Should You Create A Music Marketing Plan: 2 Possible Methods

Should you create a music marketing plan? 

Quick Answer: Yes!

For an artist in any stage in their career, creating a marketing plan allows you to evaluate where you’re at currently and helps you to establish goals for the future. 

Even if you think your music is worthy of garnering millions of streams, people have to know that your song exists before they’ll ever become obsessed with it! 

Especially during the beginning of your career, creating a plan and brainstorming different ways of promoting your music could elevate your career to the next level. 

This article will explain the value of investing time in creating a marketing plan and the different ways of approaching your plan. 

Should You create a music marketing plan: Musicians Guide

The importance of developing a marketing plan

Making music has never been more accessible which has left the music industry saturated with new releases.

“…There were reportedly over 40,000 songs uploaded to Spotify every day in 2019. When you add this number up, that means a total of roughly 14.6 million songs are uploaded to the streaming music platform every year”

–  Spotify CEO, Daniel Ek

So to stand out from the crowd, build your audience, and gain exposure, it’s all about thinking outside of the box. That’s where having a marketing plan comes in. 

If you’re getting more serious about pursuing a career in music, developing a plan is the most effective way to make meaningful steps in your career and your creative process. 

Although the process of creating a plan may be tedious and often requires deep introspection, it’s important in any field to be focused and have a direction for your career. 

Depending on how much you want to plan and how much time you have to devote to creating one, the following sections will go over the two basic types of marketing plans for musicians.

Creating a Music Marketing Plan

Unless you already have a background in marketing, chances are you’ll be creating a plan from the ground up. But before creating a marketing plan, you must establish where you are in your career and what realistic goals you want to reach in the future.

If you’re just beginning your career in music, starting with a quick napkin music marketing plan may be the best place to start. 

As the name suggests, this approach encourages you to get ideas on paper in under a few hours. This plan is not very detailed and should act as more of a roadmap for the direction you eventually want to take with your career. 

If you have never planned out your career, this is a great starting point! You can grab the napkin music marketing plan in our free planning checklist bundle here.

Levelling Up Your Music Marketing Plan

A quick plan can be great but leaves out a lot of details. With that it mind you may want to consider developing a more comprehensive music marketing plan

This is your opportunity to be meticulous, and ask yourself questions about every aspect of your career. For example, if your goal is to release music in the next year, how are you going to promote your songs? 

Are you only releasing singles, or are you planning on releasing an album? If you are releasing an album, what songs are going to act as the promotional tracks or the singles? 

What is the minimum number of streams you want to reach? What social media platforms will you use to promote your singles and album?  

This barely scratches the surface but as you can see there’s a lot to think about and the more prepared you are the better you’ll execute. A comprehensive plan helps you get more strategic and will bring you clarity no matter where you are in your career.

The right Music marketing plan for you

Whatever approach you end up taking, the fact that you’re devoting time to jot down your ideas and goals is a step in the right direction!

Life gets busy, and your music career may not be your main priority at the moment. If you don’t have the time or the resources to develop a detailed plan, creating a quick napkin marketing plan is an effective way to get the ball rolling. 

Although creating a comprehensive plan will take much more time and possibly more resources, it’s never a bad idea to seek more clarity by defining what you want to do and how you intend to do it. 

So whether you’re just starting out in music or you’ve already established an audience, creating a comprehensive marketing plan is a great investment in your long-term career.

Investing time in creating a marketing plan ensures that you improve your chances of reaching your desired audience, helps you to build brand awareness and amplifies your art.

Related Reading: 8 Time Management Tips For Busy Musicians With Suggested Tools

Related Reading: Why You Need To Build A Team For Your Music Career: The E-Myth Model

Related Reading: Why Musicians Must Have a Vision And Mission Statement

So Should You create a music marketing plan – Final Thoughts

As you can see, making a plan can be a lot of work – but preparing and planning for all aspects of your career are imperative to your success. 

The music industry is getting more crowded every day, with new songs and new artists constantly entering the music industry. 

This can be intimidating or even discouraging, especially if you are an independent artist, but developing a realistic plan will help guide you through all of this uncertainty and make you confident that you are on the right track! 

As mentioned in the beginning, every musician can benefit from creating a marketing plan! Even if you are just starting out, there is nothing wrong with establishing smaller goals and tweaking your plan as your career progresses.

If you’re ready to start planning for the future, we have taken the steps to help simplify the process of creating a marketing plan that is optimized for you!

You can download our napkin music marketing plan template and leverage the other templates in our Music Planning Checklist Bundle that will help you develop your comprehensive music marketing plan.

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