For professional musicians, and anyone who wants to make money off their art, it is important to begin thinking about your craft like a business. Even though making music is an art form, if you want to make money, you do have to think about revenue streams and growing your audience, which means you need to think about marketing.
There are many ways to grow your fanbase and focus on audience development, but one method you really should consider is cross-promotion and collaboration. Keep reading to learn what cross-promotion is in the music industry and get some examples you can use to grow your band’s audience.
What is Cross-Promotion?
In the music industry, cross-promotion is a form of marketing where fans of one musician are targeted with the promotion of a similar musician. Cross-promotion is a great way to grow an artist’s fan base, boost brand awareness, and network. It is also an impactful solution for musicians with a small advertising budget. Cross-promotion is generally free, making it a very appealing marketing strategy.
The main focus of music cross-promotion is to grow your fan base while helping other artists, and collaboration is key. Building communities is important when it comes to making and promoting music. When collaborating with other artists, the goal is to expose each other to new audiences; this, in turn, grows both bands’ fanbases and extends each of your reaches.
The first step to starting a cross-promotion marketing strategy for your band is brainstorming a list of radio stations, fellow artists, and publications you would potentially like to work with. Do some research to see what bands have a similar audience to your own and what radio stations have collaborated with artists in the past.
Once you have a list of potential contacts, you can try out some of these cross-promotion examples.
3 Examples of Cross-Promotion
Here are some examples of free cross-promotion marketing strategies that you can use to grow your band’s audience
1. Social Media
Social media is a great first step to take once you learn what cross-promotion is.
- Twitter: you can tweet about other artists a couple of times per week in exchange for tweets about yourself.
- Facebook: you can share other artists’ pages, events, and music videos and then have them share yours, as well.
- Instagram: you can go live with another band or other relevant influencer to collaboratively promote your own content
- Tik Tok: you can create a duet video with another artist on the platform.
2. Music Sharing
Similar to using social media for a “post for post” strategy, you can use music sharing platforms like Soundcloud and Spotify for your cross-promotion campaign.
On Soundcloud, you can do a “follow for follow” agreement where when you follow another artist, they follow you back. You can also do a “repost for repost” strategy where you can repost someone with a similar sound with the goal of your followers giving this other band a listen. In return, they can share your music on their own page, too.
On Spotify and similar platforms, you can use the playlist feature to create artist playlists on your page that you like/want to promote. You can ask other artists to do the same. Spotify tracks this kind of data, so while you might not see much benefit initially, in the long run, this strategy can bump your presence on the platform.
3. Collaborate on a Project
Social media and music sharing are behind-the-scenes methods for cross-promoting your music. They’re good places to start, but after a while, you should try to collaborate with artists to really reap the benefits of this marketing strategy.
Collaborating together on a project is something to consider after you have already posted about each other on social media–for your fans, this collaboration will make sense. One way to do this is to record a song together. It can be something completely new or even a remix.
You can also take the collaboration to the next level by creating a music bundle or even putting together a music festival where both of your bands are headliners. Collaborating with another artist in the public eye is a great way to gain more exposure and grow your audience.
Cross-Promotion with MerchBooth.com
Another way to get the word out about your band is to open up a free storefront on MerchBooth.com. Not only will you give your fans 24/7 access to your band merch, but your merch will also be visible to everyone who visits our website and social media channels.
We know how important it is for up-and-coming talent to get discovered, which is why we try to make it as simple as possible. It’s also free, which means our services can fit in the budget of even the most beginner band.
If you want to start selling merch and cross-promoting your band to the whole internet, don’t hesitate to learn more about our services and investors at MerchBooth.com.