Finding *your* audience is essential for building success. It is not uncommon to struggle with this, wondering where on Earth to start looking and how to reach *your* people.
A number of factors come into this, such as:
- Ensuring that your music, your ‘product’, is of high quality.
- Building a strong brand that aptly reflects the genre/style of your music and your USP (unique selling point) as a band or artist.
- Using social media effectively and appropriately to engage with fans, build connections with potential new fans, and network with industry professionals.
By implementing the above, these factors provide you with a solid starting point from which your efforts will be most impactful. Having a good quality product in the first place encourages new fans who find you to stick around. Those who find you will be interested simply due to the fact that the music you’re making is good. By producing distinctive and recognizable branding, that is applied across all of your social media, website, streaming profiles (essentially, anything you do), this will make it easier for audiences to recognize and understand who you are. In respect to social media, it is important to grasp the basics for success in terms of producing a variety of content, making use of the different features of each platform and being professional (though, that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with it!).
Getting Started
An useful place to begin is with some introspection. Consider what makes you, *you* – whether as an individual artist, a band or project. For example, which genre(s) does your music fit with best? What themes or concepts do you incorporate into your music? What imagery or style best represents your project? What inspires you to create your music?
By considering these questions, you can use this knowledge to find the groups of people who are your target audience. Generally speaking, if you are a metalcore band then your audience is, typically, going to be metalcore fans. Look at influences and themes to narrow down a more specific group. If you are a inspired by anime, look to audiences of anime who might also enjoy your music. Some of your potential audiences may overlap more so than others, and that isn’t an issue, it’s about narrowing down to find the most appropriate demographics to connect with.
Once you have established who *your* audience is, you can then begin to target them through networking and through tailored marketing strategies, for example:
- Interact with bands and fans of a similar genre through your band/artist social media profiles. Always be respectful and genuine with your online interactions – authentic relationships take time, and these are the most important for building a supportive fan base who want to stick around.
- Show support for fellow bands, artists and creators around the genres, themes or concepts that are relevant to you. This can involve creating a playlist supporting other bands – remember to tag and share on your socials. You can also create content talking about artists, authors, games, films etc., that are sources of inspiration for your music.
- If you choose to run ads, use this information to target, with as much detail as possible, the most relevant audience otherwise it is not the best use of your resources.
Finding and building *your* audience is not an instantaneous process. It will take time to discover the most relevant demographic(s) and it will also take time to then build up meaningful relationships with those people. By sorting out the basics around your music, branding and social media; by considering your USP – and how that can help you find the best groups to connect with; and by beginning to work on genuine connections, you can nurture a supportive fanbase with real connections.
Further reading:
Advice on networking
Social media & authenticity