We all know that social media numbers don’t necessarily mean actual dollars in our pockets. That being said, what strategy can you pursue to get people to buy your music? Debra Russell from Cyber PR gives us all the do’s and don'ts to actually achieve that.

How do you sell your music?

So, I’m not going to waste your time by answering that question the way the music industry USED to work, right?

Because that way is dead and gone and no longer applies to 99.9% of artists today. And I’m assuming you’re not part of that .1%, because I’m guessing they aren’t reading this blog…

The short answer is – to get people to buy your music you must make a genuine and real connection with your fans. And then, and only then, you must ask for the sale.

If you ask for the sale before you make the genuine and real connection, it will fall flat and people won’t buy your music. You will be just one more spamming, self-involved artist. If you just make the genuine and real connection but don’t ever call your fans to action – that action being to buy tickets to a show, download or buy your music or purchase your merch, and most importantly, share you with their friends, colleagues and loved ones – then you will feel the love, but you won’t be able to pay the bills.

So let’s break that out into the two steps.

Make a Genuine and Real Connection with Your Fans

Yep – I’ve said it, real connection, real relationship – that means you have to actually spend time connecting with your fans, finding out who they are and what’s important to them, discovering what you have in common with them, creating rapport with them – in other words, MARKETING!

Lest you think you’re already marketing – marketing is NOT:

Repeating ad nauseam – “check out my blog/YouTube video/song on YouTube, whatever!!!”

Tweeting/Posting on FB about what you had for dinner, what your cat threw up or how many times you’ve changed your guitar strings.

Instagramming/TikTokking a video how you recorded this song and who’s playing on that track. How cool are you?

That’s not marketing. Because marketing has more to do with your market than with you. And it’s not even sales – because there’s no real call to action, there’s a backhanded, implied call to action in the “check out my ….” Because the implication is, that if they check it out, then they’ll buy it.

But they don’t, do they? It’s not a clear call to action. And it’s not built on a real connection. In order to make a real connection – you have to actually talk with them, not blast at them.

Real marketing is defined as:

Creating an environment in which people WANT to buy. An environment in which they feel safe, excited, even driven to buy.

So you have to ask – what makes people want to buy? And how do you inspire that experience in your fans so they buy your music?

The short answer is, that depends on your fans. It depends on who they are. What’s important to them? What are they passionate about? And how do you meet them where their passion lives?

If you can key into that and connect with them about what is important to them, they will go out of their way to buy from you. If you can help them with a problem, help them fulfill a need, they will beat down your door to buy from you.

And if you can make them feel like they actually, genuinely matter to you, that you truly get them, they will get all their friends to buy from you.

But in order to do that – you have to listen. You have to ask questions. You have to know who they are and understand what their needs are. And that takes actual work that has nothing to do with your music.

It has to do with getting online and reading their stream and asking them questions. It has to do with responding to their questions in a way that is genuine and real. It has to do with seeing someone, for example, ask for information about a realtor on Facebook and going to your stream and finding a realtor to recommend to them.

Or reading about them having a tough time in their lives and offering compassion and empathy. Sometimes it just means responding to their joke with a real laugh of enjoyment and sharing it.

But Debra, that would take so much time! Who’s got time for that? I just want them to buy my stuff, come out to my show, tell their friends about me!

But why should they buy your music?

WHAT’S IN IT FOR THEM???

Look, I get it. You’re busy, we all are. But the best way to create real success over the long term is to create real fans in the short term. Fans who will love you for life. Fans who will share you with their friends. Fans who will come work for you as your street team. (When live stuff re-opens – and it will!)

That’s how you create success. It’s not about quantity, it’s about quality.

And I don’t believe there’s a quick and dirty shortcut. Can you outsource this? Maybe – some parts of it, at least.

But you better outsource this to someone who really gets that what they need to do is create a real experience of you in your prospective fans’ hearts and minds. You can systematize this connection so it doesn’t take over your life. You can schedule specific, limited daily actions. You can delegate the parts of the system that don’t need your voice and your touch.

