Can I have your home phone and zip code please? You hear that a lot when you check out at stores. There’s a reason for this, it’s called targeting.
Targeting is a method businesses used to direct products, offers, and specific information about the business to you. Usually it’s based on what interests you, where you live, and other stuff they collect about you (like your age perhaps). It’s also used to gather feedback and in the long-run see what kinds of trends appear when they try to sell you something–do you buy it or not?
When you go see a band play and you want to get on their newsletter, usually you’re not asked for much information. Traditionally a newsletter sign up form is just your name and email. And therein lay a problem that is being created by the DIY music generation. You cannot target with just an email address or a name on Facebook.
Let me give an example why not targeting specific groups in your music career is hurting you. You have a show to promote. You do everything you should like create a Facebook invitation. Yet, 85% have not replied. And you are left wondering why no one is coming to your show.
It may be because your fan living in California keeps getting invited to your shows in New York City. I see this all the time. Think about the multiplier effect. If you target CA fan to every show not in CA, he or she is less likely to check the invitation no matter how many you send or what it may be for. Add in all the invitations your CA fan gets from all the other bands inviting them to other shows not in CA and DIY musicians are giving themselves a bad name. And those 50 CA fans you thought you made touring the west coast now look at your invite as another piece of junk mail. And what is likely to happen when you’re trying to promote your new album or piece of merchandise? Ignored. Again and again by your 50 CA fans. And not just on Facebook, your newsletter too!
Start “Niching Up” Your Niche of Fans
I made up this little motto for you just this moment. Your fans are your fans because they like you’re particular style of music. You should note from this that you’ve created a niche of fans that doesn’t exist anywhere else. In other words, your 1000 fans or whatever the number are not the same 1000 fans of another group perhaps playing a similar genre. It’s a unique situation you can now leverage. So do not treat them as if they’re a generic mass of people. Start “niching up” your niche. In other words, make your target more targetable.
How many of your fans are female? Who’s between the age of 25-30? Who lives in your hometown and who lives in New York City where you’re getting a following?
Why should these mundane things matter? Your female fans want female style t-shirts and it may be good to know how many to print. Your fans between 25-30 are not likely to make it to a show on a weekend in the summer because of all the weddings they go to (or plan). And your NYC fans carry a different energy and reaction to your music than your hometown fans–so you want to deliver a NYC show to them, not a hometown show.
I made up those reasons, but it’s hard to argue you haven’t heard at least one of them before. You need to know these details of your niche so you can give the niches within the overall niche what they want.
Where Do You Start? Re-do your Newsletter Sign-up Form (Online and on Paper)
This doesn’t have to be overwhelming for you or your fans. Start with what you’ll collect from future fans first.
Start at the point of where you collect data that can be used to target fans. Here’s what my newsletter form collects. Yours can be the same or different, the data you collect has to mean something to you when you “niche up” later:
Name
Zip Code
Gender
Year of Birth (don’t ask for date of birth, it’s too personal)
I ASK if I can friend them on Facebook (it’s called permission marketing. See Seth Godin)
I ASK if I can follow them on Twitter
Make sure that your online form and paper form are as similar as possible otherwise you’ll end up collecting some information on one and not the other. On the paper form, don’t do the form in your handwriting–create a template that you can easily print over and over again. Another tip I have is to put check boxes for stuff like gender–no one wants to write out “male”.
For your current fan base, come up with some sort of survey where you can re-collect their information. You will need to verify whose data is whose by asking for their email address.
The Tedious but Necessary Part
Unless they sign-up online, you won’t have to do this, but you will have to enter all this information every time someone signs-up at your show. Find an email newsletter program that allows you to manually enter your information and allow you to filter your entire list by things like zip code or gender when sending an email.
On Facebook and Twitter, create lists. I have separated out my fan base by geography, but you can create any number of specific list–it depends how much you want to “niche up”.
Now you’ve created a system and process whereby you can collect and better target your fans instead of sending things to them as one massive whole.
One Downside
If someone moves there’s no way to really know unless you know them personally or they tell you. I can’t think of a way to correct this other than asking your fans every so often for an update of where they live.
Now you’re ready to start targeting and not abusing your fans with the Facebook invitations you’re sending all over the world. This may not be the most fun thing to do, but it will help you down the road when people don’t treat you like a mass marketer anymore and start paying attention.
