The Music Marketing Funnel — The journey from follower to superfan

In this article, we discuss how the concept of the marketing funnel can be applied to you and your music.

You can download a FREE PDF version of this guide so you always have it to hand!

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The funnel concept

The idea of a marketing funnel is one that’s widely used in marketing and business.

The funnel is the customer (fan) journey.

It describes how someone goes from not knowing you at all, to becoming interested in what you do, and eventually becoming a paying fan.

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How to design a funnel

To design a funnel is to define the journey from follower to fan. Each stage is a layer of the funnel. As they travel down each layer, they get closer to becoming a paying superfan of you and your music.

+ Content Marketing Models for Musicians

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The layers of the funnel

The below image is what a funnel looks like.

In this example, it starts at ‘awareness’, and makes its way down to ‘advocacy’, the people who promote you to others.

Your funnel might look a little different from this, but it’s good to use the concept to create a model for your marketing efforts.

In your case, you could say that the upper-most layer is everyone who isn’t aware of you at all. They’ve never heard of you.

Then the layer down from there is everyone who is aware of you. They’re not fans yet, but they’ve heard of you or seen something from you at least once.

The next layer down could be those who follow you on social media.

This could also be described as the ‘consideration’ phase of the customer journey.

The layer down from that could be those who join your email list.

Another layer could be the fraction of your email subscribers who open all of your emails.

Then the subset of that audience are the ones who buy your music, merch, or subscribe to your Patreon.

As the layers go down, they usually get narrower. This just means you’re honing in on who matters most.

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Further Reading

Here I wrote a piece for Indie On The Move about how to use a marketing funnel to promote your music.

Photo by Melanie Deziel on Unsplash