How to Sell Beats Online Part 2

What's good my fellow producers! I hope you're enjoying the posts! There are so many great resources available on how to sell beats, but with these free posts, I aim to touch on the important foundational elements that enable you to get great sales. After all the great feedback I got from last week's blog post, I decided to write "How to Sell Beats Online Part 2." The first post focused primarily on the importance of mastering your craft. If you haven't read it, make sure and read How to Sell Beats Online. This week's post focuses primarily on branding. This is a very important foundational element.

According to Entreprenuer.com, the definition of branding is the marketing practice of creating a name, symbol, or design that identifies and differentiates a product from other products. Besides your craft itself, branding is the other area that enables you to separate yourself from the pack. So let's just say you've worked hard on mastering your craft and you have an arsenal of phenomenal music. But, you're not getting your desired amount of sales. It's time to work on your branding! To keep this post from being too long, I'll touch on just a few elements of branding as it specifically pertains to being an online music producer. 

YOUR NAME
Let's start with the foundation of your branding. The first question to ask yourself is how can customers identify your brand? Do you have a unique business/producer name? All of the successful online producers I've encountered have ALWAYS had their own unique name. Not something generic anyone would think of. This name is usually also their domain name. If you can't even buy the domain name for your own producer name, then it's definetely time to consider a new name. Your name plays a MAJOR part in separating you from the pack. Here are a few ways to generate your producer/business name: Use your real name (works best if your real name is unique), use a creative variation of your real name, think about your greatest strength(s) as a producer and build your name around that, use a nickname that a lot of people call you (if it's an embarrassing name don't do that lol), etc. PLEASE don't intentionally create a variation of another producer's already existing name lol! Don't make your producer name Superstar P, or Donny Juliano, etc lol! Be original please! Also having a tagline can be useful as well when branding. It's basically a short sentence that sums up what your business is all about. I'm all about musicianship so my marketing visuals will usually say "Premium Quality Musicianship" or "Producing Music, Musically."

YOUR LOGO
After you come up with a great name, you need a CLEAN logo to represent that. Key word being CLEAN! Most times when producers get graphics done there are all kinds of distracting elements cluttering up their designs. You don't want your general image to be too complex. You must realize although music is an art, SALES are all about having simple, clean, and easy to read/navigate visuals. Think about some of the most powerful companies and their logos. Sony, Coca-Cola, Apple, Wal-Mart, General Motors, McDonald's, etc. Pay attention to how these companies brand themselves and use that as an example of how to brand yourself visually. I believe logos are even important down to the colors. Colors give people different emotions. Colors can also trigger customers to think about your brand if you brand yourself strong enough. Look at the color chart below. The first chart is strictly on how people process colors emotionally. The second chart is related to how people process colors when purchasing. Keep these in mind when choosing the color for your logo and other branding materials: 
 
Colors and Emotions Chart
Colors and Purchasing Chart 

YOUR WEBSITE
Your name and logo will be the foundational elements for everything you do going forward with your branding visually and otherwise. Next I'd consider your website. Does your website exemplify your name and logo? Is your website clean and easy to navigate? Is your website's loading time acceptable? Can people view your website on mobile devices? All these things are very important and music be assessed/addressed. Your website does not have to have bells and whistles flying each and every way and have an explosion that turns into your name lol! That's the easiest way to cause slow load times. I can't stress enough to make sure your website is clean and easy to read. Get your site designed in a way that your beat store is the central item on the FIRST page. People don't feel like clicking a bunch of links or taking a bunch of steps just to hear what you have to offer. Make it as easy as possible. Potential customers should be able to pull up your website and be listening to your beats within a few seconds. Internet connection plays a big part in this so make sure you optimize your site to load as fast as possible on a variety of connections. Make it creative but simple. Don't believe me? Look at the e-commerce sites for big name brands and you'll find a consistent string of clean and fast loading websites. Here are a few: http://www.walmart.comhttp://www.ebay.comhttp://www.overstock.com, etc. Now you get the picture. 


YOUR PERSONALITY
There are many aspects to branding, but now I'm going to touch on the KEY that makes it all come together. ​In today's social media climate, branding also includes the personality or character of your business. Consumers today have a strong desire to build a personal connection with their favorite brands and that can only happen through brands having a personality. As an online music producer, you're the face of your business. You are the brand. That means your personality/character must be represented in your brand in order for your customers to connect with you. People need to know YOU. See you may look at it as you're just selling beats, but you're actually selling yourself. Your real authentic self. People have to be sold on YOU before they buy anything from you. You can't be ignorant, disrespectful, prideful, and unappreciative then expect people to support you. Once a customer is sold on you as a person, they'll be open to buy pretty much anything of value that you provide. Now although personal relationships are wonderful, I don't expect you to have personal relationships with ALL of your customers. That's impossible! But thankfully, it's possible to still create and maintain a somewhat personal connection.

Your branding strategy must include tools like your own personal blog, mailing lists, youtube videos, and interacting via social media to show transparency and let people get to know YOU. These things allow people to see how you look, hear how you sound, know how you think, and know what you stand for. This is how you build trust and familiarity with potential and/or existing customers. Don't sleep on these tools. Stop only thinking about sales. Your customers are people. They most likely won't always need your product, but everyone can always use a word of encouragement. Take time to encourage people, get to know people, share your life, and be human so that they can relate to you. Then when the time comes for you to sell something, they're buying based on the CONNECTION that you've established not just a product. 

Don't expect everyone to like you. Some people won't care for your music, your brand, or anything related to you PERIOD. That's life! I've had people unsubscribe from my email list (which I only email once a week maximum) and call me every name in the book. Especially other producers sadly lol! Did I get upset? No! That just means they weren't for me. People have different tastes and like different things. Don't be offended or feel like being less human if someone doesn't like your brand. Keep pushing and catering to the many people who DO support you! 

Branding encompasses a wide scope of things, but these are the specific areas I usually see producers fall short in when they're having problems selling their tracks. I hope this information is helpful to you! Always remember a stellar product, stellar branding, and humility will take you a long way before you even attempt to sell anything. Be blessed! - Tone Jonez







 

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