How To Get Clients As A Music Producer
Your Home Studio Setup Is In Place
You just found the perfect spot for your music producer headquarters, and also the perfect spot for your lava lamp on your new fancy music producer desk. Right between your audio interface and where you have your headphones hanging, your lava lamp glows a florescent orange, and instrumental music fills the air. The vibes are right.
Quality production is a need for any artist who desires to make music and an income, so they need to find the perfect freelance producer to help them. Artists in the world of music need top notch audio service. You want to become the go to music producer and record music and produce songs for all the creatives in your city.
Now, how do you make that happen? When does the money start rolling in and your freelance efforts create a stream of income? There is money to be made. Your studio can become a production Valhalla for the music makers in search of paradise. But first, you need to know how to get your music production service in front of anyone wanting that Grammy quality recording.
This leads me to why I am bringing this article to the music market place. I'm here to provide you with 5 Tools To Get More Clients In Your Home Studio, so let's dive in and get this party started, so we can buy another lava lamp after a few happy clients come through.
1. Build a Content Hub
A content hub holds content
This content hub should showcase your talent, past music production experience, and your personality too. It can be a website or a page. One crucial thing your future clients need to catch as well, is that you are a good person to work with. Using past clients' rave reviews of you, is a very effective method.
Your future clients will see themselves in your past music clients. They will be more likely to trust an experienced source, like a past musician who was very happy with their experience working with you. It's not cool to brag about yourself, but, your game will speak for itself, along with those you have helped win as a music producer. Production again is a competitive market. Your skills are necessary but your personality and how you will make every interaction with each artist and musician showcase your character as well, will set you apart from anyone else trying to get freelance opportunity to their studio.
Create a no-friction contact form
Your potential clients need to have a seamless experience while navigating your site. Test your links to make sure they work. Ask your friends to visit your website and give constructive feedback on how it can be improved. If you listen and are willing to make it better, you will make progress and get closer to what you want with every edit. If your site is frustrating to navigate, your potential clients might take their money elsewhere, and you'll lose a potential income stream from their continued business. So think about this, if your site causes too much friction, and your leads leave the site before they even here your sound, or even look at your rates, you will miss out on project after project, and will find yourself even more frustrated, so be professional. Another tip, look at successful producers and their websites. Study their marketing, but also focus on how effortless their website navigation is. It takes more than a skill, to pay the bills. Focus on everythign from editing design on your Facebook, to the design of any websites connected to your brand.
Put your personality in the forefront
When a potential client enters your site, and is encountering all that you offer, make it feel like home. Focus on present yourself on camera and in your writing in a way that is comfortable and approachable. You are hoping to gain the long term trust of these people. Your first impression is going to set the tone for the rest of their experience. If your personality makes a great first impression, and you're able to build with your niche audience over time, when it comes time to follow up and contact them, the conversation will be comfortable and will require less effort. Editing your personality is not smart in marketing. Focus on starting with the simple idea of being yourself. If you're comfortable, they will be comfortable, and they will see you as an approachable music producer, not just a free lance audio robot they are throwing money at for some mastering and other music production needs.
2. Create a Free Offer to Attract Newcomers
Aim to give around $100 in value
A free offer entices people and gets them excited to work with you. We all like money, so saving your clients money off the bat, is likely going to increase your income over the months to come. I'm an artist myself, and if I get valuable help with my career, for free, that sounds good to me! This free offer of $100 can be in the form of a variety of things. You can give away a course you've created, or some mixing lessons you recorded. You can make any other free offer that doesn't need you to invest more time into making it available. I say this because you don't want to have to exhaust more effort to keep up with the demand. Even providing something like a career map for up and coming musicians, anything you think will provide them with great value in this crazy industry. Get that to your niche audience, and you will see your following grow month after month after month.
Offer free bonuses for first-time clients
A few ideas of client bonuses are a half-day of studio time, or deals on mixing. You could even offer free mastering with a client's first track. These deals will create good feelings for your client after working with you. What this experience then leads to is repeat business and loyal customers in the long run every month. In an industry full of get rich quick scams and people who want to mistreat their leads for selfish gain, being professional and helpful will quickly earn you a voice in their life. Being genuine is the key in this element of marketing.
3. Create an Interest Form
Use a Typeform form
Typeform does an amazing job with how they layout the questions you customize. Nobody wants to focus on editing for hours and put in a bunch of effort trying to create a nice looking, inviting info form. These forms feel like a get to know you experience. It's not a mechanical form your clients mindlessly fill out. This seems like a small thing, but it's actually a significant tool. It will help foster a personal connection and continue to build trust with your clients. That trust is crucial when marketing to any niche, and again, will make any future follow up seamless when you contact anyone.
