13 Powerful Tips to Promote Your Recording Studio
You've just built a brand new music recording studio and now you need to get clients. This is the part where most recording studio owners will start to struggle. It's easy to overlook this stage and believe it will be easy. Unfortunately, that isn't the reality.
I've put together 13 powerful tips that will help excel your business and increase your clients. If you put some effort into some of these marketing methods you're bound to start seeing results!
The Power of Social Media
Social media is still relatively new and is a great tool to increase your music recording studio's awareness.
Creating a social media presence and sticking to an uploading schedule is a great way to find clients and grow awareness for your studio.
Some social media websites such as Facebook and Instagram (and many more) even have built-in advertising platforms where you can target people in a certain location! (Now that's so powerful). This means you can target people in your local area and even better facebook ads manager lets you cross target people, so, for example, you can target people who live in your local area and have an interest in music production!
Facebook ads manager also lets you build custom audiences. If you already have an email list you can now target people from that list or target people who have already been on your website before (by using the Facebook pixel).
There's so much facebook ads manager can do that sometimes it can be overwhelming, especially if you're new. Luckily youtube has lots of free useful information that you can learn from.
The only con of facebook is that it can be quite expensive if you don't know what you're doing, make sure to educate yourself thoroughly before using their tool.
A great way to improve engagement is to have rewards for people to engage with your content. For examples, you could host giveaways where people need to like, comment or share for a chance of winning.
You can also post helpful information and tips for musicians. This is great because you can help and give out value to musicians at all different types of stages and levels.
Try to keep to a frequent posting schedule. In order to grow your social media, you need to produce content that people are interested in and want to share with their friends and family. Tools such as tailwind let you schedule posts way in advance, so instead of uploading every day, you can create a schedule that will post regularly for you so that you don't need to do it!
Creating or Improving Your Website
If you haven't already built a website, you should! It can really help your presence and spread the news of your services. The only downside of websites is that if you don't promote it by sharing it with people or have any content on your site then it's going to be hard for people to find it.
Adding your website URL to all your social media is a great way to inform potential customers.
Having a website that tells your customers exactly who you are, the geolocation, what services you can offer and for what prices is really helpful and is likely to get you more customers. You can even add contact information on your website so that people can contact you.
Another bonus to a website is that you can add a blog and post articles. Blogs can bring in organic traffic from google or other search engines. (More on this later with search engine optimization). If you build a blog you can eventually monetize it by placing advertisements or affiliate links in your articles.
Adding a blog to your website can create a solid foundation for your business and will even help your authority with Google and is likely to rank you higher for other pages on your website.
When creating a website you need to make sure the website doesn't look spammy and builds trust with the users. By adding contact information and avoiding using spammy content such as audio playing in the background or pop-ups, your website will look a lot less spammy. Having a good color scheme and branding is also something you should consider.
If you haven't created a website yet, WordPress is a really good website content management system that can be used to create a website. Most shared hosting packages will have WordPress included. Hosts such as BlueHost and Godaddy will have this option.
Another bonus of having a website is that they are really cheap to set up and run,
Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization is extremely effective when done right!
It can drive thousands of new visitors to your website. The best way to get seen on Google is by producing lots of high-quality content.
As of writing this article, Google loves long content between (1800 - 2500 words) that is really helpful. If you aim to provide free, useful content that is valuable you're bound to start earning traffic.
When I first started trying to rank on google I was clueless, it was only after I join this training program called incomeschool.com that I was able to see results. In less than 6 months my website started to go from 4 visitors per day to over 250 visitors. This training program will teach you how to create content will rank high on google so that you can start being seen on search engines.
Here's proof:
You can then also start making money by placing adverts on your website and linking to affiliate offers or just by linking to your services.
Avoid Black Hat Search Engine Optimization!
At all costs avoid black hat SEO methods such as buying for black links. This type of search engine optimization may increase traffic for the short term but it is likely to get you penalized by Google later on down the road. It isn't something you want to do if you want to create a long term sustainable business and should be avoided at all costs.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is something that I wished I started doing earlier. Just by adding an email contact form on your website is a great way to start collecting email addresses that you can market to by sending a series of emails or weekly newsletters.
It's a fantastic way to drive traffic back to your website and to inform users of the services you offer.
