Creating a promo campaign for The Candyman video

Due to the recent spike in visits and interest sparked by unexpected attention on /r/vinyl due to this post, I had to improvise a lot. I wasn’t ready to take orders for Pantaloon Descendo's upcoming 7-inch EP, I was even further away from releasing it.

So, I had to rush everything and figure things out on the fly: I need to capitalize on this surge otherwise I'm going to miss out on this opportunity.

As a result:

• The official release date for 7 inches of bliss has been set for November 15, 2014.
• In order to support the release, The Mustache Club will be releasing the music video for The Candyman, a song featured on 7 inches of bliss. This has been set for October 27, 2014. 

Because the video will be released so damn soon (10 days from now) -- and I tend to be kind of clueless when it comes down to marketing my own art -- I had to figure shit out reeeeallllyy quickly… So many questions…

• How would I get organic engagement?
• Would I annoy the crap out of my friends and family asking them to share the video on social media the release day? I always hate it when people I haven’t talked to in years try to do that.
• Would I go for paid advertising? That can be a bit overwhelming when your advertising budget isn't super high...

In the end, this is what I ended up going for:

In order to figure shit out, I went on /r/WeAreTheMusicMakers and asked the following question: Bands/Artists who tried paid advertising through Facebook, what was the experience like?

I’m extremely grateful for everyone who took the time to answer me back, it really allowed me to figure out what I need to do. The feedback went from “Waste of time and money” to “It really works well if you do it properly”

I understand some people's campaigns didn't work properly. But I feel like maybe the value they provided didn't

Based on redditors’ comments, I was able to identify these few key points:

• Do not fish for likes.
• Targeting is key: interests, location. Not doing so will attract click-farms and devalue your Facebook page’s worth. 
• Creating engaging posts 
• Testing over a few days helps understanding/identifying what variables work and which ones don't
• “Boosting” posts (paying to make Facebook push your post to more of your organic “fans”, since it automatically ) is what works the best, as long as it provides good value. Ads and “sponsored posts” do not work as much
• “Boosting” to “friends and family” instead of targeting people by interest/location provides engagement through peer validation

As a result, I will run different campaigns over 5 days that will help me identify what works best (if it ends up working at all) for all future releases.

The last few days have been extremely intense, everything is moving at lightning speed. 

But it’s very exciting!

The small-scale value of a targeted Reddit link

Last week, I had a sudden spike in visits on this blog after a post thanks to Reddit.

If you have no freaking idea what post I’m talking about, itwas a blog post that discussed the economics of DIY vinyl. 

Over the last few months, I've been working on hand-drawing 100 sleeves for an upcoming vinyl release by Pantaloon Descendo. After I was done drawing everything, I thought it might be interesting to share the numbers with people because they’re not numbers we typically tend to be privy to. 

(Pantaloon Descendo’s hand-drawn sleeve for "7 inches of bliss")

The post made it all the way to the top of /r/vinyl. Probably because:
1) it was targeted right: it was a blog post about DIY vinyl that I showcased on /r/vinyl, so I reached the proper audience there
2) it provided valuable insight about DIY vinyl production, and
3) it had a good title that hooked people and made them want to click through

I can tell the blog post fared well because of the upvote/downvote ratio, which was over 80%. If 4 out of 5 people liked it, I consider this a success.

Over the course of 3 days, the Reddit post directed roughly 2,400 visitors to the blog.

Initially, I really wasn’t prepared to convert potential visitors into sales; The Mustache Club’s Web site isn’t even fully set up to accommodate sales. 

In order to actually be able to take sales, to improvise and invite people to e-mail me and then proceed to invoice them via PayPal, instead of having the convenience of a Web store. Old school shit. It worked.

The whole thing has been very educational.

What I've learned

The Reddit post directed 2,400 unique visitors to the blog. Out of those 2,400 unique visitors, 8 contacted me saying they were interested in the product. Out of those 8, I managed to convert 6 into a sale.

So, it took 2,400 unique visitors in a highly-targeted context (blog post about producing DIY vinyl record that reached a vinyl-focused group) to make 6 sales.

And, with 6 sales out of 8 leads I have a 75% conversion rate, for which I can only assume that the price ended up being prohibitive ($10 for a 7-inch record is on the higher end of the scale). If a 75% conversion rate of leads into sales is where I'm at, I'd say I'm faring pretty good. 

