Promotion in the digital age.

Hey everyone. I wanted to share the results of an experimental marketing campaign that I conducted over the last 3 days.

Reverbnation offers a lot of services for musicians including song hosting/sales, mailing list management, and apparently online advertising. Each campaign costs 25 to 50 bucks, and they advertise on your behalf on facebook, myspace, spotify, rhapsody...etc. You can even go so far as to pick 5 artists that you feel that you are similar to, and they will target the ads at fans of those artists! Pretty cool. I did a campaign this week just to see what would happen.

I started by picking 1 song as a free download, a couple of promo photos for the ads, and 5 artists who I feel we are similar to. I went with Sabbath, Zeppelin, STP, Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden. Each of those bands has several million fans, so it's a large audience to advertise to! You can pick "local" or "global." I picked "global" for a worldwide campaign. I had a 25 dollar promo credit to reverbnation, so I selected a 25 dollar campaign. It's like a drug dealer....the first hit is free....lol.

Over the last 3 days, here are the results:

the ad was run 236,661 times targeted at fans of the bands that I picked
the ad was clicked on 104 times
47 people downloaded a song
our facebook likes went from 11 to 20
our reverbnation "band equity(combination of likes/plays/visits/etc) rating" went from 21 to 39
our "local rank" for rock bands in denver went from 979 to 735
our "global rank" for rock bands in the nation went from around 70,000 to 57,388
we were especially successful with fans of Sabbath, and STP, as we got the most activity from fans of those bands. Good to know.

I honestly thought that no one ever clicked on those little ads, but I guess I was wrong. A very small percentage of people do actually click on them. If I had the money, I would keep running these ads. I really like the idea of random people out there downloading and listening to our songs. That's why we do this! Some of these people even found and liked us on facebook. Cool stuff!

It just goes to show you that just like a decade ago, or 2 or 3 decades ago, you can get people to listen to your music if you have decent music and plenty of cash to throw around!

Well, if I have any more bright ideas I'll update again. I figure other musicians that follow this blog might find this information useful. Again, if you have any other ideas on how we can promote this music please email me.

Word to yo Mutha!
Saints At Sundown

Rise of the Fenix

Like the Fenix, we RISE AGAIN! We just hope you haven't forgotten about us.

What a long and strange road it has been! Our record is finally done, and it was a true labor of love. I was starting to think the universe was against this record being made for some reason. It was a learning experience for sure, and I think it turned out well. At any rate, it is done and it's out there. If you haven't taken the time to listen, please do! Free downloads and free streams can be found on our facebook, reverbnation, or noisetrade pages. Links to follow.

The next part is figuring out how to get people to actually listen to it. I'm exploring several non traditional avenues of promotion to try and ink out a little following for what we do. I have a small list of e-mail addresses, but I just hate spamming my friends and family....lol. If you have any ideas, or want to help out please get in touch with me! The album will always be free, we just want people to hear it. The best method is word of mouth so spread the word to your cool rock and roll friends. I'll try and update occasionally to let you all know how it is going.

Free download link:

www.noisetrade.com/saintsatsundown

Thanks for listening, and be excellent to each other.

Jacob

www.reverbnation.com/saintsatsundown
www.facebook.com/saintsatsundown