Guerilla Marketing - it CAN work

[GregB]

My very first album “Not All It Seems” (2002), appeared in a few CD Review sections of printed publications.  It was a real buzz to be ‘noticed’.

 

But newspapers (and journalist numbers) have since withered at the same time that home-produced music has become a deluge of new releases. 

 

I imagine that most people on Songstuff are similar to me ... without any fan base from gigs or active social media.  There’s little chance our music will get heard, or even noticed, without shelling out money (“cash for comment”).  And, even then, there are few remaining platforms and limited space that hasn’t already been taken by the ‘labels’ for their professional artists.  

 

True 'guerilla marketing', like crashing outdoor broadcasts or doing media-attracting stunts, are just not something I'm capable of.  What else could I do?

 

A business marketing course I attended (a looooong time ago) said media outlets:

• Are always desperate for content
• Prefer stories where the work is already pre-packaged (requiring minimal effort by them)
• Prefer stories that have a unique ‘angle’

 

While this advice was pre-internet, I reckon things haven’t changed much as there are now more ‘outlets’, fewer ‘writers’ on each (often just ONE!), and a great pressure to keep pumping out content that can appear between the onscreen adverts that earn such sites the promised waft of income vapour.

 

I put this into practice, emailing stories of my albums to relevant news outlets, along with images.  I kept my sights focused within Australia, hoping for the ‘homegrown’ angle, along with the possible added interest that these albums were post-retirement after a long career that had nothing to do with music.  

 

I estimate that my success rate was ONE story for every FORTY emails I sent.  Not particularly ‘successful’, but it cost me nothing to do.  For the second album "Prescient", the only uptake was by a free paper for ‘seniors’.  I wrote it as upbeat ... that 'oldies' can still learn and achieve new milestones. I also created the composite image. 

 

 

My 3rd (and solo) album "The Flat White Album" got two major separate articles in our local street-press (Australia's 6th largest city of 600,000) for the music and arts.

1. https://blankstreetpress.com.au/greg-barnett-flat-white-album/ 

I wrote the Q&A and the journo wrote the intro.

1. https://blankstreetpress.com.au/greg-barnett-flat-white-album-videos/

Having corresponded directly with the journo who wrote the first article, I felt that he might be pre-disposed for additional material.  Again, he used my own Q&A and wrote his own top’n’tail.

Both ‘headlines’ were supplied by the paper ... headlines are definitely a ‘black art’ that I can't do 😊

 

For my 4^th and last album "Not All It Seems - REDUX", the “interest” angle I played was the 20-year cycle between my first song/album (cowritten/performed and studio recorded) and my home-produced solo re-imagining of it.  This ‘city’ edition story was syndicated to six regional ‘papers’/sites.  https://www.thesenior.com.au/story/7182141/recording-career-comes-full-circle-for-greg/#!

 

Did any of these published stories make one jot of difference.  Who can tell?   Unlike Taylor Swift and Kanye West with their billions of streams and an army of marketing people, I can see no statistical ‘surge’ after any story ... is five listens per month more significant than four (or the other way around)?  

 

My philosophy is that I’ve had the good fortune of being able to create and capture music of which I remain hugely proud.  Without taking a megaphone to the streets, I’ve done my best to make a few additional people aware of its existence.   It was no great impost, I’ve always enjoyed ‘writing’ ... letters, stories, articles, lyrics, critiques ... as anyone who reads my long posts on Songstuff should have realised by now! 😊 

[Glammerocity]

16 hours ago, GregB said:

A business marketing course I attended (a looooong time ago) said media outlets:

• Are always desperate for content
• Prefer stories where the work is already pre-packaged (requiring minimal effort by them)
• Prefer stories that have a unique ‘angle’

 

 

"Big" John Duncan, once of punk outfit The Exploited, had a band named the Gin Goblins, who would appear regularly on the front page of the Sun, with accompanying outrage. He told me the band made up stories and fed them to a journalist, who sooner or later figured out they were fake but didn't care. One such story involved them playing a Halloween gig at Gogarburn, a psychiatric hospital (in a fitting ironic twist, it's now HQ of RBS bank.) Another claimed the band broke into crypts to have sex. All nonsense, all national front page.

 

For a band I was in, we got stickers made with the band's name. We could walk through town slapping them onto any traffic pole or surface we passed. We figured it didn't matter if people came to see us at first, as long as when they saw the name again they recognised it. The more they see the name, the more curious they get. It's also a lot easier than putting up posters. The band got a big buzz and a bidding war. I can't put a percentage on the stickers' contribution but it didn't hurt.

[Clay Anderson Johnson]

Any news good or bad eventually becomes good because people will remember your name but not necessarily remember what they heard about you. Ask Exxon or Phillip Morris.

[john]

Guerrilla marketing can work. You just have to use it to implement an overall strategy. 99% of the time people stumble around using a few guerrilla marketing tactics, sometimes along with a paid marketing tactic, but they use them in an uncoordinated way, not linked to an overarching strategy.

 

It is all very well getting someone’s attention, but you then need to do something with it. Something worthwhile. Not only worthwhile, but the right action, with the right purpose, at the right time and the right place.

 

It is that lack of connection and cohesiveness that renders individual tactics ineffective, not the tactic itself.