Michael Walker: If you’re listening to this then you likely already know that being an independent musician is a lonely road. And maybe your friends and your family don’t fully understand why you do what you do, or why you invest so much time, energy, and money achieving your music goals. And especially early on, it can be hard to find people who really understand what you’re trying to accomplish and how to make it happen. So, that’s where Modern Musician comes in!

My name’s Michael Walker and I can understand and relate to that feeling. I’ve been there myself, and so has our team of independent artists. The truth is that basically everything good in my life has been a result of music. It’s the reason I met my wife, my 3 kids, it’s how I met my best friends. And now with Modern Musician, we have seen so many talented artists who started out with a dream, with a passion, without really a fanbase or a business. And you’ll take that and turn it into a sustainable full-time career and be able to impact hundreds, maybe even thousands or millions of fans with your music. We’ve had thousands of messages from artists who told us we’ve helped change their lives forever. It just gets even more exciting and fulfilling when you’re surrounded by a community of other people who get it, and who have shared their knowledge and success with each other openly. So, if you are feeling called into making your music a full-time career and to be able to reach more people with your music, then I want to invite you to join our community so that we can help support your growth and we can help lift you up as you pursue your musical dreams. You’ll be able to interact in a community with other high-level artists, coaches, and industry professionals, as well as be able to participate in our daily live podcast, meet these amazing guests, and get access to completely free training. If you’d like to join our family of artists who truly care about your success, then click on the link in the show notes and sign-up now. 

Jared Christianson: Although you can reach new people really easily with the internet. It takes some nurturing and some level of exposure, continuous exposure to your artwork and to experiencing your music in order to really create a customer, or somebody willing to invest who wants to wear your brand when they go out and listens to your music all the time, has you on their favorite playlists. So I've just realized that the amount of exposure that you can have, and re-exposure to your music and people experiencing your music is so important in order to create the people who really feel that connection on a level where they'll invest with their wallet. 

Michael Walker: It's easy to get lost in today's music industry with constantly changing technology and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician and it's only getting better. If you have high-quality music, but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate a sustainable income with your music, we're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution in today's music industry and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.

Hey, what's going on everyone. Welcome back to the Modern Musician podcast. At the time of recording this, we just celebrated Christmas and the holidays. Getting ready for New Year's. I'm really excited to be here today with Jared Christensen. So Jared has been on the podcast before. In fact, he's really at the core of what even made this podcast a reality here at Modern Musician. So I'm super grateful for Jared. He has been with Modern Musicians since pretty much the beginning when we started about 6 years ago. He is a renowned musician, digital marketer, and founder of the influential progressive metal band Arkaik. He's been touring personally for over a decade in North America alongside top names in the extreme metal genre. I got to see him perform in Florida and I saw some people's stage diving and just seeing you do your thing was amazing, Jared. So you're really like the epitome of Modern Musician in so many ways. Jared has really leveled up in the company as it relates specifically to our paid media and to marketing, and he really organizes and runs Modern Musician’s campaigns, which is a huge part of what we do. In addition to that, he also helps manage and organize and run campaigns for our artists for them to grow their fan base. So he has a lot of insights from being directly connected with our artists, seeing what's working and the lessons that we're learning there. In addition to also being an avid podcast enthusiast themselves, he follows a lot of different podcasts. He’s joined multiple $10,000 plus courses that are all about learning how to do this effectively. He has a lot of insight into what's working right now in terms of building a fan base. I'm really excited to connect with him today and share some of the lessons; some of the new takeaways and aha’s he’s been experiencing so we can share this forward with you as well. So Jared, thank-you so much for being here today.