Overall, it takes me 400 unique visitors with a highly-targeted message to a specific audience to generate one sale. 

Not bad at all. 

A personable approach to sales is key

10 years ago, I was very active in the music business, both as an artist and a label owner. My music-related activities greatly helped me pay my way through university. However, after university, I drifted away from it. Climbing up the corporate ladder and establishing a good career can be extremely time-consuming.

I tried to keep on playing and recording, but I didn’t have enough time. In fact, setting up everything for my new label, The Mustache Club, took me over 4 years.

4 years of working here and there on Pantaloon Descendo: recording a ukulele track one night after work, recording a vocal track on a Sunday afternoon while the spousal unit is out to get her make up done... All in all, a lot of isolated efforts here and there, but nothing concrete.

I’ve been working on it alone for 4 years. It gets lonely, and it’s ridden with huge moments of self-doubt… “Is it worth it?” “Will people like it?” “Will it just be a forgettable product?”

Despite the self-doubt, I kept on going forward. Fighting in isolation against procrastination.

However, over the last few days, Pantaloon Descendo and The Mustache Club have gained a lot of unattracted traction thanks to a recent reddit post.

It's been generating unexpected volume of traffic and sales, which is really nice.

Sales are great.

Ultimately, sales are the oil that fuels the engine.

I love making a sale. It’s the ultimate form of validation. It’s someone saying “I’m willing to give you my hard-earned money for something you did”.

I’ve been away from music for 10 years. I’ve been away from music sales for 10 years. I’ve missed it.

But most of all, I’m realizing that I really missed the one-on-one contact with customers, and the relationship that evolves through every sale. An e-mail inquiry often turns into threads of 5 to 20 replies that have nothing to do with the sale in the end.

I really missed that.

Let’s be honest, Pantaloon Descendo is not the type of band that will massive amounts of copies: I can handle a one-on-one approach.

I’ll definitely make it a part of The Mustache Club’s business model.

Always be ready for a sale - I wasn't

Yesterday, I blogged about the economics of producing a DIY vinyl sleeve for Pantaloon Descendo’s “7 inches of bliss” and posted it on reddit in the /r/vinyl subreddit.

To my surprise, the post did really good and was upvoted way more than I thought it would. That means the post gained traction and went up in visibility on reddit, driving good amounts of traffic to this blog.

To put you in context: before I published the post on DIY vinly sleeve economics, I had 187 pageviews total for this blog. After I posted it on reddit, this is what happened:

You can see a spike. 

That's definitely a spike.

At the moment of writing this current post (24 hours after the article on DIY economics), it had been viewed 2137 times (so far). To a lot of well-established bloggers, this is nothing. But for me, this means worlds. 

It's been viewed way more than any of my previous posts:

In all honesty, when I posted on reddit, I wasn't trying to make a sale. 

My aim was simply to provide information on the mechanics and costs involved; if other people can learn from my experience, I thought it could help them.

However, I was not ready for people to actually be interested in ordering copies. The release date isn’t set for at least another 2 months. I just thought it would be cool to showcase the product and provide some metrics. 

Man, I wasn't ready for that.

In fact, the web store isn’t even ready yet; the simple option of ordering through a few clicks is not even functional yet. 

That’s dumb, I know. I should’ve been ready. I wasn’t.

But then again, surprise customer interest is a good problem to have.

I had to come up with a solution.

I offered interested people to e-mail me at The Mustache Club's email address, which would then allow me to invoice them via PayPal. Thankfully, my PayPal account was already set up.

Or so I thought.

After I created my first PayPal invoice, it asked me to confirm my e-mail address: can't send the invoice yet.

Crap!

I don't have access to my The Mustache Club e-mail account at work; I will have to wait until tonight to confirm my PayPal account. 

Re-crap!

I hate to make people wait.

Re-re-crap!

That will be a valuable lesson: always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always be ready for a sale.

***

As a way to counterbalance the fact that the ordering process was a little bumpy, I decided to mail advance copies to all redditors who order by Friday. Instead of asking customers to wait until it's actually released in 2 months, I thought it would be a nice gesture to send it now.