fan
noun
a person who has a strong interest in or admiration for a particular sport, art form, or famous person.

Facebook pulled an interesting marketing strategy  this week by replacing its “fan” buttons with “like” buttons. On the surface it seems like just a minor grammatical change, but the ramifications of this small action can be huge. According to Facebook, the reason for this change was a “part of [their] ongoing efforts to improve the user experience, increase engagement and promote consistency across Facebook, [they] are changing the language [they] use when people connect to [their] Brand Pages. People will soon connect with [their] Brand Pages by clicking “Like” rather than “Become a Fan.” People already “Like” their friends’ status updates, photos and links everyday. In fact, people click “Like” almost two times more than they click “Become a Fan” everyday”.

Will this plan actually work?

I am not convinced. One of the reasons social networking has become so popular is because it opens up brands to the consumer, allowing them to access ‘their’  brands on-demand. This can inspire more than just a “like” feeling, it creates a fan. This is what marketers have been trying to get their consumers to be: brand-loyal fans!  I can guarantee a “fan” will buy a band t-shirt, someone who just likes a band probably will not. While this new “liking” strategy may get more people to “like” a brand, I would like to point out that quality is way more important than quantity when it comes to social and email marketing campaigns. It is the fan, the super-loyal user, that will always click on your email and will always engage with your brand on social sites and will bring you the most return on your marketing investments.

And how do fans feel about this?! I think some of them feel a demotion in status from a FAN who attended every single one of band x’s tour dates last year and has band x’s tattoo, to someone who has been to just one show. Fans love being fans, they love the status and they are your most brand-loyal consumer. Engage them instead of losing them in the crowd.

I am an old man (in some circles). When I find myself on most undergraduate college campuses the days, it seems that the students have more in common with my 12 year old step son than with me. I’ve been out of college for almost 15 years now. So it was with great curiosity and mild mischievous humor , that I have entered into the hallowed halls of online course-dom by way of Berklee’s Online Music Marketing with Topspin course.

I feel a bit like Rodney Dangerfield in “Back to School”.

As CEO of a pretty well respected direct-to-fan marketing shop, our clients kinda expect us to already know quite a bit on the topics of online, social and so forth. And we do. And we pitch and deliver outstanding programs every day. So it is a bit of a running joke around the FanMail office that that I might be bit overqualified for the class… and so likely doomed to failure based on murphy’s law.

I got a C on my first assignment for not answering the whole question, “Please outline your top 10 pros and cons (5 each) of a direct-to-fan sales and marketing approach. Which traditional outlets do you think are still effective for selling and marketing your music?” I got the 10 pros and cons but skipped the question on which traditional outlets still work. Rats… the details get me every time.

But it is the dialogue that I’m most interested in. That is the good stuff. The grade is really negligible for me.

I mean the music industry sucks for open dialogue. Generally there is just too much ego and posturing and and self congratulation and fierce competition for the industry to actually openly discuss what works or doesn’t work in their marketing methodologies. It is interesting. If you go to any number of main stream “corporate” marketing conferences often you find presenters (one person showing a case study or telling a real story of success) or round tables (open dialogue with the audience and a moderator). But in the music industry it is all about “The Panel” (a group of hand picked experts who are really there to propel their own agendas).

So I’m looking to Academics for dialogue and I applaud Ian and Shamal and team for bringing it into a forum where such things can hopefully thrive. My fear of course is that the promise of open dialogue here could quickly be clouded by the marketing agenda. We shall see.

I’m also interested in the Topspin platform. I don’t think that it is akin to the second coming of Christ as the hype would lead us to believe, but I do think that it is a game changer and puts some pretty powerful tools in the hands of artists and their team. At FanMail, we are hoping to expand our programming over the next months to execute services for our clients on the Topspin platform. This is a good way to “dip our toe in the water” without taking a full dive.

We have a number of clients who use both FanMail and Topspin in tandem. FanMail for email, sms, automation and database management and Topspin for transactions, media and widgets. I’m hopeful that as the dev team continues to build out their APIs, that the doors will be opened where these two world class systems can continue to compliment each other. Ian, can I hear an open source yelp?

To top it off (and inspired by the class project) I’m working with Josiah to bring The Lion’s Rampant album “It’s fun to do bad things” to market for a March release on Topspin. This band it too much fun and I’m sure there will be more insights on this to come.

Ok, I’m off to find an apple for the teacher.

Until next time!

David

Quote of the Day | Bob Lefsetz

I don’t have the time.
And neither do you.
That’s what your unwanted e-mails are, solicitations.

Check out the full post here>>

The thing that sucks about most marketers is that they think too much like marketers… like solicitors. They have a very hard time stepping away from themselves long enough to ask their audience/client/customer/ticket buyer/fans, “why is that important to you?” and “what are your needs”. Most marketers are only concerned with their own needs… their own point of view and what is important to THEM.

I had a interesting conversation over lunch with a gentleman in the music industry who didn’t understand why permission marketing was important.. or how it worked. The question he raised was, “if cost were not an issue, why shouldn’t promoters send as many emails as possible, to as many people as possible, as often as possible?”

And he has a point… after all, if I throw enough shit at the wall, certainly something will stick.

However, email marketing is NOT permission marketing. Email is just the vehicle… a very efficient vehicle, but just a vehicle none the less. The value is not in the email, but in the PERMISSION… that somebody cares what you are saying and is looking forward to it.

The problem with just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks… is that the people who might have once cared and once gave you permission are likely to get hit along the way.

And once those people go away and block you out… they almost never come back.

Over the summer, while on our family trip to Michigan, we listened to Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser which heralds a resounding cry against modern agribusiness, industrial food processing, meat processing and fast food culture. In the months since, our eating and consumption habits have changed and we are consistently more focused on locally grow, fresh, non-processed foods. You are what you eat.

So it was with great surprise that I found our FanMail client Wookiefoot recently released a video on the subject as well. It is so good, that I just had to share. Enjoy.

One of our newest clients, Them Crooked Vultures, are something to write home to your Mom about. Not just because they are a SUPERgroup made up of drummer Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters), vocalist and guitarist Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) and bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin), but because their marketing and email strategy is highly effective in growing their fans and subscriber list.