Music Influencers: Brand Partnership and Influencer Marketing for Musicians

Marketing is challenging, and developing brand partnerships and engaging with music influencers could prove beneficial for your music career. But the process is more complex than simply shooting an email off to a prominent brand or famous influencer.

When considering brand partnerships and music influencers for your artwork, you must consider a few key elements. For instance, does the brand or influencer attract an audience similar to yours? And what will your alignment with a specific influencer or brand say about you and your music? There’s also the question of where and how to look for a strategic partnership.

Determining the best partner to promote your music effectively takes careful analysis and planning. When securing a brand partnership for musicians, your approach will differ from finding the ideal influencer. There are also specific pros and cons associated with each, which you must think about.

This article will delve into the ins and outs of developing brand partnerships and engaging with music influencers. We’ll also look at the best approach for finding a partner that aligns with your brand. And we’ll touch on some of the different ways you could work with the brand or influencer.

Music Influencers: Brand Partnerships for Musicians

What is a Brand Partnership

Brand partnerships are essentially that. Partnering with a brand. This could be through a long-term agreement or just for a specific marketing campaign you have in mind. Either way, the partnership must be mutually beneficial. Meaning both you and the brand leverage each other's audiences to promote the growth of awareness or sales.

Partnering with a brand is a great way to boost your marketing efforts. Especially if the brand is beloved and successful. By teaming up, you'll be promoting the brand's products and services to your audience. And the brand will be endorsing and exposing your music to its customers.

The Benefits of a Brand Partnership for Musicians

Being in partnership with a brand gives you access to an audience who may not have heard your music before. These would be loyal customers who trust the brand. As such, they are more likely to take the brand’s advice when they recommend listening to your music.

You may be lucky enough to enter into a contract with a brand and receive payment for promoting the brand. But this would depend on your approach to brand partnership and influencer marketing for musicians. You may also benefit from receiving free products to wear or be seen with from the brand.

One of the most significant benefits is the added exposure you'll receive when promoting something specific. For example, perhaps you're releasing new music or selling tickets for an upcoming gig. Your partner brand could have a massive impact on your conversion rate when they share the information with their customers.

Finding Brand Partnership Opportunities

You must be clear about your wants and needs before diving into working with a brand. If the brand can't help you reach your goals, there is no point in partnering with them. Likewise, you should have an idea of how your music could benefit them.

Another critical element to consider is your personal values. You must ensure the vision of each brand you approach aligns with what you believe in. If not, both their customers and your audience could get the wrong idea entirely. And it wouldn't feel good to work with someone you didn't see eye to eye with.

When looking for a brand to work with, you must consider the customers they cater to. This way, you can determine whether their audience is similar to yours. Of course, to do this, you'll need to have a firm grasp of who your audience is. Make sure you know the demographics and interests of your fans.

You've likely seen international and local artists partner with different brands. So, you probably have a good idea of the typical ways in which they tend to work together. If possible, you should try to avoid what everyone else is doing and competing for. Think about different brands that allow you to provide value to your fans and their customers.

Forming partnerships and running online campaigns will be the easiest way to go about things. But you can also partner with local brick and mortar businesses and work together to engage with your community.

Remember to keep your music front and center. Don’t allow money to be the driving factor behind the brands you choose to work with. It’s the quickest way to lose the respect of fans and fellow artists.

Approaching a Brand for Partnership

If you feel a brand and its customers align with you and your fans, it’s time to make contact. But you should give some thought as to how you’ll pitch your partnership idea before diving in. The primary objective will be to show the company how you and your music can bring value to their brand. The company will also want to know what you expect in return.

Sharing a detailed profile of your audience is a good idea. If you can display this information comparatively next to an analysis of their customers, it will help. This way, the brand will recognize the similarities between their audience and yours. And this should encourage them to strike a deal with you.

When pitching your partnership idea to a brand, be mindful of your long-term goals. It's often possible to enter into an agreement with a brand over a longer period. So, avoid being tempted to snatch up the short-term gains and run. Working together toward a mutually beneficial partnership over the long term will be in your best interests.

Some examples of ways in which you could work with a brand are as follows:

1. Product Placement: You could include the brand’s products in photos and videos you share on social media. And you could opt to place them in your music videos. Find out how to make a music video for your song here.
2. Song Lyrics: Dependent on the brand, you could consider including the brand name as part of your lyrics.
3. Social Media Promotion: If you have a decent following on social media, you could offer to feature the brand in your videos or posts.
4. On Stage: Again, depending on the brand, you could wear or include the brand's products on stage while performing.
5. Photo Shoots: When putting your electronic press kit (EPK) together, you’ll need professional photos of yourself or your band. You could include the brand somewhere in these photos, which will appear on your website and in the press. Read our detailed blog post “How to Create an EPK” for information on how to put a professional EPK together.