I teach about how to do that in more detail in the Artists Marketing & Business Academy Track 3 – The Nuts & Bolts – Business Fundamentals.

But ultimately you are creating a relationship between you and your fans – and no one else is going to be able to do that for you.

Some folks have asked me, “How do I do this, when Facebook blocks my interactions with fans?” To be completely honest – Facebook has made it virtually impossible to have real interactions without paying Facebook for them. But Facebook is NOT the only game in town. You can certainly engage on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, MeWe, TikTok (and who knows what other social media engines will be born in the coming years).

Every platform is going to have its unique rules of engagement as well as cultural differences. It is part of your job marketing your music to understand a few things about each platform you choose to engage on. (Contrary to some people’s beliefs, you don’t need to be on all of them.)

1. What are the rules of that platform and what your profile can and cannot do there.

2. Knowing who and where your niche is – are hanging out on that platform?

3. And then get specific – where exactly are they hanging out on that platform and how do they like to engage?

Once you have chosen which platform you will work and understand the state of play there, you need to start engaging regularly. Not just posting (outgoing), but liking, sharing, and engaging in conversations with your prospective fans. I explore these questions in a lot more detail in my Multiple Streams of Music Income Self-Study program.

The 70:30 Rule

But one tried and true metric you should build into your posting system to get people to buy your music –

• 70% new content/engagement/sharing of others and

• 30% marketing/sales/announcements

Which means every third post can be straight-up marketing. The rest needs to be posting, replying to others, engaging in others content by sharing it, etc.

And remember, you don’t have to create all the content.

One of the best ways to engage with someone new is to find something in their stream that you can share and comment on. Don’t just share it – value it, make a statement about it. Make sure they can see that you’re not just clicking the RT/share button on random stuff.

OK, so now, you’ve built connections with your fans, and your fans frequently RT and share your content. They respond when you ask them questions, they’re ready!

NOW, Ask for the Sale

Here’s where it can be scary. You’ve spent all this time creating a real relationship with them, but now you have to ask for money. You have to ask them to buy your music. You have to ask them to contribute to your Kickstarter or buy tickets to your show. You have to ask them share you with their friends by buying a CD as a Christmas gift.

And that can be scary – because you’ve actually created a relationship with them. They’ve started to matter to you. And if they say “No,” it might hurt.

But what if you think about it differently. What if “No” doesn’t mean that they don’t love you or whatever you’re currently making it mean that makes it hurt. What if “No” means either:

• This isn’t the right time/place/format/price for them, or

• They’re not the right fan for you?

If it’s the first, well, you can package your products differently, at different price points, formats, or whatever to make it easier for your fans to say “Yes.” I go into this in a lot of detail in the Multiple Streams program.

You can also change the energy around the “Ask” to generate excitement or humor or the emotion in your fans that your fans will respond to. You can make it fun, entertaining and exciting. You can make it a game with wonderful prizes. Be creative!

How do you know what will work?

Apply the scientific method! You have a theory about what might work, because you’ve done your research and spent some time really getting to know your fans. You’ve watched them to see what they respond to.

Then, you test different ways to ask them and see what works. But when you’re designing your “Ask” remember, you want to create in them the same emotional connection you feel when you’re excited, inspired and happily anticipating buying something.

Make it fun. Make it real. Just think about the last time you bought something and you felt really good about it. Yeah – that – that’s the same feeling that will inspire your fans to take action. So, what was it about the offer you purchased that made you want to buy? How can you translate that into your offer for your fans?

And if it’s that they aren’t the right fan for you? No worries – you don’t need 7 Billion people to love your music in order to be really successful!

A single “Yes” or “No” will not make or break your career (unless you let it).

And if you just ask for the sale enough, with a strong groundwork of relationship, you’re going to get plenty of fans who will say yes, happily! Not only will they say yes happily. But they will love you for asking. And they will love saying yes to you!

Because your success has become important to them. They feel a connection to you and they love you and they WANT you to be successful. So ask.

Remember – if you don’t ask, the answer is always “NO!”