<aside> <img src="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/8a85baec-44ad-420c-83b2-efce6bfdcf7d/information.png" alt="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/8a85baec-44ad-420c-83b2-efce6bfdcf7d/information.png" width="40px" /> Once you reach potential fans, your job now becomes to move them along the fan journey. The next step is acquisition. You need to acquire the fan data before you can engage them. Reach people first → then acquire them → then engage them.
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There are many different ways to acquire fan data. And where you acquire fan data depends on which of your marketing channels are the most successful, or which channels are resonating the best with your target audience. If you are receiving a tremendous amount of website visitors, then you have an opportunity to capture and convert these website visitors into a large email database that you can engage with content at a later point in time. If, however, you have a tremendous following on TikTok, then you need to stay focused on creating the best possible TikTok content to acquire additional followers and ultimately excite this audience enough to move them further along the fan journey.
<aside> <img src="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/5711b6ed-ba3d-4f89-be51-e323689a8ecb/information.png" alt="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/5711b6ed-ba3d-4f89-be51-e323689a8ecb/information.png" width="40px" /> The general rule becomes: find the best performing marketing channels, find out what resonates the best within these channels, and then do more of it.
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Ideally, you are acquiring fan data for owned media sources like your email list or SMS text list along the way. But you can also focus on acquiring fans at the social media level, for example growing the number of Facebook likes or Youtube subscribers as long as there is a plan in place to engage these communities and ultimately convert them into paying listeners.
Once again, this answer depends on the overall quality of the list you are trying to build. The absolute best way to grow a very large email database is to give away a high value prize via a viral sweepstakes. If you give away a car and use paid media to target lots of people from all over the world, I guarantee you will roll up a very large email database. But this would be considered a low-quality list because these people didn't sign up for YOU, they signed up for the car. Low quality lists are defined by low open rates, low click-thru rates, and large bounce rates. You don't want these things.
The next best possible way is to perform a checkpoint audit - where are fans and potential fans currently engaging with you? Are they visiting your website? Are they watching you on YouTube? Are they hitting your Linktree link? Determine first where people are engaging with you and then test different strategies to convert these impressions into an email subscriber.
If visitors are hitting your website on a regular basis, you can tools like SUMO to A/B split test your content and call-to-action to optimize your email sign ups. I absolutely love SUMO and I've seen it pour rocket fuel on email list acquisition programs.
The #1 FREE email capture tool
Simply ask people... ask people to sign up. You'd be surprised how many people say yes if you just ask them. Provide an incentive. Provide an on-brand incentive like a chance to do a facetime hang or win a free signed guitar. Run a viral sweepstakes and collect email addresses as a condition of entry. But the first step is to simply ask.
<aside> <img src="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/cbb8ee74-5580-48b3-9c4a-1b48fc166195/information.png" alt="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/cbb8ee74-5580-48b3-9c4a-1b48fc166195/information.png" width="40px" /> The ideas are endless, but the main point remains: Work backwards. Find out where people are engaging with you and then determine the best way to generate email subscribers via that specific marketing channel.
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This is the holy grail of modern music marketing. Every artist, every manager, every record label executive I've worked with has been focused on rolling up a massive number of social media followers. And we all know the true answer...
<aside> <img src="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/cab377c2-3f7e-4273-bf29-3b1694edccb7/information.png" alt="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/cab377c2-3f7e-4273-bf29-3b1694edccb7/information.png" width="40px" /> There are no shortcuts.
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