowing them away with the artist’s live show.

 

Bailey James has played 1 middle school show. We got 150 contacts from that one show.

Abbey Cone is an artist I used to work with. She did a show and implemented text capture. The result was over 400 contacts in 5 minutes!

 

 

 

Now, you’ve done that.

 

You say they love you.

 

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GET THEIR INFORMATION DUMMY!

 

 

 

 

 

Squeeze pages and text capture are amazing tools to do this with.

 

You need to be downright OCD and ANAL about this process.

 

 

So you have the REACH. What are you doing about the FREQUENCY?

 

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Bottom line, it’s a psychological FACT that the human brain needs to hear a song at least 8 times before subconscious brain begins to realize that it should even pay attention to a hit song, let alone love it, know it, and live it.

 

contact-list-8-times

 

8 knocks are required before anybody even thinks of opening up that door.

 

Make sense?

 

 

 

If your content, especially video content is valuable to THEM, you can always be playing your music in the background; creating FREQUENCY.

 

For the indie artists with a little promo budget flirting with the idea of radio, one or two spins isn’t going to get it done.

 

You’d better have a budget for a boatload of spins to even make a dent.

 

Btw, the dent you may or may not be making is a “dart in the dark”.

contact-lists-analytics

 

There’s no way to monitor it, measure it, get real numbers as to how many heard it, and who exactly heard it.

 

How about who liked it and who didn’t after they heard it?

 

 

 

With social media there is analytics.

With your contact lists there are analytics.

 

If you take the time to learn about different contact capture tactics, you’ll begin to see results.

 

 

Contact Lists jacob-cade-squeeze-page-resized

 

 

What I mean by that is there are Squeeze page, text capture, and other kinds of technologies that will keep you in touch with these fans.

 

 

 

Once you master the REACH of a live show or social media and capture the people who respond, you now have an opportunity to create a relationship and implement FREQUENCY to deepen that relationship.

 

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Once you have a deep enough relationship, meaning once they trust that you, the artist, cares about them, they will spend their money.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remember this, communication is NOT your intention, it is what is being received by the potential fan.

 

 

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It doesn’t matter that you actually do care about them. I mean, it DOES matter, but if your language, communications, and exchanges are not relevant to THEM, or personal to THEM, it doesn’t matter that you really do care.

 

 

 

 

They won’t open the emails.

 

They’ll think you don’t care because you haven’t effectively communicated that you do care.

 

Telling them you care because you really do isn’t enough.

 

You have to SHOW them you care.

 

 

 

When you start wondering how you can communicate that you care and what kind of content will be valuable to THEM, you’ll start asking the RIGHT questions.

contact-lists-permission

 

Once you figure out how to gain and keep permission, they’ll buy from you.

 

 

If you are OCD ANAL about building your list and (especially for touring artists) if you’re converting that list, you’ll become a successful artist who is making a nice living doing what they were born to do.

 

You have the seeds now. Just add execution and GROW YOUR BUSINESS.

 

Stay

 

In

 

Tune

 

 

 

If you found value in this article, please SHARE it and COMMENT below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Traffic Feature 1

If you read my last post, hopefully you understand the concept of marketing (and how it’s commonly confused with digital distribution), customer list building, and the monetization of that customer list. If online sales are mathematically predictable, then once the sales funnel is optimized, you need only worry about average revenue per contact (bundles, other widgets, etc.) and traffic.

How do you create traffic?Traffic Predictable

How do you drive traffic to your squeeze page or get a live audience to text a keyword both of which will put consumers into the sales funnel?

There are endless possibilities, here are a few:

  • Live shows
  • Social Media
  • YouTube Channel
  • Blogging
  • Article Writing
  • PR
    • TV Exposure
    • Print Ad Exposure
    • Blog interviews
    • Magazine interviews
  • List Sharing
  • PPC Campaigns
  • Advertising (YouTube, Online Blogs, etc.)