Jared Christianson: Hey, thanks for having me, Michael. And thanks for making me sound awesome with that excellent intro. Yeah, I'm excited to be here and talk to you. You're probably my favorite person to talk to about this kind of stuff. Just to give some folks a background if this is your first time meeting me, I've been doing music pretty much my whole life. I started early on in elementary school playing guitar, middle school, and got into high school, started a band and it took us about 6 years of real hardcore boots on the ground, playing shows, meeting people to get to a point where we were able to tour and get to tour with some of our favorite bands. Next year, it'll be 20 years that this project; this high school band of mine has been around. So needless to say, I've been in the music industry for a long time now. It wasn't until meeting you, Michael, and coming into the Modern Musician world that I really was able to uplevel my music business acumen, if you will, or learn new skills and strategies that you'd discovered that are emerging technology, and ways to reach more people. Because no matter where you're at in your music journey, of course we all want to reach more people, connect with more fans, get more listeners, impact more people. So there's always room to grow, and today things are changing very quickly. So, you've been able to introduce me to certain topics and interests that I've dove really deep into the last about 5 years now. And it's just something that I have a passion for studying this whole music marketing, essentially, is what we're talking about in a broad term when we're talking about meeting new people, getting more listeners. There's a couple kind of epiphanies that I've had recently after so much 1:1 coaching over the years. It'll be 4 years in February, I think, coaching at Modern Musician. And so seeing patterns and seeing what really works in order to create the level of fandom that we want in order to have a sustainable business. Yeah, I wanted to take some time to share some of those like aha moments I've had. The first one, and I'd love to get your feedback on this topic, I haven't heard anybody speak about it in this way or use this phrase, but it's: frequency of exposure. So what does that mean? I'd love to know in the chat, let me know what does that mean: Frequency of exposure to you. To me, what I've learned is that although you can reach new people really easily with the internet, it takes some nurturing and some level of continuous exposure to your artwork and to experiencing your music in order to really create a customer, or somebody willing to invest who wants to wear your brand when they go out, and listens to your music all the time, has you on their favorite playlists. I've just realized that the amount of exposure that you can have, and re-exposure of your music and people experiencing your music is so important in order to create the people who really feel that connection on a level where they'll invest with their wallet. 

Michael: I love it. You know my mind thinks in analogies, and the analogy that came up for me right now related this idea of frequency of exposure and creating a fan, and a super fan: someone that is a lifelong supporter, was thinking about: I've been making tea lately, been making a lot of tea, turmeric and ginger tea, and if you just dip the teabag in the water one time, and then you just throw it away, that's sort of like, if someone hears one of your songs one time, it's like you grab the teabag and you like, you set it in the water and then you throw it out, there's gonna be very little tea in the water. There wasn't really a whole lot of exposure that the tea had to be able to steep, but the longer that the tea steeps in the water, the more that it gets infused, the more that you can enjoy the deliciousness that is the tea. That was just an interesting analogy that came to mind in terms of what you're describing: the quality of the exposure, how potent is the exposure, how long, how much, how many times has someone streamed your music, how many minutes, how many hours of video content have they watched? It definitely seems like there's a dial and the more steeped someone is in your community and your culture and the value that you provide, then the more that the tea is going to propagate and the more deliciousness that's going to come from it.

Jared: Yeah. That's an excellent analogy too. One little dip… you're not going to get much from it, but if they soak in it and they really absorb your music long-term, they're gonna be the kind of people who buy tickets to your shows, who buy all your merch, who invest in your memberships that you do like your Patreon or your Inner Circle memberships. Those are people who, they haven't just had one I want to or two casual experiences with your music. You're a part of their life and their identity. And I think that that does take time and it takes that frequency of exposure over time. But I think that's the missing link: If you don't have that yet, that's what you need to do is expose them more. Maybe it's your story. It doesn't have to be just your music. Maybe it's your artwork. Maybe it's your photos. If you think of your favorite artist… Michael, for you, what was the last artist that you actually spent money on?

Michael: I mean, I went to the “When We Were Young” festival most recently. That was kind of a whole bunch of artists, but they were like from my youth, I guess.

Jared: Yeah. You've been exposed to all that music for so long; you've been dipped in that environment for so long that it's like a part of you and part of your identity and so much so that you'll buy an expensive festival ticket to see all these bands. And maybe merch. I challenge anybody who's listening or watching to think about what is the artist that their lifetime value is high. So maybe you've spent $100, $200, $300, $500, $1,000 on certain artists over the years. It's because you've been exposed to them so many times, they're so part of your life and those 2 things correlate. Then it's like the next question is, well, okay, I get it. We need to expose our listeners over and over again to what we're doing to where it becomes like a part of their life or their listening habits or anything we can do to increase that. I heard this term somewhere, I don't know if I saw it online or something, but the term “force multiplier”. And I was like, Oh, okay. So what could be a force multiplier? And I looked it up like it. The term goes back to the military, which was an interesting force multiplier, but it also is used in business and basically means just like a tool or a lever to increase something dramatically.

Michael: Technology is like a force multiplier.

Jared: Yeah, and so the first one that comes to mind that's the most low effort but high force multiplier is social media ads, because you set them up and they run and they hit new people all the time, so you're just increasing the frequency of exposure as much as possible. You can even retarget and double. That's another lever that you could increase that exposure with. But the beauty of social media ads, and this is where I get like really geeky and into the weeds, is how they use machine learning and AI in order to figure out who's engaging, what signals they're getting, likes, shares, watches, in order to drive your ad to even more of the right people. But you can set it up in it. This is happening while you sleep. There's somebody up late at night while you're asleep, maybe it's a moment of your song, or they're invited to listen to your music. So that one was like the most obvious when I started to think about this: well what are the force multipliers for exposure? And it was like, social media ads is a huge one. Yeah. What are your thoughts on that?

