#4 - Keeping someone's attention once you have it 👋🤡
If you're still reading this then I must be good at it!
(If you haven’t read my last post “the basics of sales funneling for musicians [CLICK HERE]” you may want to check it out since I’ll be using VERY SPECIFIC and VERY IMPORTANT examples. I don’t write these just to hear myself. talk. I suppose I do a little. Cheers.)
In honor of this week’s weather forecast:
“HOT AS F***”
Today’s overly-simplified and somewhat condescending analogy puts us in the tiny shoes of a child at a lemonade stand on a hot summer day.
This child, smart whippersnapper that she is, read my last SubStack before setting up her lemonade stand, and realized she needed to first identify her target audience.
The child, let’s call her Gertrude, or GERT, maybe Gerty…..
Gertrude identifies that her target audience is anyone in a high traffic area seeking some refreshment from the hot summer sun.
So Gert, future business baby titan that she is, packs her tiny child bags and moves to New York City.
I know, how can a child move to NYC alone?
Gert’s father left after her mother cheated so it’s actually pretty complicated. Gerty’s mother, Pauline, works day shifts at the diner and thought GERT was with her Dad the day she left...
I’ll let her tell the rest though it’s not my story to tell.
Gerty, clever gal that she is, sets up her lemonade stand in TIMES SQUARE….
And as luck should have it, the sun is beating down on the pee-soaked streets of the Big Apple, emanating a general musk of trash and raw horrid potential. It’s the perfect day for lemonade.
Thousands of sweaty transients walk past Gert’s stand every second… and sure enough, people start stopping at her stand, desperate for relief from the concrete hot box.
One moment shouts “My GOD…. this is exactly what I’ve searched for my whole life. I will drink this lemonade whenever I see you on my morning commute!”
A few hundred happy customers echo the same sentiments, and Gert packs up shop after pocketing a cool $500 for her efforts.
The next morning…. GERT wakes up to another hot as sh** day in Manhattan. She packs up her stand, and heads to Times Square (this time with more supplies to account for her new “regulars”).
When she arrives at her spot, another vender has already occupied it. Selling CRYSTALS…. UGH.
“No matter” Gert sighs, “I’ll just go across the street and set up there. It’s just as busy!”
Gert sets up shop on the other side of the road, and sure enough, people start stopping again.
Once again, Gert’s lemonade is a hit. Hundreds of new faithful fans pledge to stop for lemonade whenever she is around.
But at the end of the day, Gert pockets the same amount of money as yesterday…. $500.
“That’s strange” 4-year old sweet baby Gert says to herself. "If I made a bunch of superfans on Day 1, then why didn’t my lemonade stand do better on Day 2?”
And now, dear reader, I ask YOU that question.
Don’t look away, yes you.
WHY DIDN’T SWEET FOUR YEAR OLD, INNOCENT BABY GERT NOT GROW HER LEMONADE STAND?????”
………
……..
Because she moved across the street, right? Relax. Why’d you make it so serious?
She moved across the street is correct, but it’s only half the answer.
She moved across the street ANDDDDDD more importantly, she had no way of telling her new regulars that she moved.
You see, Gert has no way of contacting her loyal lemonade fans. They all paid cash and just walked away into the abyss of crazies that encircle Times Square.
And the next day when Gert wasn’t in their direct path again, they forgot.
They bought a Diet Pepsi from a shirtless guy sitting on a cooler instead.
But I digress.
THE POINT:
Top-of-funnel marketing (as discussed in my last article) requires a high traffic area of your target demographic, hence why it’s the top (widest) part of the sales funnel. This is Gert identifying Times Square as a high volume area of her target demographic (anyone seeking relief from the hot summer sun).
Middle-of-funnel marketing is where we capture some form of contact information, so we can reach them more than once, and either continue to sell them products, or continue to provide value to warm them up to your brand.
For example, if Gert was truly as smart as she claims…… she would’ve asked every customer for their email in exchange for 10% off their next cup of lemonade on Day 1, then on Day 2 when she moved across the street she could have emailed those customers something like:
Subject: Cold lemonade (across the street)
Hey *CUSTOMER NAME*
It’s another hot day 🥵, if you want to claim your 10% off another ice-cold lemonade, we’re located across the street today! See you soon.
BABY GERT
This would allow Gert to get the exposure of the new audience on the other side of the street, while bringing her existing fans over to her new location instead.
MICHAEL, WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH MUSIC?
Well, swap Gertrude for you, and swap Times Square with Instagram.
Instagram will show your content to hundreds of new people when you post it…
The challenge is building on that audience every time, because you don’t own the data for your own fans.
You are completely reliant on Instagram to put you in front of the right people, and without it, you have no way of connecting with them again.
Same goes with Spotify. If you land an editorial playlist and nab 10,000 monthly listeners, you won’t actually be able to reach them unless you find a way to convert as many of them as you can onto your own database (email, phone, etc).
So in my next article, we’ll use a real-world example (one of the comments on my last post) to demonstrate HOW we can implement middle of the funnel marketing so you can keep your fans attention once you have it.
But, you’ll only see that SubStack if you subscribe….
Otherwise, just like poor sweet baby Gertrude, I will lose you forever into the abyss of crazies.
🫡⚔️🫡⚔️🫡⚔️🫡⚔️🫡⚔️
Michael from Mad Records