When getting people to sign up to your email lists you should offer them an incentive to join. Something they will get for free when they join your list. This gives them a reason to sign up. Whether it's a 10% discount code or something valuable such as an ebook on how to improve your mixing skills.
One of the reasons why email marketing is so good is because once you have their email address, marketing to them is super cheap and has very high returns.
When sending out emails make sure they provide value and are not spammy as people will unsubscribe to your email list.
A couple of great free email marketing web applications you can use it MailChimp (The one i use) and Sender. These two software will allow you to collect email addresses and send out mass amounts of emails at a time. Most of the free email marketing software will only remain free for up to a certain amount of collected emails or will have a limit on how many emails you can send out each month.
Post Fliers in Your Neighbourhood
If you're not too comfortable with promoting your studio digitally you can always resort to the good old fashion methods. By posting notices and fliers in your neighborhood you can increase the awareness of your recording studio and get more clients.
It doesn't hurt to ask your local food shop or other local businesses if you can post a flyer up on their billboard. Usually, this is free of charge too.
This is my local Tescos (a grocery store in the united kingdom). They allow people to come in and hang up billboarded notices for completely free of charge. Perhaps this can give you some ideas?
Post in Your Local Newspaper
Another non-digital method is by posting an ad in your local newspaper. Local newspapers get quite a lot of exposure (especially from slightly older people), so it could be a good way to increase awareness.
It is definitely something worth testing. Usually, the local newspaper will charge for this service so be prepared to pay a small fee.
You can check your local newspaper's website or most of the time there will be more information on how you can post an advert within the newspapers.
Attend Free Local Music Events and Hand Out
Attending your local music event and handing out leaflets and talking to people (networking) is probably one of the best places to promote your studio.
If you get talking to the right people you can quickly spread the news. Try finding and looking for people who are into producing music. Look for people holding guitars, setting up music equipment, talking to band members ect.
You could also try speaking to the venues manager/owner and see if you can hang up a poster or whether there's a place you can leave leaflets.
The best part about music events is that the atmosphere is very chilled. After everyone's consumed a little bit of alcohol it might just be an ideal environment to promote your services.
Word of Mouth
Word of mouth is another extremely powerful way to promote your home recording studio.
By just telling friends and family or asking them to tell all their music friends can result in some extra clients. Most music producers will know other people who are interested in music production so word of mouth can really spread the news of your services quickly.
You would be surprised how many offline businesses have succeeded by just using word of mouth. This especially works for businesses such as restaurants and cafés.
Promote to a College, University Or other Educations
Lots of young adults who are just coming out of college are looking to get into the music industry.
Students who are studying music or audio productions might be interested in studio sessions or perhaps other services such as mixing and mastering.
It wouldn't do any harm to contact your local college and ask if you can put up posters or hand out leaflets in their music departments.
Being over-optimistic and trying our new marketing strategies is how you're studio is going to succeed, so it wouldn't do any harm in trying!
Google Ads
Google ads is one of my most favorite ways to get seen by potential clients.
What google ads lets you do is target specific long tail keywords in a geo location. For example, you can target keywords such as "nearest recording studio" or "music recording studio near me".
In other words, if somebody in your local town is googling terms such as "where is the nearest recording studio" you can jump to the top of the list on google and be seen.
Below is what a google ad looks like:
Google ads works on a cost per click bidding system. The highest bidder will be seen first and it will only charge you once somebody clicks on the ad. If someone was just to see the advert but not click it, you won't be a charge.
That's why Google ads has such a high converting rate, and is often cheaper when compared to another advertisement system, especially if you're using it for a specific location as there's less likely to have high competition.
Lots of web hosts will often have a discount coupon code to use with google ads. Google ads often host discounts very often for new advertises, by simply google searching "google ad coupons", you can find discount codes.
Like the one i found below:
Facebook and Instagram Ads
As mentioned in the social media part of this article, you can leverage Facebook and Instagram by running advertisements to potential clients.
The reason why Facebook and Instagram ads are so powerful is because you can target people in your local area who have an interest in music production.
This approach will need a lot of testing. You will need to test different images and videos, text copy, different ad types and much more such as interests, gender and age.
