What Your Band’s Website Really Needs

Marketing is the difference between a band website that gets a lot of traffic and one that doesn’t. But how is marketing your website different than marketing your music? You’re about to find out.

It Starts with Signals

Just like a good song, a website that sends the right signals will attract more people. Search engines work by crawling your site, analyzing its structure and content, and determining which signals it should rank for.

There are a number of things you can do to make sure your site shows up on the first page of a search engine when someone types in “electronic music San Diego,” for example. 

Of the top internet marketing trends, mobile optimization and content marketing are very important when it comes to sending signals to both search engines and internet users. Content marketing can take the form of a blog that highlights your band’s activities and shares pictures as well as videos. Moreover, it’s especially enthralling for fans when you post previews of new songs.

The key to great content marketing is quantity and quality. Post new content to your band site 2 to 3 times a week — if you can manage to do it daily, that’s amazing. Post quality content that really gets at the heart of what your band is doing, and link to other pages on your site, especially your merch page. Link out to other sites when appropriate, but make sure they’re legitimate sites — who you link to is like the friends you keep, it sends signals about where you belong on the internet. 

Great band blogs are very rare. Do this well and your content will easily put you on page one of the search engines. 

Next, consider mobile optimization — you can’t underestimate the extent to which people will be using mobile devices in 2019. Right now, people spend about 5 hours a day on their mobile devices. When someone searches for music on their phone, you want to make sure they can easily access your site. Moz’s tutorial on mobile optimization will give you a good idea on where to start. 

Use Analytics to Monitor Performance

The benefit of website analytics to marketing is such that you can figure out where your traffic is coming from and concentrate your efforts on improving shortcomings.

If, for example, you see all of the visitors are popping in from your Facebook page, you can maintain your efforts there while beefing up the content on your website in order to attract search engine traffic.

Google Analytics will be your primary go-to for analyzing what type of traffic you’re getting. There are also free alternatives to Google Analytics. You have to go the extra mile to use these, but it can be worth it. With Piwik and Open Web Analytics, you have to install them on a server and use antivirus software to protect them instead of simply accessing them on the web. They’ll give you deeper insights than Google Analytics.
Inspectlet is supplemental to Google Analytics and can tell you why people are remaining on certain pages and doing what they’re doing.

It doesn’t hurt to start with Google Analytics and troubleshoot with new analytics tools if you need them for further insights. Apply analysis to your site’s traffic to determine what type of marketing you need, and you’ll be able to go a step further than other bands.

Enable Ecommerce
  
Selling merch and music on your site is an awesome way to take things to another level. You need to enable the site for ecommerce first, though. There are several ways to do this. If your site is on Wordpress, you can use a platform like WooCommerce, which is a plugin you can enable by going to the Wordpress admin area and doing a quick search. After you’ve installed the plugin, run through the setup wizard.

Or, you can allow people to make orders directly through online PDF forms. Make sure your forms are user-friendly by minimizing the amount of information users need to input. Allow touch interfaces for smartphones, and make sure cyber security is up to date on your site so customers can transmit forms securely.

About 80 percent of people have made at least one purchase online, and there’s a good chance they want to buy music online, too. Allow them to do so on your site, and you’re opening the door to listeners who might not get into your stuff otherwise. 

What does your band’s website really need? Marketing. Keep your marketing up to date by refreshing content regularly, and make sure it’s mobile friendly. Use analytics to stay on top of user activities, and you’ll be sure to understand what’s working, and what isn’t. As your music evolves, so too will your site, you’ll be blown away by the level of excitement from fans.