Introduction

A marketing plan is a single or album specific plan that describes activities selected to achieve specific marketing objectives for that product, within a set period of time.

Record labels create an initial, written marketing plan like you might see at any other company. The document allows the label to develop a timeline and coordinate the plan with the artist, their management and other external partners. For a record label, the marketing plan is the blueprint for each release, but after the release is launched the plan may be adjusted in response to the market. Every record released has its own unique marketing plan based on expectations of sales performance and tailored to the target market.

There are two basic target markets for the marketing plan: The consumer and the trade. The trade consists of those people within the industry for which business-to-business marketing is done. This includes radio program directors, journalists, editors, distributors, retail buyers, and others involved in the push strategy.

Who gets the Plan?

The plan is distributed to everyone involved in marketing the record, including people both inside and outside the label. The label will provide an edited version of the marketing plan to trade partners (distributors and radio) to indicate the seriousness of their effort to sell this particular album.

Internally, it is important that everyone at the record label understands what is being done in other departments, and how synergy is created when all of the elements come together. The chart in Table 6.1 gives some examples of who may be involved in the execution of the plan.

There are other departments that benefit from, and are included in the plan, including grassroots marketing (street teams), new media (Internet), and, if the artist has a “360 deal,” merchandising and tour support. Coordination is necessary for synergy to occur. The publicity department may develop materials necessary to send to retail accounts and radio (such as press kits). Advertising needs to be coordinated with retail accounts for sales in the marketplace and with the promotions department for trade advertising aimed at radio. The sales department works with the promotion department to ensure that product is available in all markets where airplay is prevalent. Advertising and publicity go hand-in-hand, sometimes combined in a “media plan,” because in many instances, the same media outlets are targeted for both. Outside of the company, summaries of marketing plans may go to account buyers in retail, program directors in radio, the artist’s booking agency, and they are always presented formally to the artist and their manager. Often, the manager will help develop the plan if corporate sponsors are involved or if there are special events that could be mined for extra marketing impact.

Figure 6.1

What’s in the Plan?

The plan provides basic information about the release, and a description of what is occurring in each department or area. A timetable is often included to ensure that timing and coordination are optimal. Financial specifics are often eliminated from the copies circulated at the marketing meetings, but are an integral part of the plan. Sales goals and shipment quantities, however, are often included in the plan. The following is a list of some basic information included in a marketing plan:

• Project title and artist name
• Street date
• Price, dating, and discounts
• Song selections
• Overview or mini-bio
• Configurations and initial shipment quantities
• Selection number and bar codes
• Marketing goals and objectives
• Target market
• Promotion (radio)
  • Names and release dates of singles
  • Promotion schedule
  • Promotional activities

• Publicity
  • Materials
  • Target media outlets
  • Specific goals (interviews, appearances, reviews, etc.)

• Advertising
  • Materials
  • Target media outlets and coordination with retail accounts
  • Ad schedule

• Sales
  • Sales forecast
  • Account-specific promotions, P&P
  • POP materials

• Video
  • Production information
  • Distribution and promotion

• New media/Internet promotions
• Street teams/grassroots marketing
• Lifestyle/promotional tie-in with other companies/products
• Tour support (usually tied in with retail and publicity)
• Tour dates—help with spread of product at retail and tie-ins with radio
• International marketing
• Artist contact information (manager, publicist, and so on)
• Comprehensive timetable
• Budget (not included in copies that are distributed to employees or contract agents)

Timing

Timing is crucial to the success of an album, including the time of year the album should be released. The album release date is called the street date. Albums are strategically released on Fridays to take advantage of a full week of SoundScan sales numbers. Release dates are subject to change for many reasons, not the least of which is what other artist might release a new album on that particular Friday. Given consumers’ limited budgets, it would be unwise for a label to release a new pop artist on the same day as the long awaited release from an established major act. The time of year that a new album is released also varies depending on the stage of the artist’s career. Established artists frequently release albums in the fourth quarter to take advantage of holiday sales. Retailers have frequently expressed their displeasure at the glut of releases at the end of the year when their stores are already full of shoppers and the lack of releases in other times of the year when a strong release may lure shoppers into stores. New artists are advised to release during those times of the year when competition is less, but then so is the number of shoppers. An album may be strategically timed to coincide with a concert tour or a major media event for the artist. Valentine’s Day is also a popular time of year for music purchases.

