We’re Marketers, Not Magicians

I’ll just say it…digital marketing people can be annoying. I KNOW. But here’s the deal: we have a valuable skill set that you need, even though you may secretly yearn for a time when you didn’t.

Sometimes we come off like know-it-alls. We don’t mean it (most of us). But it’s because our line of work can be exhausting. We are repeatedly asked to translate our area of expertise down to the most basic, pedestrian levels. I have yet to find another area of business where one must overexplain the ins-and-outs before being able to do the job for which they were hired.

I’ve also yet to find an area of marketing that yields such strong, visceral reactions just by TALKING about it. Let alone, ya know, doing it. It doesn’t help that social networks are at the top of the news and political cycle. We have administrations and media outlets talking about banning social networks all while using those same platforms to solicit your clicks and hopefully your votes. Irony at its finest. As I like to say, social media is awful until it serves you.

We seem to be in a vortex of “expert” opinions. This ranges from anyone who has ever had a personal Instagram account (that would calculate to roughly 2 billion experts) to someone who reads an article (let’s just say for argument’s sake it’s actually from a reputable source!) about TikTok and is convinced we need to move immediately on what they learned in the article. Sometimes we even get opinions from people who admittedly “aren’t on social media.”

Imagine if I called my business managers (shout-outs to Mike Vaden and Michelle Beeler) and had them walk me through every line of the tax code, explain in detail the IRS forms, and forward them articles about “research” I found (even if the strategy it suggests is illegal). After all that, imagine I get mad at them personally when they send over my final tax return and it doesn’t look like what the influencers said it would. This scenario is in the ballpark of what it sometimes feels like in my office.

At a certain point, to do my job right, I need a defined scope of work, agreeable and realistic growth projections, I require a little trust, some breathing room, autonomy based on mutually agreeable parameters and most importantly, wiggle room to try new things that might not “perform” without the constant fear and anxiety of perceived failure. It’s part of the creative process.  

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The Honeymoon’s Over

Some clients want to love us so much in the beginning. Perhaps you speak negatively of your previous social media manager or agency and all the things that didn’t happen on their watch. You shower us with savior praise, promise to try new things, agree to content minimums, and say you’re open to all ideas. You understand you’ll need a paid media budget and see this as an investment, not an expense. Yes, you are ready! You got this! But do you?  

The honeymoon is sweet too. We laugh a lot about how silly the internet is and settle on sometimes we do things just to do them, to have fun, and be involved with a trend or two. You’re open! We ignore the repetitive nature of the questions you ask as you try to understand what we do and how we do it. Everyone is shaving their legs and keeping their social media psychosis hidden.  

Then, as things progress and become more challenging (and they are very challenging currently), sometimes you begin to resent that we might be marketing people instead of magicians. We may not have personal control of the platforms and their updates or the almighty algorithm you so desperately want to dominate and maybe you take your digital frustrations out on us in real life. You see certain posts perform well, so you naturally want to do more of those. You see putting a small budget behind certain pieces of content yields great results, so you want to spend more. You want to do what’s easier. How very human of you! But, by doing so, you ruin what made you organically great in the first place.

I don’t make the rules, guys. I don’t even follow them. So, hear me out when I say, some of you need to take a big, deep breath and realize that not everything online is a calculated, analytically informed strategy. Why is that? Because the internet is full of people with opinions—good and bad—and sometimes there’s no damn reason why something performed or it didn’t. It just is. There is a ton of anxiety about reaching the people you used to not have problems reaching. You wonder why you are showcasing deeper content and not getting as much engagement now as when you convinced yourself you tackled the algorithm that one time last April and had two videos “go viral.” Most of this isn’t in your control. Certainly, you can follow best practices, but please stop comparing what you did last year to this year.  

Focus on controlling what you can:

1. Am I creating compelling content and deploying it consistently?  
2. Am I focused on what I do and constantly striving to get better at it?
3. Do I connect with others on these platforms outside of my own content/channel?
4. Am I having fun?‍

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Digital Marketing Is Not Just Social Media

Social media is like building houses on leased land! (I don’t know who I stole this line from—if it’s you, please let me know!) Your owned media (website, email database and texting platform) are paramount to your career. It’s not a sexy public subscriber number or follower count, but these are your direct connections, your REAL lifeline to the people who you want to be linked to.

We all know this, but I’ll say it again... these third-party platforms are temporary and transactional relationships, no different than radio stations, television networks, record stores, etc. They own the relationship to the customers, you don’t. Yet you are more motivated to build their businesses than your own, because the public can see how many followers you have. Are social networks an amazing tool to have in your arsenal? Yes. Can your entire livelihood depend on them? No.

What is your 1:1 plan? This should be at the top of any “artist development” plan. What premium content or offer can you hold back for the loyal fan without feeling you “wasted” it on the website or the email list that isn’t necessarily public facing?
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Going Offline With Artist Development

Artist development is sharing your story and bringing the viewer along for the journey. Growing numbers is certainly part of artist development, but it is also supporting the efforts by properly resourcing what the artist needs to reach their goals offline. Artist development is being brave enough to go against the grain to ensure what gets said gets said right first…metrics second. You can always amplify or repeat messages. But if the message isn’t right, nothing else matters.

I’d like to point out what artist development is not. Artist development is not a bunch of people sitting around a conference table hoping the numbers tell the story about who an artist is or isn’t. Artist development is not asking the artist to do more with less.

Artist development also needs to happen offline in front of real human beings.  Full stop.

More frequently than I’d like to share, I have meetings with artists who are deflated and don’t know what know which way is up. Often it is because they’ve heard the following messages:

“Once you build up on socials, then we will release music.”

“We need people to stream your music more. How do you get them from X to X?”

“X artist does this and it’s very successful for him. You should do that.”

“We need to ensure we have a return on our investment.”

“We can’t get you dates/streams/sponsorships/anything until your social numbers are higher.”

Now, instead of being inspired to create consistently, they’ve been taxed with the burden of performance anxiety. I challenge us to reframe these conversations because if we can inspire confidence to create, all of those benchmarks will eventually grow and they grow without the fear and angst that we’ve seen derail too many careers.

Right before an artist hits the stage, you wouldn’t tell them how many seats were left to fill or show them a video of someone else’s performance and tell them to “do that.” After the performance you wouldn’t immediately send them a list of all the things they did wrong and tell them they must get better or else. But that’s what’s happening out there online right now.  

There’s certainly always room for improvement and we should all have goals, but from my POV, it’s noisier and faster than ever out here. Before asking for an artist’s digital footprint to be the catch-all for every single thing the business deems important to be promoted, please consider the fan on the other side of the phone and what would be important to them. You can’t go wrong with that as part of your artist development plan, yet it sometimes never comes up in the meetings.

Also, be nice to your social media teams. ;-)

Be good… online and in real life,
Jennie