 

 

Traffic Bang for your Buck

 

With this new mindset of capturing contact information, one can really get the most “Bang for your buck” with every form of exposure.

Live Shows

Google IS an advertising company, so why on earth would they buy Motorola for a bazillion dollars and purchase an 80 million dollar ad campaign from another ad agency?Traffic Google Motorola

Because Google knows it needs to be in your smart phone.

This is real.

You need to internalize this.

 

Text Capture is a killer way for an artist to take advantage of the implied power they have when they’re onstage to create real traffic to their sales funnel.

 

 

Whether you’re up in front of 100 people or 10,000 people there is an implied power given to you by the audience.

 

 

file0002005996090Sometimes we refer to this power as the artist “Having audience in the palm of their hand”. The crowd will mostly do what you tell them to do.

 

Imagine THANKING everyone for attending the show from your stage and offering up a free gift for the audience’s effort.

 

You say, “I’m so happy y’all are here tonight.  I want to and I’m GOING to return the gesture because y’all are important to me. I’m going to give you a free track for coming out! Everyone get your cell phones up in the air right now! I want you to text the keyword _______ to this number and get your free song.  Thanks again, I love and support you too.”Traffic Thank you

 

 

Boom, just like that you could have tons of opt-ins to your sales funnel.

 

 

FYI, the conversion rates on traffic from a live show are astounding.

Those of you who regularly find yourselves on the county fair or festival circuits are wasting this amazing opportunity to connect with the THOUSANDS of consumers that have experienced you live for the purposes of driving traffic to your sales funnel.

Traffic Get Over It

 

Btw, if you’re rolling your eyes at the idea of sales get over it.

 

You going to have to get over it.

 

 

 

 

I have seen even the most “hippiest” of hippies who followed the Grateful Dead selling spaghetti to afford the trip to the next venue.

Commerce has to happen if you want to make a living.

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Those of you with a regular draw are wasting the ability to connect directly with your audience to ensure consistent growing attendance. Btw, that “regular draw” will have an insane conversion rate.

 

Google “Text Capture” to find all the companies that will compete for your business in this technology.  Most will seamlessly connect to your CRMs like aWeber, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, etc.

Social Media

 

 

Traffic Social MediaSocial media is a major component although it is not everything.

Social media is an awesome tool to target the traffic that will most likely connect with your art.

 

Once the potential traffic is targeted you simply need to serve up the effective language to direct them to your squeeze page (AKA top of the sales funnel) to turn them into real traffic.

Traffic Craig Gerdes

 

 

EXAMPLE: We worked with a super talented artist named Craig Gerdes who wrote a song called “Haggard Fan”. At the time we started working with Craig he had a Twitter account but hadn’t paid too much attention to it (like many artists).

We cut “Haggard Fan” and targeted…well, Merle Haggard fans on Twitter.

 

 

It was literally like shooting fish in a barrel.  We had a killer song, a killer track, and if you think about it, an audience that was prepared to love it.

In a couple months we grew Gerdes’ Twitter account from 27 followers to over 5,000.

 

How did we drive traffic you ask?Traffic Auto DM's

 

We simply set up a revolving automated DM for everyone that followed Craig.

 

Some will tell you automated automated DM’s are a nuisance.

I will tell you if the content is good and served up correctly, the content is welcome.

 

The DM said something like, “Wow, TY 4 the follow! I am so grateful. I want you 2 have a free track 4 giving me a shot. Go2 HaggardFan.com today”

 

This garnered us 2,000 downloads of the single in just a couple months and, if there was a CD to sell (which there wasn’t), we would’ve mathematically sold at least 100 CD’s + the upsell revenue from any bundles that were on his web store.

 

That was JUST using Twitter.

How would you feel about your artist career if you could add $2,000-$4,000 of online sales in the next couple months?

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For many of you that would be a huge improvement.

Let’s be honest for many of you that would the difference between $0.00 and whatever revenue the traffic created.