The Importance of Street Date

It is extremely rare for any label to release an album in the U.S. on any day other than Friday. There are conflicting stories for why street date was on Tuesdays, but since that day was chosen the charts and sales reporting were built around it on July 7, 2015 new releases world-wide were moved to Fridays. By releasing a new song or album on Friday, it gets a full week of sales before the first chart report. This is important because of the publicity opportunities afforded by doing well on the charts. If you drive around Music Row in Nashville, you’ll see plenty of banners celebrating #1 songs and albums, but you won’t see any celebrating being #2 or #3 or #10. How many sales does it take to be #1 on the charts? One more than the guy that’s at #2! So every sale and every spin matters and you don’t want to have that first week’s numbers split over two reporting periods. (Kelly, 2010)

In the following illustration, some retailers must have violated the street date by selling early. Missy Elliot sold 1,484 units the week before the album was officially released. Then on the week of the release, the album sold 143,644 units—enough to place it at #13 on the chart. But if the previous week’s sales not been made before street date and instead sold during the first week, the additional 1,484 units would have been enough to rank the album at #12 for the week, above Nelly, except for the fact that he also had some early sales.

Figure 6.2 Effect of Breaking Street Date on Chart Position

Timing of the individual elements is also crucial. The first single is usually released weeks before the album, to create an initial demand for the album. Then a second single is released to further support the album once it has been in the marketplace for a while. Some new artists on major labels may release a single to radio in the fall to introduce the artist into the marketplace, but wait until early the following year to launch the album and release the second single. The actual timeline varies for different genres. Rap/hip-hop albums have a shorter life cycle and the marketing activities may be more compressed. Country music has a longer life cycle and the release of singles may come at longer intervals. A study of the charts in 2000 found that it took a popular rap single only 10.6 weeks to rise to a “top 5” chart position, whereas it took 14.8 weeks for R&B, 13 weeks for top 40, 26 weeks for adult contemporary (AC), and 18.6 weeks for rock. It took a country single 19.5 weeks to enter the top 5. In 2000, top pop singles spent the most time on the Billboard chart, at 29 weeks, with rap singles spending the least amount of time (Hutchison, 2010). A study of the country charts in 2010 found that it was taking the typical country single 25 to 30 weeks to peak on the charts. The same study also found that the number of #1 singles on the charts had dropped from 49 in 1989 to less than 25 in the years 1999 to 2004 (Heine, 2010). It is difficult to break a new artist when you cannot place more than one or two singles on radio in a year.

Rock and metal acts that depend more on touring may plan events around the Ozzfest, Bonnaroo, or other summer tours and festivals. Smaller indie labels may depend more upon touring to sell records, since getting radio play is often too expensive.

Some publicity materials are sent to print vehicles in advance of the release date so that album reviews and features will appear during the week or month of the release. Trade advertising and publicity to radio occurs prior to the release of each single; and to retail, advertising is timed with the release of the album. All the elements are timed and coordinated to create a comprehensive snowball effect, generating a buzz in the marketplace and convincing gatekeepers and consumers that this project is the “hottest thing” in popular music.

Marketing Strategy

The marketing strategy is the fundamental marketing plan by which the company intends to achieve its marketing objectives. It consists of a coordinated set of decisions based on target markets, the marketing mix, and the marketing budget. The marketing strategy is the “road map” or guide to growth and success.

The marketing plan for a company should start with an assessment of the company’s internal strengths and weaknesses, followed by an examination of the market environment. This situation analysis is sometimes referred to as a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats). It is a review of the company’s present state, and an evaluation of the external and internal factors that can affect future success.