Marketing for Musicians: Music Influencers

If you're planning to pitch a mutually beneficial partnership offering exposure to your audience, make sure you have an audience. The first thing the influencer will do is look at your profile on the platform. So, ensure that you have something to show them, including great content.

What is Influencer Marketing

Brand partnership and influencer marketing for musicians are not exactly the same. A brand partnership for musicians can take many forms, including sponsorship, product placement, and more. However, when working with music influencers, it's typically online and usually in the form of a paid partnership.

This means that you’ll most often have to pay music influencers to feature your music on their channel or profile. As such, influencer marketing will form part of your social media marketing strategy as paid advertising. That said, it may be possible to find music influencers to share your music with their audience in return for some exposure to yours.

These music influencers have connected with their audience on a very human level. And as such, they've established a level of trust with their audience. They, therefore, have the power to persuade their followers should they recommend something to them.

The Benefits of Influencer Marketing for Musicians

Music influencers come in all shapes and sizes. Some, referred to as micro-influencers, have small but highly engaged audiences. While others may have millions of followers and views with plenty of reach on a platform as a result. The latter, however, will most often cost you an arm and a leg to join forces with.

The benefits of brand partnership and influencer marketing for musicians are similar. Partnering with the right music influencers could expose you to a substantial, engaged, loyal following.

Finding Music Influencers To Work With

Many creators in numerous niches can be utilized in your influencer marketing campaign. It’s up to you to decide on a partnership that will best benefit your music and you as an artist. You could even partner with other musicians who create music in the same genre.

The best places for musicians to find music influencers to work with are TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. And the idea would be to get music influencers to post content related to your music on that platform. This could be content you create together or content they create featuring your music.

If you’d like in-depth information on the best strategies for TikTok marketing, read our “How to Promote Your Music on TikTok” article.

The following are essential elements to take note of when selecting the ideal social media celebrity for your influencer marketing campaign:

1. Number of Followers: What is the size of their audience? You'll want to work with music influencers who have at least 5,000 or so followers.
2. Rate of Engagement: How often is their audience liking and commenting on their posts? For instance, something isn't right if an influencer has 50,000 followers but averages 200 or fewer likes per post. This person may have purchased fake followers to make it look like they have a large audience. Or their audience is simply not engaging with their content.
3. Type of Audience: Does the influencer's audience match your current and target audience?
4. Type of Content: Will the type of content posted by the influencer resonate with your target audience?
5. Your Budget: If you’re working with a small budget, you may want to start off by working with micro-influencers. These would be individuals with at least 25,000 to 50,000 followers on TikTok, about 10,000 on Instagram, and roughly 5,000 on YouTube.

Approaching an Influencer

Most influencers can be approached via direct message on their chosen social media platform. Some influencers might provide contact details in their bio for collaborations, so keep an eye out for those.

If you're planning to pitch a mutually beneficial partnership offering exposure to your audience, make sure you have an audience. The first thing the influencer will do is look at your profile on the platform. So, ensure that you have something to show them, including great content.

Some of the ways you could work with an influencer include:

1. Song Reactions: This would apply to music influencers who frequently listen and react to music on their channel.
2. Create a Challenge: TikTok would be the perfect platform for this as challenges are the name of the game here. You could approach a dancer with a significant following. Then ask them to challenge their audience to a dance challenge using one of your songs.
3. Link to Your Profile: The influencer could feature your music and provide a link in the description to your profile. This way, you'll generate more traffic to your profile and, hopefully, more followers.
4. Link to Website: Similar to the above option, you could ask music influencers to provide a link to your website. Or to your profile on one of the leading streaming sites such as Apple Music. This is also a great way to promote gig ticket and merchandise sales.

Conclusion

Remember that the work doesn't end after a deal is struck. You'll need to be active in discussing and creating relevant content. And you must analyze the success of each campaign based on the level of engagement or conversions. Putting time and effort into something that isn't serving you is never a good idea.

The world is your oyster when it comes to campaign and partnership ideas. Be creative and try to incorporate your personality and the personalities of the brand or influencer. And if you’re stumped for ideas, competitions are a tried and tested campaign idea. But remember to encourage likes, follows, and tags as a form of entry.

You must do your homework if planning to promote via brand partnership and influencer marketing for musicians. Selecting the wrong influencer or brand to work with could be detrimental to your music career. If you need advice on publishing or distributing your music, Sugo Music Group has you covered. Their remarkable team of music industry role players have 35 years of experience in the industry. Their experts can help you release your music successfully and ensure you receive the royalties you deserve.