 

That would easily pay for 5 years of subscriptions to premium social media tools, huh?

 

Get it?

 

Now implement Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and boom, you have a real network going on.

 

Btw, Instagram is, by far, the most engaging of the largest social media platforms.

 

 

Traffic Crack The Code

Learn to crack the Instagram code.

 

HINT: it’s the same code as Twitter.

 

 

 

Next week I am going to turn y’all on to the 10 fundamentals of creating a successful YouTube Channel that will drive traffic to your sales funnel.

Until then…Traffic YouTube Strategy

 

Stay

In

Tune

 

 

If you like this post, please SHARE it and/or LEAVE A COMMENT thank you!

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Flaws Gun Pointing

The record business is rife with fatal flaws. Even in the heyday there were huge mistakes constantly made by major record labels and those flaws are showing big time Flaws Flawed eggin the new music industry.

 

 If you ask any CEO from any company in any industry on any part of this planet what their most valuable asset is, they will tell you it’s their customer list.

 

 

Yes, their people are important but you can’t pay good people without cash flow from customers.

Yes, their intellectual property is hugely important, but you can’t monetize intellectual property without customers.

 

Maybe you’re a fan of Chevy, Ford, Toyota, Dodge, Porsche, BMW, etc.flaws automakers

From the perspective of the CEO’s of any company, you are a customer, maybe even a loyal customer.

 

Artist “fans” are called “customers” in every other business.

 

Get it?

Businesses go to GREAT lengths not only to build and maintain customer lists but also to DEEPEN the relationships with those customers.

Think about your Kroger or Ralph’s (grocery store) discount card.  They offer discounts in exchange for information on your buying habits.

 

flaws discount card

They KNOW if you like 1% milk or 2% milk.

They KNOW what kind of beer you like.

 

They KNOW when you prefer to shop, how much you normally spend, and what products you normally spend your money on.

 

Now, if we put a gun to Tim McGraw’s head, Katy Perry’s head, AC/DC’s heads, Jay-Z’s head, or Daft Punk’s helmets, they couldn’t tell us who’s buying their music.

The fatal flaw is they don’t know who their customers are!

 

If you don’t have a customer list, not only is it impossible to identify who the customers are, you certainly can’t contact them.

 

If you cannot directly contact the customers, you have to spend MILLIONS of dollars on what they call “Branding Campaigns” (that’s super expensive advertising in plain English).

Branding Campaigns put an artist everywhere there is to be for a few weeks at a time to plug the new release and continue to promote it.

 

People, Us, Vanity Fair, Country Weekly, Taste of Country, blogs, nationwide radio, Letterman, Fallon, Ellen, Seth Meyers, GMA, Today Show, Newspapers, blah, blah, blah.

 

But what of the artists who don’t have million dollar budgets?

 

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What about the artist you USED to have million dollar budgets?

 

Even with a million dollar brand name (think any former major label artists who no longer have a major label) the sales will suffer simply because the customers don’t know the product is available.

What if there was a way to “capture” contact information that would become a customer list?

 

An artist with an active customer list could:

  • Deepen relationships with customers creating a tribe-like following.flaws iceberg
  • Offer exclusive content to make customers feel like they’re “in-crowd”.
  • Monetize it by changing to a subscribership business model (think Netflix).
  • Inform the customers of new content on YouTube and grow the subscribership.
  • Then Monetize YouTube (creating another cash register).
  • Inform the customers of any contests the artist is having.
  • Inform the customers of upcoming concerts.
  • Disseminate any images or content offering social proof of awesomeness.
  • Cross promote other artists
  • Obtain Corporate Sponsorships
  • Monetize it through sales on the artist’s web store.

Some of you hate this idea but I’ll bet if you were famous you would at least entertain the idea of a clothing line, or perfume scent wouldn’t you?

The tremendous power that direct customer contact will bring to an artist was demonstrated quite clearly by Taylor Swift in 2014.

flaws taylor swift 1989

 

We have probably the biggest superstar on the planet who released a new record but she switched genres.