If you have an email list, Facebook and Instagram ads will let you target people who are on your list or if you use their 'pixel' you can target people who have visited your website before. This is great because people who already know you are considered as 'warm traffic' and they will have a higher conversation rate since they already know who you are. This means it will
There are also many more features that these ad platforms let you do. If you want to learn how to run ads on those social media platforms you should watch some tutorial videos or read up about them. It's very easy to spend money fast on these platforms if you don't know what you are doing.
Facebook and Instagram both have different demographics. Younger people tend to use Instagram whereas Facebook has many different demographics, that's why testing both of these platforms is worth doing. Different demographics will react to your ads in different ways.
Other Pay Per Click Advertisement Platforms
There are also other advertisement platforms you can use to help promote your business. LinkedIn, Youtube, Reddit, and Twitter are prime examples.
I've never used those advertisement platforms before but I have heard great things about them. Especially LinkedIn and Reddit, so it might be worth testing those platforms out to see if you have any success.
You will find that different advertisement platforms will have different levels of competition, so while one platform might be really cheap to use another platforms might be considerably more expensive. For example, google's advertisement could be more expensive (or cheaper) than bing's ad platform.
Every ad platforms has different options, layout, and systems in place to run your ads. Some platforms may take more time to master than others and might be more complicated to use. For example, Facebook ads platform has lots of different ad types and options, while amazon's ad platform is really straight forward to use.
Each ad platform will have different metrics and ad types that you can use and might be confusing/complicated at first. Luckily, youtube often has great free content that you can watch to deepen your understanding of these ad platforms before you run your ads.
The great thing about using paid advertisements to find clients is that once you have found a winning campaign you can scale your business really fast by just adjusting your budget.
Build a Youtube Channel
Youtube is something that is definitely worth looking in to and has been building in popularity in recent years.
By building a youtube channel your content will be able to be viewed for many years to come and is a great way to help get clients.
For this to work you'll need to come up with a marketing plan. There are many ways to approach this.
You could create a youtube channel showing people how to mix or produce music, or you could create a channel that just promotes the business.
Personally, I would aim to provide as much value as you can.
Youtube also has a cost per click advertisement platform, but I have never used it before so I cannot really give my opinion on it. It might be something worth testing or looking into.
There are also other opportunities to monetize your youtube channel such a selling merch and using Amazon's Affiliate Services (or other affliate programs) to redirect users to the camera and products you have used when creating your youtube videos.
You can also use that to recommend products such as studio monitors, microphones and audio interfaces. More importantly, you can use youtube to redirect to your recording studio's website and to promote your services, or perhaps you'd like to offer other products such as mixing and mastering services.
How to Get Results
If you choose a few of these methods that we've talked about above and stick to them, you will bound to get results within a timely manner.
The best way to become successful is by testing as much as you can. Constantly try different methods to grow your studio's awareness and increase the number of clients you have. If something doesn't work, consider trying something new or changing it up to see if the results differ.
- Before trying any of the advice above, it is best to come up with a solid music recording studio marketing plan by thinking it through.
- Once you have thought it through, come up with a plan
- and when ready take action!
Lastly, you should promote your business the way that suits you best. For example, if you're an extrovert then get outside and talk to people in person! and if you're an introvert you might just have better success by learning how to market yourself on social media or search engines.
A thing to note is that promoting your services digitally can take time to see the results you want (much longer than promoting it in person). Online it can take a while for people to start to trust you and therefore the conversion rates may be lower.
Don't Give Up Too Early
Many new businesses fail because they give up too early. Don't make this mistake.
Below is an image that has stuck in my mind and is something that I consider whenever I'm starting something new.
If you're not seeing the results you've been hoping for and you've stuck to one thing for a good amount of time, then try changing it up because whatever you're doing right now isn't working.
The Importance of Your Mindset
Being optimistic is such an important skill to have. If you're bogged down all the time and don't believe in yourself then you have a much lower chance of succeeding.
Being able to take a step back from your situation and analyze your business as a whole is something you need to be doing regularly.
Below is a video that explains the importance of your mindset and how not being able to reflect and change your mindset can result in your business failing.
Related Questions:
How should I charge for my home recording services? It's common to charge clients on an hourly rate. Some recording services will charge per song.
How much should I charge for my home recording services? This completely comes down to the level of equipment you have and the type of client who approaches you. The quality of your home recording studio will be a huge factor that decides how much you can charge.
How long does it take to record a song? This will hugely depend on the artist and how many takes they will need. It will also depend on how long and complicated the song is too.
