Being an entertainer includes knowing how to connect with an audience.
—Joe Nichols
Understanding the people that a brand is meant to target is the first step to attracting them and is the main point described in this chapter. Following the behavior tendencies of an audience and gathering data regarding their preferences, as well as utilizing this information in the process of promoting content are key features to extending the reach of a product’s activities. The music business is so incredibly and fascinatingly influential and successful because, unlike other industries, it satisfies the end consumer’s needs in a variety of different aspects by providing experience that influences a person’s senses in multiple distinctive ways, unlocking feelings and perceptions, which cannot be generated or substituted by any other product. In its essence, the concept of the music culture is so appealing to the mass audience because it does generate and create a landscape of a community and a sense of genuine belonging to the end user.
Comprehend the Process of Connection
Influential and successful acts are such due to their capability to create and offer a product that is an irreplaceable commodity for their respective audiences, making their status and presence such that cannot be substituted by any potential alternatives. The process of targeting is not defining the general specifics of your audience only. Certain artists tend to believe that once they receive some ideas and notions about the overall characteristics of the people, who they see during their shows, or the ones that interact with them on their social media accounts, they start to understand and have an in-depth knowledge about their audience and how to approach the procedure of targeting. Which is, to some extent, correct; however, nowadays popularity is based on social currency. People enjoy the feeling of being identified and associated with their interests—this activity of indirect interaction with their favorite musicians or artists gives them a sense of purpose, belonging, and the opportunity to establish a bond with something or someone that they feel close to. Having said that, when it comes to the process of connecting your activity to your audience’s attention, an artist’s goal should not be to necessarily and only establish a fan base with their product, but to provide this kind of a value of social currency, which people are looking for. For instance, people who enjoy sport love to expose and showcase their fandom and their admiration to their favorite athlete or team. They do love wearing their favorite player’s jersey and items that expose their level of affection to the said person or brand. Why? Because these sorts of actions are increasing their social currency and help them to think that they are perceived by other people in the way that they want to be perceived. This same concept is fully applicable to the music world. Once you determine what sort of content that you are capable of producing have the potential to make your audience feel proud and satisfied to represent your brand, you will know how to use your talents and intrigue people with your work. This is the ability that will help you to extend the reach of your actions organically, and that will increase your social rank. You have to understand your audience, the principles behind the activity performed by the people who follow your career. Why do they like you? What do they like about you? How they perceive you? How they expose their support to you? Gathering data and information about the way that your fans interact and invest themselves in your activity, utilizing the extracted knowledge from such operations and forming, organizing and performing your actions in accordance to the established tendencies is the only method that can provide you with the opportunity to exploit the support of your fans to its highest possible level and generate the results, which you might need from this field of action in order to achieve career growth. Even from a personal point of view, you have to be willing to understand how people perceive actions and respect and consider their notions in the process of building your professional level.
The Big Wins Come with the Small Ones
Attracting one fan matters, and spending significant amount of effort to do so is not irrational. Building a fan base, to a large extent, is basic and simple mathematics. It truly is a game of numbers and working toward exponentially organizing your audience growth as a mathematical progression. As such, in order to expand the reach of your activities to as many people as possible, you have to start your efforts from the first, lowest progress step—gathering the attention of one person. Contrary to popular belief, the sustainable way to establish a profitable and well-operating career is by developing your profile and audience from the first level of exposure, step by step, slowly and steadily, before progressing to do so globally, even though the advantages of the social media platforms can suggest differently. Even from a personal perspective, an artist would be more beneficial to steadily develop understanding about interacting, engaging, and establishing audience on a smaller scale, rather than getting involved in operations that would require more experience, knowledge, and intuition. Many artists find the incentive to do what they do only once they see the possibility of achieving significant, almost unnatural progress. However, undertaking such approach is actually one of the most unreasonable decisions that a formation can take advantage of. Do not aim to impress the mass audience at once. Try to base your efforts on getting the attention of each person separately, at the same time. Treat the people following you as a community, but aim to showcase that you do not perceive them as one universal massif, but as a combination of different individuals, where you appreciate their personal characteristics and notions.
