Entrepreneurship: Strategizing a Strong Campaign
How Great Storytelling & Relationships Benefit Fundraising
This new year many musicians and organizations are looking to reestablish themselves and create a more successful campaign strategy. Sometimes It can be overwhelming figuring out where to start and what you want to say. Having some tips on how to utilize your storytelling and relationships can help you strategize a strong campaign.
Building Your Campaign
As a musician in the 21st century, it’s important to make yourself marketable to your audience. Every musician should have tools to create great storytelling, establish meaningful relationships, and build a strong campaign.
According to an article by iConnectX, “Stories about your cause provides an emotional connection with them [your audience] and keeps them interested.”
As a musician who’s new to the workforce, I’m still ideating a brand and image for myself. I’ve been working on my networking and relationship skills to build my connections with industry professionals.
I’ve found that having strong storytelling skills and lasting relationships can play a big part in creating a successful campaign.
Understanding how to tell your stories in an effective way and build strong relationships benefits fundraising.
Utilizing these tips for success can help you authentically tell your story and build stronger relationships in order to strategize a strong campaign.
1.Use Social Media To Your Advantage
Social media is a key part of marketing yourself and building a strong campaign. It provides a larger database of who your audience is, and increases your reach as anyone can have access to your content.
Having a strong online presence allows you to build more strong relationships with industry professionals, potential investors, as well as your audience. Don’t forget to use social media as an outlet for promoting your campaigns.
Oftentimes individuals or companies will look towards celebrities to help endorse their brand. However, you’re better off reaching out to influencers to market your brand.
“Influencer marketing, because it is based on a smaller, more intimate fan base than that of a true celebrity, instills more trust in the consumer,” according to an article by Campaign Creators.
Make sure you define your target audience(s) and identify what platform(s) they are on. Different generations will be prevalent on different platforms.
In order to build a strong campaign you need to know who your target audience is, what platforms they congregate on, and how to best grab their attention on social media.
2.Build Strong Partnerships
We’ve heard it before- networking is very important in building your career, especially in the music industry.
Networking is essential for not only connecting with people on a professional level, but to build those personal and relatable contacts.
When it comes to building a strong campaign it can be helpful to have references to talk with as well as build a potential partnership. The people in your network want to see you succeed just as much as you do, so don’t be afraid to reach out to them for a partnership.
Partnerships can be a helpful way to reduce costs and increase engagement for the campaign such as:
Advertising
Logos
Campaign space (digital, print, radio, etc)
Sharing your campaign with their network and increasing visibility
Building upon these strong relationships can be very useful in campaign creation. It can help your campaign become stronger, and you’ve established a stronger connection with this individual which will make things like partnerships more likely to happen again in the future.
Strategizing Your Campaign- The Den Collective
3.Learn to Reflect & Simplify
Another important step in strategizing a strong campaign is learning when to go back and make changes. No plan is perfect, and you will likely need to make adjustments along the way.
Reflect on the good and bad parts of your strategy. What seems to be working well? What could be improved upon? These are the kinds of questions that are important to ask yourself periodically when creating a campaign.
Taking inventory of how your strategy is working will help you make any needed modifications to reach your goals more successfully.
Sometimes we get carried away with the strategy that it becomes too busy for our audience. Focus on a few channels to relay your message to your target audiences instead of trying to reach everyone in the music industry.
You will be more successful if you reach your audience with high exposure than trying to spread your resources and range too thin.
Don’t be afraid to reuse content and campaigns that were successful. “Too often marketers tire of seeing the campaign. Remember, your audience is not seeing it nearly as often as you are, and repetition is key to recall,” according to an article by Forbes.
4.Share More of You
Fundraisers often know a lot about their donors and potential investors in their campaigns. However, it’s even more important that they know more about you.
You want to build those strong relationships and potential donors, and in order to do that you need to be open to sharing more of yourself. If they know more about your passion behind the cause they will feel more connected and want to invest.
Sharing more of yourself will also increase audience engagement. Your audience already enjoys the content you create and they’re always looking for ways to get to know you better.
Sharing some aspects of your life such as other hobbies, behind the scenes, and personal messages can be a great way to build that artist-audience bond.
You don’t want to share everything about your life as privacy is still important. However, being more vulnerable and authentic with others can help establish true connections with people who share the same values and goals as you do.
Benefits of a Strong Campaign
Cultivating strong relationships and storytelling may be overwhelming at first, but don’t be afraid to use your resources to help build your campaign.
Having some tips on how to build strong connections and storytelling can help you strategize your ideal campaign to life. Remember that your authenticity is one of the most important things in building strong connections.
The Den Collective partners with Resources Allison Thompson and Michaela Bulkley to provide arts administrative, development, and fundraising sessions for musicians. More information on our resources can be found here.
Understanding tools to create and strategize a strong campaign are important when establishing your brand and career as a musicians. Myself and The Den Collective are here to support and help in any way we can!