5 Ways to Use Fans in your Rollout
I sat down with some fellow music marketers to discuss the best ways we can use fans in rollouts. Here’s what we came up with.
I sat down with some fellow music marketers to discuss the best ways we can use fans in rollouts. Here’s what we came up with:
Lean into Fanpages for Creative Direction
Rarely have I seen better graphic design and video editing than I have on some dedicated fan pages. Fans tell you what they want to see, and we tend to forget that fans are our target consumer, the people we are ultimately trying to please.
Olivia Shalhoup
Don’t Forget About the Power of an Email List
I have done some cool campaigns but one of my favorites was when we used an artist's email list to reveal the highly anticipated tracklist of their album. We took a list of their most active and loyal fan's emails and segmented it into 16 (there were 16 songs on the album). Then we designed 16 different emails, each with different song titles from the tracklist, and included a Twitter Hashtag where they could post the track they got and find other fan's tracks. Within minutes they started Tweeting and figuring out the entire tracklist. It was so fun to watch them freak out and get excited in real-time. One of the most important parts of my job is letting fans be a part of their favorite artist's major moments. It builds an unbreakable bond!
Elizabeth Fanfera
Trust Your Artist
My biggest piece of advice for any team looking to engage fans is not to doubt the fans knowledge of both the artist and the music industry. Personally I think now, more than any other time in music, fans are really familiar with how campaigns work and they can tell when they are being force-fed stuff. It immediately turns them off and they won't be interested in the artist from then on. If you work alongside fans, both new & old, and ask them to be part of your artist's journey, they take it personally and it creates a bond that isn't passive. Paying attention to what matters to them — whether that's fans being able to hear an early demo of a song via a clip on TikTok or asking fans to input their own stories for a chance to have the artist write a song about it (Ashley Kutcher does this and her fans love it), will go a long way because when you make it as personable as possible by including them on the journey, they'll be a fan for life.
Kelsey Barnes
LISTEN -- like actually listen.
Fans will tell you exactly what you need to hear, you just have to open your ears. Do some digging and get to know the people tagging you in their posts. Where do they live? How old are they? What do they love about you? What did they think of your fit today? If you can’t answer these questions, you’re not looking in the right places.
Kalesha Madlani
Tap into the whole team.
Chances are, you producers, ,engineers, and songwriters have fans too. Make sure to include everyone involved in your project in the rollout, more often than not you’ll be hitting an entire new fan group.
Olivia Shalhoup