Utilizing your Strengths To Promote Your Music

[CashBook Clique]

In this section we will discuss how to properly leverage the strength of your team to approach the promotion of your group.

The first thing you want to do is to establish clearly what you hope to achieve by the end of your “campaign”.
Hence, you will need to go to the drawing board with the following (which I would consider key points) in mind;
• How many people do you have to use in you efforts?
• What are the strengths of each individual?
• What kind of budget do you have at present?
• How long will this effort take to come to fruition?
• What area do you plan to cover?
• Who will you need to speak to?

How Many People do you have to use in your efforts?

This should always be one of the first issues to explore as the amount of bodies available in any effort is very important.
Now keep in mind that everyone involved does not have to be a part of the performing group, if at all the possibility of including other people interested in assisting arises as long as the person displays “commitment” welcome them with open arms.
Please note however that commitment is highlighted above, this was done for good reason.

If an individual does not believe in the strength of your music they will not be able to convince other people as they themselves may have doubts. If an individual is not prepared to give his or her all sometimes it would be best to reconsider that persons involvement in this project depending on the scope of what you plan to do and the level of commitment that will be required from each person involved.

What are the strengths of each individual?

Once you have decided on how many people you have to work with the next best step would be to analyze the strengths of each individual in an effort to place them in an area in the plan where he or she will be most effective for e.g. with my group CashBook Clique we have basically gone through the group which consists of four main individuals. What we have done is to assign task’s to each individual based on what he is best at,Keez is best at public speaking doing letters etc hence he is in charge of publicity i.e. submitting to newspapers ,radio stations, television stations, speaking to sound system selectors with an aim of getting our music played etc. Scaffle is great with computers and studio equipment so he is in charge of all our recording sessions video productions including you tube material (see this link for e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VUKX5BJdHI ). Binlaw and Khani are very aggressive individuals on the street level and know quite a few people and places hence they are in charge of the street team.
Once the strengths of each individual are recognized and utilized you will find that things flow a lot easier and a lot more gets done.


What kind of budget do you have at present?

In planning your campaign it is always good practice to do a budgeting session with your team. Look at what you have in terms of cash and try to decide the best way in which to use this.
That is to say use this budget to approach a task that fits the budget and will be most effective to you in achieving the outlined goal.
You should realize by now that your day job and its salary will definitely be needed until at least this venture takes full flight. I would advise you not to quit just as yet.

Why?, music at times takes a while to take off for a lot of artist’s and you will need to have an income to support yourself and the music until it can take care of you, needless to say if you are a group and everyone is working this makes it a lot easier once every one can contribute to the efforts. This allows for two things that I would consider being of major importance;
1. Everyone being able to contribute allows the budget at times to be a little bigger hence you might be able to cover more ground as more funds are available allowing you to do more.
2. More funds can also mean you might be able to hire a promotion company which will give you more time to focus on making music.(Be very careful if you choose this route, always check out the company’s background and if possible past client’s. Try to get some feedback from them about the company’s work done for them).


How long will this effort take to come to fruition?

Important in considering the budget for your campaign is considering the timeframe over which you expect the activity to last. This will therefore give you an idea of how much cash will be needed for the activity in order to properly execute the plan put forth.


What area do you plan to cover?

An important part of considering your budget is also thinking about the area or areas that your campaign will cover.
Ask your self he following;
1. How far should this campaign go?
2. Are these areas logical for my style of music e.g. would you want to shop a hip hop song to a rock magazine or radio station for coverage or try to market rock to an hip hop public?
3. What clubs do I need to go to? (I would suggest starting with the hottest ones in you genre of music and working your way down the list).

Remember there is always a possibility that you will hear “no” this does mean that you should give up, try to find out what the individual had a problem with in terms of what you were shopping to him or her and try to fix it, go back to the drawing board if necessary. Just remember you will not be able to please everyone “not even God can” try however to please the majority. That is to say if you shop something to ten people and six (6) had a particular problem being the same or close this might be a legitimate issue that you and or your group would need to revisit


Who will you need to speak to?

It is very important to decide at the beginning of you campaign the “face” so to speak that the campaign will take on.
After deciding this you will need to think about the people who you will need to contact in an effort to get things off the ground.
I would advise you to try and compile a list of everyone that you will need to touch base with and ensure that you maintain this list for future use adding new persons to it as you go along.
Also important is noting the response form each individual you contacted from this list. Pay special attention to the ones with negative responses as discussed earlier take these with a smile if possible listen attentively to all comments and examine them with your group, this you must do objectively as if you are independent of the situation.
The reason for this is that you may very well have to try to approach this person again whether you like it or not and as they say first impressions last and some persons tend to look negatively on an artist or group that they believe is cocky, at least wait until you have made it to be cocky you can afford to be then.


Again I say these are but some of the pointers I picked up from my exploits with my group CashBook Clique and my crew members who are also partners in Street Dream Records www.streetdreamrecords.com my record label.
I make no promises that they are foolproof but I can say that they have worked for us.