Digital Media Firing Squad

All of the Jays agreed that retargeting is a big deal. If you have no idea what that is, don’t feel bad – Music Geek Services’ Jay Coyle said that when he talks about retargeting with his artists, he often gets a blank stare.

To explain the concept, Coyle asked, “Have you ever gone to Amazon or eBay and looked for anything? I was just looking for a new pair of running shoes last month and for the next two weeks all I saw were ads from shoe manufacturers … through Google and other [search engines and websites]. … That’s exactly what retargeting is.

“Now imagine if you applied that to a band … and you had the opportunity to push your album, push your tour, in a specific area. “

Although retargeting is easy to implement, such as by adding a pixel to your website via Adwords.Google.com, it’s not as simple as just pushing a button. Coyle added, “You have to nurture it and engage people … mine the data that’s there. You have to feed these fans and engagement tools.”

Later in the conversation Coyle gave an example of the importance of adjusting strategy based on the data with a story about a band sending out an email to fans in Baltimore.

Out of the 1,900 fans who received the email, 1,850 opened it. So far, so good, right? Except that only 75 clicked on the link. Although that stat sounds disappointing, the last two times the band played Baltimore, the band packed the venue. “Your core fans are not pre-buying tickets,” Coyle said. “That doesn’t mean they’re not going to come. It just means we have to change the conversation. Instead of ‘Buy tickets, buy tickets,’ it’s, ‘Come out, come out.’”

One topic that came up repeatedly during the panel was video – and more specifically, how folks in the industry aren’t properly using videos to their full potential. Jason Fahlstrom, senior consultant at Google for live events and ticketing, said, “If you have a fan out there who is interesting in going to a show, they’re going to be much more excited about going to that show if they have an opportunity to see exactly what the band is doing and how they’re out there performing.”

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Later in the conversation Fahlstrom pointed out how little video is used in email marketing for bands and live shows. To contrast, he said that nonprofits will send emails from the CEOs about what they’re doing to make the world a better place – and 90 percent of the email subscribers are watching the videos. Frank brought up a fantastic solution for those ads we’re forced to sit through before getting to the content we want to watch on YouTube.

“Most people are certainly aware that YouTube, if not the primary form is one of the biggest platforms that anybody under 25, in particular, is using to consume music,“ Frank said. “And yet, I’m on YouTube all the time but I almost never see an ad for concerts. I see ads for cars or insurance. Lots of insurance ads. Can we please do something about that? … It takes you maybe an hour to just go and edit some old live footage on iMovie, go and slap on a quick voiceover with some standard text. Upload it to YouTube and then spend $50 to market it … You can hit a great number of people and you’re going to hit them with sound, information and visuals all at once. That’s gotta have a bigger impact that a Facebook ad that you’ll just scroll right by on your phone.”

While we all know how important social media can be to a band’s success, that doesn’t mean there aren’t smarter ways of using it. For example, bands will be sure to tell the audience at a show how thrilled!!! they are to be in Nashville, but on Twitter the act will simply tweet that they’re “in Nashville for a show.” (Notice the lack of enthusiasm.)

Even worse, some acts won’t even mention they’re in Nashville until after the gig out of fear of bombarding their followers with too many tweets. Audience member Kelli Richards, CEO of The All Access Group, chimed in to say that acts need to engage fans all year, not just when they’re going on tour. Venues also need to step up their social media game.

Frank says, “You’ll basically have someone make sure vodka is stocked … that the sound is good … but the social media person isn’t monitoring that people are complaining that the bathroom is overflowing or parking is bad.”

But it’s not just about being on the defensive. “How many times did you message a fan back when they tweeted, ‘This show was awesome!’?” Frank said. “We don’t spend enough time engaging fans who are being positive. The more time we spent engaging with the positive, we’ll see that halo effect.”