Digital music promotions are becoming more and more popular for marketers because they are valued by consumers. Whether you have a small business or work for a large corporation, digital music promotions are an effective, low-cost way to tap into different target markets. Thanks to iPods and mp3 players, fast broadband and smart phones, everyone is listening to digital music. CD sales are dropping, and not just because of the economy.   Consumers are value digital downloads and are responding to digital music incentives.

Of course, a successful digital music promotion involves more than just sending someone a $5 iTunes card for making a purchase. The smart marketers are tying their digital music promotions into a marketing campaign centered around a particular idea or event. One hotel chain recently gave free Classic Rock songs to their frequent travelers from a specially-designed website as part of their digital music promotion. Stay more nights, get more songs.

To follow are five examples of consumer markets, which value digital music promotions:

• Generation Y: I realize this is a rather large group. The largest of any group, in fact. At last count, Generation Y outnumbered Baby Boomers 82 million to 78 million. And it’s Gen Y that’s driving the digital music promotions. They’re the biggest users of smart phones, SMS technology, social networks, and of course, digital music. Any time you want to reach this age group with a marketing campaign, digital music promotions will be a safe bet.
• Runners and fitness enthusiasts: Nike hit on a particularly smart idea a few years ago, teaming up with Apple, and creating the Nike+ iPod Sport Kit. It’s a chip that will not only give runners their time, distance, pace, and calories burned, it will even pull up the music that matches your pace and inspires you to keep moving. It’s great for cyclists too. If you have an fitness-related business, a digital music promotions campaign that offers motivating and up-tempo music can really get your campaign off the starting blocks.
• Road Warriors: I’ve spent countless hours on planes and in cars, and I can only listen to podcasts for so long. But I would love to be rewarded for doing what I’m already doing, and listen to some of my favorite music. While we’re not out there for the rewards, they still make a nice incentive. In fact, some Road Warriors will make a game out of it, and try to find the most profitable rewards for the fewest miles traveled. So if you can create a digital music promotion which is based on miles traveled, nights stayed, or dollars spent, you’ll win the Road Warriors over.
• Stay At Home Parents: Tie your digital music promotions campaign into a product or service that a SAHM or SAHD is going to take advantage of. Parents are just like Road Warriors: they’re already doing their thing, regardless of the incentives. But if they can get a little something extra for buying a product from you, instead of your competitors, they’re more likely to take advantage of it.
• Entrepreneurs: Whether it is due to the economy, or the fact that more people have a burning desire to start their own business, we’re seeing more entrepreneurs and in the business world these days. They are working in coffee shops, meeting at restaurants, and trying to keep costs as low as possible. When you start looking at their buying patterns, you see coffee shops being a big part of an entrepreneur’s budget. The smart coffee shop owner is going to attract the entrepreneur crowd with a digital music promotions campaign. Instead of giving away a free cup of coffee, try giving away free downloads of the music you’re playing in the store. And if you have musicians play on the weekends, be sure to include any of their music in your campaign.

written by jross \\ tags: Digital Music, digital music promotion, digital music promotions, digital promotion, Digital Promotions

If you have purchased furniture, at some point, you’ve probably had to assemble a piece or two on your own.   At first glance, it is looks like an easy process – legs go here, drawer face there, top goes on like so, etc. Sometimes there are even rudimentary instructions.  It is not that hard to assemble it to a point where it is functional.

Once you start using a self assembled piece, you often find that your creation has a few blemishes: it wobbles when you touch it, the drawers a bit misaligned, or the doors may not close all the way.  None fatal defects, but at some point you have to spend time trying to correct the problems and keeping it functioning properly.

The alternative is to buy a piece that is assembled (by someone that does that sort of thing for a living)– it may cost a few bucks more on the front end, it is put together well, everything lines up, and it functions exactly as designed. You can eat on it right away, put stuff inside, and generally enjoy how it complements your room (no worries about the craftsmanship, or intermittent tweaking required).

Compare the above to implementation of a digital music promotion.  To a sponsor (or their agency) assembly looks straightforward. All you need is music and a delivery vehicle right? Pick up the phone, call a label (or at least a music site), dazzle them with marketing acumen, done deal.  Or is it?

Can it be done as described above? Sure with some amount of time and effort. Look closer though, who takes care of the underlying issues like contracting/licensing platform reliability, budgeting, customer service, delivery obstacles, etc.?  Who’ll align the drawers?

The alternative is to partner with a specialist that assembles and executes the digital music programs for a living, handling all ancillary details mentioned above.   Licensing/contracting – check, proven systems in place.  At that point, a marketer doesn’t have to mess with making things fit together snugly; they can focus on other aspects of their business.  How much overall time and effort is saved going this route? How many fewer headaches involved?

Digital music as a promotional incentive can be a powerful tool for a marketer – just make sure that you have someone that can align your drawers for you.

written by Steve \\ tags: Digital Incentives, Digital Music

How did the promotion perform?

Let’s take measurement for digital music download promotion as an example. The first inclination is to jump right to redemption rate as a means test for success when in fact, that is one of the poorest possible metrics on which to judge efectiveness (unless the goal was to influence redemption as much as possible). Take a look at a CNET article that discusses results from a Pepsi-iTunes promotion (theory of “redemption as barometer”?).  Interesting…

What about finding out the result of the campaign from a marketing perspective ever happened to information on performance in market?
- How much extra leverage did Pepsi distributors get in the field as a result?
- Did Pepsi meet their sales targets (Pepsi was the primary sponsor after all, not iTunes)?
- For Pepsi, how far did the iTunes partnership go in effectively re-asserting itself as THE brand that best utilizes music?
- For iTunes, what was the increase in user base for the iTunes music store?

I admit that there is a challenge involved in obtaining answers to the above questions, as parts of the data required may be spread over various parties, none too eager to discuss their results with others. My contention is that in the Pepsi-iTunes promotion specifically, the benefits from that partnership were substantive for everyone involved, even though the redemption rate was what I would classify as modest.

Artificially weighting of something like redemption rate is not a good way to solely judge effectiveness. Let me give you a better example (the names and industries changed to protect the guilty):

A software company gave away music CDs to consumers that purchased multiple software titles. When the promotion was over, the company instructed it’s agency to analyze the promotion by contacting as many participants as possible to determine how many times each one had listened to their CD. That metric, it was determined, would be used to judge whether they would run a similar promotion the following quarter.

Sounds crazy right? the digital equivalent of this happened. last. year.

If I was the software company, I would be more interested in things like:
- Of people buying the software, how many saw the CD offer and chose that brand over a competitor?
- How many incremental software units were the field sales teams able to ship because of this promo? How many displays were they able to get?
- How many people went in to buy one title, and ended up buying more than 1 to get the CD?

With digital content, the redemption rate is much less important than what the incentive did in the market. A better question for a sponsor is whether the  incentive was effective in grabbing attention and creating action.   Better questions lead to better answers, and the better the answers, the better the marketer.

written by Steve \\ tags: Digital Content, Promotion Metrics