As a part of the SWOT analysis, the internal marketing audit is designed to examine the company’s areas of strength (the company’s competitive advantages) and weaknesses (the company’s vulnerable areas and underperforming units). Then, an assessment is conducted on the external opportunities (areas for growth) and threats (roadblocks and challenges) that exist for the company. The resulting investigation yields the SWOT analysis—strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. A SWOT assessment allows the marketing department to determine:

• Where the company is right now: What is our position in the marketplace? Our market share? Which products are currently successful? What are our areas of strengths and what are our weaknesses?
• Where the company needs to go: Where are the opportunities? Where are we likely to hold a competitive advantage in the marketplace in the future? What is our game plan for the future? What threats should we be aware of?
• How to best get there: What action needs to be taken to achieve our goals?

A SWOT analysis for a record label may yield some of the following findings.

The SWOT helps the marketing department determine marketing strategy, including the identification of suitable markets and appropriate products to meet the demand. The company can then engage in sales forecasting, budgeting, and projection of future profits.

In the book Marketing: Relationships, Quality, Value, Nickels and Wood use Motown Records in their example of a SWOT analysis (Nickels and Wood, 1997). Motown’s main strength is its strong catalog of 1960s and 1970s music, including the Supremes, Four Tops, The Jackson Five, Michael Jackson, and Boyz II Men. A weakness is their lack of start-up urban and rap artists compared to other labels such as Interscope. Opportunities exist in the nostalgia fads that periodically emerge, creating a demand for the old recordings and may include a resurgence of interest based upon the release of a movie or movie soundtrack. In 2006, a movie based upon the Supremes was released called Dreamgirls. The soundtrack slipped into the number one position on the Billboard chart in January 2007. A threat Nickels and Wood mention is “a shift in popular interest away from the label’s music” as old-school R&B gives way to newer artists.

The SWOT analysis helps the company discover its core competencies, which enables the company to surpass the competition. However, it is the product marketing plan that helps to coordinate the strategic efforts to promote a particular product. It is a carefully planned strategy “with specialists in the areas of artist development, sales, distribution, advertising, promotion, and publicity joining forces in a coordinated effort to break an artist and generate sales” (Lathrop and Pettigrew, 1999). The term marketing plan is used by record labels to refer exclusively to the plan designed for each album release and is generally not associated with an overall company strategy.

Figure 6.3 SWOT vs. Marketing Plan

Conclusion

Lewis Carroll said “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” If you want to get to the top of the music business it is best to have some goals and a plan to get there. In this chapter we have reviewed basics of marketing planning used by record labels to promote artists and their recordings. Every label will bring their unique philosophies, strengths, and weaknesses to the process but they will all have the same goal—to have a hit record. The plan gives the marketing team a starting point and an adaptable framework to achieve that goal. In the chapters that follow we will discuss the specifics of each of the major marketing tools in greater detail.

Appendix: Making Sense—Major Artist Marketing Plan

Below is a detailed marketing plan for a major artist. The names and dates have been changed, but everything else is real—the timing, the numbers. This plan, created the week after the album street date, was an update to the original marketing plan to keep the sales and marketing teams in the field updated on current events.

• Title: Silver Pennies
• Artist: Making Sense
• Release Date: February 7

Glossary

Marketing plan—A single or album specific plan that describes activities selected to achieve specific marketing objectives for that product, within a set period of time.

Push strategy—Pushing the product through the distribution channel to its final destination through incentives aimed at retail and distribution.

SKU—Stock-Keeping Unit—an inventory ID that represents one or more items sold as a single unit. A vinyl and a CD version of an album would each be a separate SKU and each have their own barcode. If the CD and vinyl disk were offered together as part of a box set that would be a third SKU.

The trade—Those people within the industry (middlemen) for which business-to-business marketing is done.

Trade advertising—Paid promotions targeted and industry middlemen and designed to stimulate purchasing and, in turn, promotion to consumers.

References

Heine, P. “Stuck on Repeat.” Billboard, June 12, 2010: 18+. November 4, 2014.

Hutchinson, T. Unpublished research. 2010.

Kelley, F. “Why Albums Are Released on Tuesdays.” The Record: Music News from NPR. NPR, September 8, 2010. Accessed October 3, 2014.

Lathrop, T., and Pettigrew, J. This Business of Music Marketing and Promotion. New York: Billboard Books. 1999.

Nickels, W. G., and Wood, M. B. Marketing: Relationship, Quality, and Value. New York: Worth Publishers. 1997.