 

Yeah, yeah some will argue that Taylor Swift was never really “country” but the point is that all Taylor’s previous records were promoted on Country Radio and “1989” wasn’t.

 

 

Country radio felt that Taylor abandoned country music and moved WAY too far into the pop world and therefore refused to promote it by spinning her new singles.

Come to think of it, in Nashville, I haven’t heard ANY Taylor Swift songs on country radio for quite some time which is crazy considering they are continuing to spin every single ever put out by her country peers like Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney, Carrie Underwood, etc.

Here’s the point, she still had the bestselling record of 2014.flaws social media nails

 

This was true because her fans KNEW the record was coming via her social media.  This is huge because while I’m sure most of you are plugging away at your social media, “Swifties” feel like they have a special connection with Taylor.

 

That’s the key.

 

Don’t fool yourself on the power of her superstardom either, it was the connection.

 

Want proof?

 

George Michael was a superstar stadium act that had sold 25 million albums and 15 million singles with Wham! before he ever got his solo deal with Columbia.  His first solo release was “Faith” which sold a whopping 25 million copies. In September of 1990 George released his 2nd solo effort entitled “Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1” (arguably considered his artistic masterpiece).

flaws george michael

 

 

George was sour at the fact that the Sony Corporation had purchased CBS records. He tried to exercise a “Key Man Clause” in his contract once artist beloved CBS Records President Walter Yetnikoff was replaced with Tommy Mattola in 1990.  Tommy took that action personally and detested George’s artistic refusal to appear in any videos to promote the record. As a result, Sony chose not to promote “Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1” and it sold a disappointing 8 million units.

What would have happened if George had been able to contact his 25 million customers?

 

Want to know how you capture this information?

 

There are 2 primary ways (depending on the age of your audience) that you can capture customer contact data and begin to build your list.

1 way is called a “Squeeze Page”. flaws_Twitter_Squeeze_Page

A squeeze page is designed to “squeeze” the contact information out of a potential customer (usually a name and email address) while allowing the customer to “opt in” to email driven marketing initiatives.

The idea is you offer what my friend Rick Barker calls an “ethical bribe” by exchanging a free track(s) for the contact information.

I mean, you need to know where to send the customer’s free track right?

 

Here are a few links to some squeeze pages we have created at Daredevil Production, LLC. I recommend you experience some of these as a consumer. You can always UNSUBSCRIBE at the bottom of each email address if you want.

  • GiftFromJohnny.com (this is to a free download of my bestselling Twitter Book which you are welcome to have if you don’t already own it)Flaws_Ty_Herndon_Squeeze_Page
  • GiftFromTy.com (this is a free track from Platinum country artist Ty Herndon)

 

 

While there is an art to structuring a squeeze page that will optimize conversions, it can totally be mastered.  Check out companies like Lead Pages to help you capture that info and store it.  (If you have any problems, simply give us a flaws lead pagescall and we are happy to help you set up your own squeeze page.)

 

 

 

A second methodology which is extremely effective for younger audiences (not so much for audiences over 50) is the text capture methodology.flaws call loop logo

Check out companies like Call Loop. They offer the ability for your customers to text a “key word” and receive instant downloads of your music.

Now you have their phone number.

 

Text messages have a 99% open rate.iphones

 

Whoa.

So imagine you’re playing a live show and you own the crowd. From the stage you instruct everyone to “Raise their phones in the air for a FREE track!” and just like that you get 50 phone numbers.

 

Did you rock the house?

 

Did you leave your audience wanting more?

 

Does your show feel like an event?

 

Would they LOVE a text from you 1 week before your next show?Flaws no fatal flaws

 

I’ll bet they would.

 

As an independent artist, you can avoid fatal flaws.

 

Stay In Tune.

 

If you like this post, please SHARE it and/or LEAVE A COMMENT thank you!

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