S1E9 – 4 Keys To A Healthy Marketing Mindset For Your Music

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Why You Need A Healthy Marketing Mindset

Have you ever used words like slimy, spammy, or feel like you’re selling your soul when you market your music?

I believe marketing has gotten a bad rap, especially from us songwriters, artists, and creatives. We love to write the music and record the music, but then when it’s time to share the fruit of all the hard work you’ve put in, it’s like pulling teeth.

Yes, marketing can be extremely challenging and feel disheartening at times when it feels like no one seems to be paying attention or cares.

But I don’t think the problem is your mindset about it, and we’re going to talk about why, and 4 ways to shift your mindset so you can fix it.

How to Properly Define Marketing

Before we get into the 4 keys, I really want to first establish what marketing is and isn’t. I think one of the first reasons you struggle with marketing and sharing your music is that you have a misconception of what marketing is.  

When it comes to marketing your music, many people think about about things like:

• Posting on social media
• Pitching to Spotify playlists
• Getting a review on a music blog
• Running ads or promotions

While these are all tools and methods you can use in marketing, this is not what marketing is,

The True Definition of Marketing

Seth Godin, who is known to many as the “godfather of modern marketing” defines marketing like this in his book “This Is Marketing”, and I love this definition: 

“Marketing is the generous act of helping someone solve a problem. Their problem. Marketing helps others become who they seek to become”.

Seth Godin , “This Is Marketing”

When I first heard him say this, it blew my mind! It’s such a mindset and perspective shift from how marketing is commonly seen and defined by many. It changes the perspective from being about you to being about them.

Marketing in the Bible

If you’re here, you’re most likely a Christian, so let’s look at the greatest marketer in history, Jesus Christ.

Jesus was able to spread a message of His love, His father’s love, and His kingdom to many around the world. Even to the point where His ideas and ideologies are influencing us today, and changing lives around the world.

So how did Jesus share His message, through service.

Anywhere in the Bible where you see Jesus, He is where the people are who need His message and He is meeting their needs. Again it’s not about Him, it’s about them, and Him helping them solve their problems. Helping them become who deep down, they seek to become.

Marketing Mindset #1: Marketing is Not About You, it’s About Them. 

Marketing is about sharing ideas, thoughts, and concepts, that can help someone solve a problem. Your music is about sharing ideas, thoughts, and concepts, that can help someone solve a problem.

We can get caught up feeling like a car salesmen on tv, yelling at people to listen to or purchase our music, and often times, it feels like we’re just yelling on deaf ears.

But if you can really boil down your music, your message, to how it can help someone get through depression, or help someone deal with a loss, or help someone find encouragement or hope in Jesus Christ, etc, then it’s vital for you to share that.

Because not only is there someone who may need to hear that message, at that time, from your unique perspective, but it’s also something they find value in themselves. By promoting your music from this foundation, it allows the person to be more receptive and want to listen or purchase your music, because they know value it will have help them.

So just keep this in mind when you promote your music, what’s in it for them. Approach it from that standpoint and you may find people respond differently.

Marketing Mindset #2: Speak To One Person, Not Many.

In our last episode, with Marcos Suazo, he shared a great quote from Simon Tam about social media:

“Social media is often used as a megaphone instead of a telephone, instead of using it to talk to many people, we should use it to talk to one person.”

Simon Tam

There is a concept or tool in marketing called the ideal customer avatar. It’s a profile that a business uses to understand its ideal customer. So it will contain the person’s demographics, age, location, interests, goals, what shows they watch, what groups are they in, etc.

The idea is to help them understand who their ideal or target customer is and learn how to speak to them with their marketing messages.

The main concept is that by speaking to this one person, you are building a relationship with them, you are showing them that you understand them, and their problems, and so you position yourself as someone who knows how to solve that problem because you understand it and relate to it.

You need to do the same with your music. To understand who your ideal listener is and speak to that person. Speak about their interests and their pain points.

I think it also helps to relieve some of the pressure that comes with marketing. Because when we are just trying to gain the attention of so many people, then we begin to feel like that car salesmen on tv. We’re just wildly interrupting people, and making empty noise.

But when you can focus on just one person, and speaking to that person, it becomes so much easier, because now you’re just talking to a friend, someone who you’re building a relationship with and adding value to their lives.

Marketing Mindset #3: You Don’t Fail, You Learn

A lot of marketing is testing and requires you to take the emotions out of the process at times.

For example, when you share your post on social media about your music and it doesn’t get as many likes or engagement as you hoped, you can’t start telling yourself, “no one really cares about my music”.

That’s false. Because there are so many factors, especially with social media, as to why a post may do well or not, such as:

• You shared it at the wrong time, or on a day when no one was on.
• You chose the wrong hashtags.
• Chose the wrong type of content to share it as (video vs. reels, single image vs. carousel, etc.).

I mean the list can go on and on.

That’s why it’s important that even before you start to share your music, you start creating content and engaging with people.

By doing this you get to learn (and test) what type of content and messages your people connect with, when to post, how to post, and how to create content that’s most valuable to them.

Yes, it’s a lot of work, but the more you can test, or the more you fail, the more you’re going to learn about what doesn’t work and eventually learn what does.

And if you can begin to do that consistently, you’ll begin to see the fruits of your labor.

Marketing Mindset #4: You Don’t Have To, You Get To.

You know being a husband and a father, there’s a lot of things I have to do around the house. My wife is pregnant now, and she often calls me to help her with things, and I’ll be honest I’m not always very willing to do it right at that moment.

But something I have to remind myself is that I don’t have to do anything for her, I GET to.

• I get the privilege of having a wife.
• I get the privilege of having a house to take care of.
• I get the privilege of having a child with another on the way.

And the same applies to you with your music. Songwriting is a privilege, not everyone is called to do it, or has the gift or ability to do it either.

Being a musician, I hear people tell me all the time that they wish they could play an instrument. Or that they stuck with it as a child, or just have an ear for it. Not everyone gets that opportunity or gift, so when you have it, cherish it!  

This such a powerful way to shift your mindset, when you begin to feel weary, or discouraged with sharing your music.

It’s that you don’t have to share it, you get to. You don’t have to spend hours writing a song, you get to. You don’t have to spend tons of money getting a song produced and sounding right, you get to.

God called you, specifically, to share His messages through your music. That in itself is such a high calling and absolute generous gift and privilege given to us from God himself.

And I don’t know about you, but it’s something I can say with absolute certainty, is one of the best gifts I can think of.

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