Another good and similar read from Dave Cool: “Stop Wasting Time Sending Facebook Invites”
31. August 2011 at 4:41 pm
Thanks, Brian, this is great & makes so much sense. Will be implementing this for sure. The geo targeting (esp. on FB) is so important and getting a lot more attention lately. I hope a lot more musicians start thinking this way.
31. August 2011 at 7:31 pm
I agree with your basic premise of identifying your fans and targeting them. But I disagree with your questionnaire. I think asking for too much info up-front is a BIG mistake.
People move through the Internet VERY FAST. The decision to sign up for a newsletter or download a free track is a split-second impulse call. The fewer hurdles in their way, the better. If a fan wants to join your list, they should just have to give their email address — that’s IT. Ask for more, and a large chunk of your visitors will say “too much trouble, I don’t feel like filling out five fields” and they’ll disappear, lost forever.
Topspin’s email widget is incredibly effective because it only requires three steps: 1) Click the button 2) enter your email address 3) click Submit. Admittedly, this doesn’t include the Confirmation Email that the fan must open and click, but that’s outside the initial “capture their attention” process we’re discussing here. But it’s so smooth and fast that fans complete the process without a second thought. The minute you start asking for more info, you lose fans.
I do see the value in collecting that additional info, though. Maybe you could build a widget where the primary goal is simply capturing emails, but once that’s done, it offers users a chance to enter more info if they want — maybe incentivize them with bonus free downloads if they enter their ZIP/age/gender.
31. August 2011 at 10:46 pm
Thanks for your thoughts Jason, but what I say in this post I put in practice myself. No one has complained to me when filling out my paper sign-up sheet in person that it is too much information and when they’ve asked about certain things like zip code, I tell them straight up–I use zip code so that I can email you about shows in your city or specific neighborhood. If they don’t want to be a fan because they don’t want to give a zip code then they’re not a fan is how I look at it.
It is true that people want to go through the internet forms fast, but if that were the case no one would bother buying anything on the internet where more information than what I ask of a fan has to be filled out. I think the majority of people are used to filling things out and being asked for information. What I ask is commonly collected all the time, so I don’t believe it’s a huge waste of time.
One thing I neglected to mention in my post is that whatever information you want to collect, you can make certain pieces as required or optional. I think that’s a happy medium if you’re worried about asking for too much information.
And my list is just examples based on what I use. Musicians can use more or less than what I offer.
The last thing I will say is to run your music career like a business. Targeting is a best practice, so why not try it? My main point is not to promote, market, or sell everything to everyone of your fans. Because then you look like a mass marketer and not a niche marketer, which means your ignoring people’s preferences.
Thanks for the comment, Jason!
Brian
20. September 2011 at 6:56 am
I think that you (Brian and Jason) both have a point – we generally try a combined approach – and it is effective, to a degree.
Whenever we have tested long forms against short forms on an artist site for a free music / email trade the short forms have performed better – i.e. less info and easier for the fan to submit.
Then, at a later date, we email the whole list (relatively regular intervals – say 6 months apart) and ask them if they want to give us more info so that we can send them more relevant info – including Zip code etc.
If the mailing list is well run and reasonably responsive (we can hope for 50% plus open rates on a genuine artist fan list) then we will get maybe 30% of that opening half to give us the extra data.
By doing so they are automatically segmented into a new list so they won’t get asked it again whereas all those that don’t will get the next request 6 months later.
It’s not perfect but I think it’s the best compromise.
That said, if you are an established act with a very active fanbase you can ask for more data up front if the reward for signing up is good.
20. September 2011 at 12:59 pm
Good tips Brian. I agree – asking for more than just the basics is OK as along as you explain why you’re asking – what’s the benefit for the fan?
There’s another way of looking at this. It’s important to know what’s unique about your act and, from understanding that, what’s unique about your audience? Knowing these things helps with targeting.
Eliza is author of The Fan Formula
29. September 2011 at 5:29 pm
Thanks, Ian & Eliza for your comments.
It depends what you think is long form and short form. What I suggest does not take very long to answer in my opinion. But to other artist’s fans, it may be. Collecting what you think is important to YOU is what it should come down to. I agree with Eliza, if there is something unique you start noticing about your fans that can be captured in a data format, then it may be worth collecting.
I think Ian’s approach of asking at a later date is a great strategy too. I just prefer to capture what I can up front so I don’t have the extra step later.
Brian
3. December 2011 at 7:49 pm
Your writing has definitely inspired me to totally change the way I blog. I really appreciate your hard work.