4. Get ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is an email service provider. Think of it as the Mother ship of your email activity. It gives you powerful tools to help you interact with and grow your client community. The rates are very reasonable and at times, it can even sound too good to be true when you learn how much their system can do as you manage your leads. Budgeting some of your income intentionally to keep this running is sound advice, no pun intended.
Setting up an automated sequence of emails
The automation ActiveCampaign offers a system that is working for you while you sleep. You can dream of all the progress your clients are making on their customer journey. But the amazing thing is, with these automated emails, those dreams are reality. You will have a library of your leads. Whether you need to reach out to only those who show interest in audio services, or those who simply want to book recording time, this software is able to organize, and automate on an insane level. ActiveCampaign will be a game changer in your business. And to back that, I'm going to give you the first five emails you should send right now. You will build up your own library of emails in the future, but starting out this will help you immensely.
1. A Welcome Email
This email's purpose is to let your clients know you're there for them, and to thank them for checking your stuff out. It also verifies the communication via email is working, so you can keep the follow up going.
2. The 6-Hour Follow Up
Yes, you send this email 6 hours after the welcome email. In this email you should offer your business number and invite your client to hop on a call. A personal phone call can go a long way when it comes to removing obstacles and remaining friction. You'll be able to answer any questions they have, and it adds that all important personal touch in this crucial follow up moment.
3. Three Day Follow Up
This email will help you discover where they are. If after 3 days they aren't ready to set up a recording session, or book your free lance audio services, you know they may need some more space. Maybe their income is tight and they can't make a financial commitment just yet with your rates. Perhaps they stumbled upon you through advertising on Facebook, Instagram or word of mouth, and they are very new and want some further education to get a better sense of your approach, and message.
Hopefully if they don't book, they will keep going through your library, and will keep your portfolio on hand and sign up for some recording minutes later, and you can follow up again when that time comes. Remember that everyone in your marketplace is a person, they have real lives, so playing the long game is key. You could be the audio engineer with the most skill, but there is no price tag you can put on having a niche audience within your specific marketplace that trusts you and forges a genuine connection to you.
4. Three Week Follow Up
After three weeks goes by, if your leads have not booked anything, it's possible that they went another route. They might have chosen a different producer who had lower rates or a cool Facebook profile pic, but that's okay. At least this email will keep you on their radar for next time.
The great thing about artists, is we love to create. We have a library of material we are dying to share. We crave the stage, rocking shows for our niche following, our tribe. This means there will be more songs in the future. Perhaps that other producer turns out to be a flake. Then, your potential client will come to their senses and find that you were the right choice all along. That brings us to the final follow up email.
5. Three Month Follow Up
At the point of three months, the previous project they worked on is most likely complete. This is a great opportunity for you to swoop in again. This follow up email reminds them that you'd still love to work with them, and offer the amazing value you provide to the marketplace. You can hop on another call, and ask them how their music has been going. This call will help you identify areas they'd like to see improvement. That's when you make it clear again, you are the solution to the problems they are facing with music, at an unbeatable price. Follow up emails like the ones above will help any freelancer gain control over how to use Active campain to its full potential.
5. Use A CRM
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Manager. Make sure no client falls through the cracks. Organize and track their progress in relation to your business. Control what they experience on their journey. Active Campaign has an excellent CRM in place for their higher tier subscription. But if you need an option that is free to use to start, Trello is another CRM I recommend. This will only take a few minutes to set up, but the effects it will have on your ability to track and manage tasks beats any plain calendar option.
Trello
Trello can start you off with a blank sheet which gives you the freedom to create your own custom columns. This platform will serve you well. To help you get started, I'm going to share with you the five columns I use myself.
1. Replied To Email
2. Phone Call
3. Offer Sent
4. Offer Accepted
5. Project Complete
You're Ready To Go
As you use these tools, you will notice your business making progress. Not only will you continue to provide great products and services, but a great experience. This will eventually translate into income. These tools will help build trust, and quality interactions with your clients as well. Pretty soon you'll have a library full of past client rave reviews.
I once heard that people don't always remember what you say, but they never forget how you made them feel. Don't miss out on many future opportunities. Put these tools into practice today, and set yourself up for more success tomorrow. Now post a quick photo on your instagram of your lava lamp and make all the other audio engineers jealous and let's go be the best source of value to your niche.
Then through word of mouth, artists will hear your voice welcoming them. Bring your unfinished compositions, let me help you tell your musical story. No task too difficult. In no time, your portfolio will speak for itself and send this message to all artists: Your Valhalla awaits. Sign up today and your story will be hallowed throughout history.
Trust me, this is going to be an epic tale, now that you have tools to build your presence as a freelancer and set up captivating advertising through effective marketing strategy. You're sure to win with this advice. Now let's get to it!