Expectations
Do not aim to meet people’s expectations—aim to exceed them. An artist should develop a mentality where, regardless of what the exact situation and specific requirements are, there is always a desire for adding a final touch to the respective activity, which would doubtlessly impress the final user and would put your action over the top in terms of the generated effect. Attention to detail is a necessity. Aim to create an impact. Possessing an influential value is the asset that can guarantee long-term stability and sustainability in terms of your product and career’s performance. Whatever task you are performing, invest 1 percent more effort and passion into it. Make sure to reach your absolute limit and then surpass it. If you believe that your career is worth pursuing, then it is worth putting an extra effort in it as well. Give away more than you receive. The way to utilize the marketing potential of your audience to its full capacity is by providing your followers with a value that is on a higher level than the invested time or funds in return. This is how people would be interested in your activity and overall performance—by understanding that they are profiting and receiving more from this interaction than what they would with another artist. Once a person realizes that their efforts are appreciated and acknowledged better by you than your competitors and that you treat your audience with more care and attention than your market rivals, this is where your approach would create a long-wasting, sustainable, and positive impression, which would start defining the performance of your brand.
Give the people what they want, but do it how you want it. Yes, the essence of the entertainment industry is quite simple in its structure—you will be in a position to generate beneficial results with your activity once you build a methodology that can provide the audience with the product that they want. However, they key point to this aspect and principle is regarding the fact that while you need to consider the audience preferences and desires, you have to comply with their requirements in the way that you want to do it, not how you think people would like you to do so.
The Focus of Impression
The biggest and most noticeable problem that many young artists struggle to recognize and address is the lack of proportionality and cohesiveness in the different aspects of their promotional work, when a part of their careers is not representing their overall vision as an artist. You might be a group producing great music, with very active live presence and already establishing a stable fan base, yet your online activity might not be representing the potential that you are able to offer in these areas at all and you have to make sure that you are in a position to level that. Yes, you are generating interest from people, you are being involved in good interaction with fans that like your music, but here is the key thing—you should not aim your activity to be noticed by people that are already aware of you, that are already hooked to your product and will follow your progress. You have to work to get the attention of those who do not have any idea of who you are and you need to develop the constant urge and ambition to expose your music to people outside of your reach, all the time. It is a matter of perception, but as you know, the internet is providing you with the biggest and most efficient tools to get your profile popular. And the beauty behind it is that you can count only on your efforts and activity to achieve that, at least to some extent. So, make sure to promote your content constantly. Many people tend to worry how this sort of actions and attitude are being perceived by the audience in general and they do not want to establish themselves as click-baity working artists, unnecessarily exploiting methodologies with questionable effect, but thinking like that is a common mistake, which will only prevent you from extending and showcasing your activity to new people. After all, you should be receptive and appreciative of how much you are putting in your respective career, so it is only natural to make everything possible to show your product to new audiences as well, as there are a lot of people out there that will love your music and product. However, at the early stages of your career, no one will seek your specific activity and products, so it is your job to put them in front of the eyes of the audience that might be interested in following your professional progress.
Professional Landscape Overview
Audience Profile
Main interests and subinterests and the establishment of a general audience profile can be determined through gathering information about the following aspects of your audience’s profile, which can provide you with the chance to not only understand but also know the people that you would be in a connection with through your music. Following, considering, and utilizing the main characteristics of your audience and implementing the formed conclusions in the process of building the specifics of your marketing activity can have a crucial effect on the positive rate of the execution of your business strategies and approaches. Collect knowledge about the aspects that are constructing the profiles of the people who show tendencies of appreciating your activity, such as general age, gender, type of personality, behavior, secondary interests, consumer tendencies, other favorite artists, preferred social media platforms, and approach in terms of exploiting them. The ability to construct a legitimate and truthful impression of your audience and its preferences, features, and attributes will give you the chance to better know how to use and shape your own talent and activity in order to form a better, more sustainable, and long-lasting connection with it.
Analyze Your Market
Even if your strategy does not include synchronizing and shaping the nature of your decisions in accordance with the established business sphere of the activity of your competitors, you should—at any stage of your career and development—be in a position to be cognizant of the circumstances that your career is being involved in and be aware of every industry aspect, which have the potential to be relevant to your career at some point. Follow and study the most successful acts in your scene—both local and global—and consider the utilized approaches and methods, which they are undertaking in the process of achieving exposure, engagement, and traction. The generated conclusions will help you to evaluate the eventual reasons and decisions that might be preventing you from generating the best possible results that your potential might be capable of and find better and more efficient ways of utilizing your talents in order to determine accurately the buying potential of your products, the active tendencies that can maximize the ability of a product to score better sales rate and to define the most useful, helpful, and beneficial promotional content that you can use for the exposure of your product. Moreover, receiving in-depth and detailed idea and perception of the following topics will confirm whether the field of your activity and career sphere that you chose to participate in is capable of providing you with the opportunity to construct a sustainable, successful career.