Michael: Yeah, I think it's a great topic and a great question is like force multipliers. All of us have a limited amount of time, a limited amount of energy or resources, but we also, we all have the exact same amount of hours in the day. And so really the true full force multiplier is time and how well we leverage the limited time that we have, what we spend our time doing, which means that the process of prioritization and choosing what we focus our limited time and attention on is incredibly valuable. And as it relates to social media ads, this is a way to multiply yourself and to be able to have this exposure happening every single day where it's you and the things that you're doing, like your music, your performances, your ads. It's putting you in front of new people and you don't necessarily have to spend your time every single day doing that. So I think it's a really powerful tool. Everything that is a technology is a force multiplier in a sense. It's designed to help you get a result in less time so leveraging the right tools in your arsenal, and knowing how to use those tools is incredibly valuable. In the short-term, it's like the Abraham Lincoln sharpening the saw analogy that if you give them an hour to sharpen the saw before he cuts down the tree, it's only going to take him an hour to cut down the tree, but if you just tried to start without sharpening the saw, then it might take him 10 hours. So I think it's important for all of us to just sort of have time carved out to sharpen the saw and to to be working on learning these technologies. It might take some time and investment upfront to do it, but once you have that, it gives you leverage and allows you to multiply your output.

Jared: Yeah, that's exactly it: multiplying your output and social media ads is one way to do that. The next obvious one was your lists; your email list primarily, but hopefully you're starting to build an SMS texting list. Think about this, let's say somebody sees your ad or they see a piece of content on your Instagram reels or something. They go to your link in bio or they click the link and they opt-in. Now they're on your list. Now you can multiply the exposure as much as you want because you already earned the connection, earned the contact and the email, and you can create email sequences that 5X-10X the exposure that would have just been maybe a view or like a little dip of tea. So that one's big. Thinking of examples, Modern Musician, we use our email list, we use our texting list and that's probably why you're here. If you're here live, it's probably because we're using, like you said, the technologies to multiply the exposure and help bring you into this community. That’s just another example is the email list.

Michael: Yeah, yeah. 100%. I think it's kind of like an interesting juxtaposition between using content, and leveraging paid media ads, and also live experiences. I truly think there's something sacred and there's something that can't be replaced about live; to get being here live. This is all that there is, is live. I think for all of us as musicians, it's been so part of the core of the value that we provide is our live experiences and community is really like part of this live communion that we all come together. And so I think that the big opportunities right now for musicians are in something that we're exploring right now as well: just doing these podcasts is having a live audience, by doing this live, by interacting and bringing people up on stage. We're able to help shine a light on different viewpoints within the community. We're able to kind of create this shared movement. And I think the same thing applies to musicians. It's been the way it's been forever. But especially now with the technologies around live streaming and having an inner circle stage community where maybe you perform once a day for half an hour and just come together with you people. There's platforms like Twitch that some of the most influential people in the world are people that have developed an audience on Twitch because they're getting steeped big time. That team is getting steeped big time when you're there live and you connect and you can engage, you can interact, you can be a part of this evolving moment. So I would definitely encourage all of us to think about that as part of the force multiplier as well is like when you can bring your people together through live experiences and live events, while also using the live events and carving out pieces of value and nuggets that, maybe if you do play a song live every day, maybe one of your fans will edit the replays and the videos for you so you can distribute those and publish those across your channels. So really, how do we build a community? How do we build a strong connection with our fans? We were talking about the difference between live events being a way to bring community together, as well as being able to create content and distributing that content in an automated way using emails, using social media and advertising.

Jared: I kind of started to make a list of these force multipliers and kind of prioritize them on which ones can get the most leverage. In case you missed it, we had one of our platinum artists, Ryan Krysiak from First to Eleven on the podcast. He just did an absolute masterclass on a massive force multiplier. It feels like I have to talk my band into, even though they're open to it, but I'm needing to lead the way and be like: okay, we need to find a song, we need to pick a song and we need to do the Arkaik version of it, because it's just a massive lever. There's so many songs that can be turned into being a genre bending of some kind, likely. We need to do that. One of our goals is 10X, our listenership, 10X the people experiencing our art over the next year. And that's a big part of that is: well, we should do some really awesome covers because you just immediately get that traction that you normally wouldn't get because you're leveraging another artist or another song that people are really aware of. Cover songs is like… I knew that what Ryan was doing was totally insane and awesome and the frequency of exposure for First to Eleven is just so high!

Micheal: Over 500 million views on their YouTube channel. Just phenomenal.

Jared: Yeah. So I encourage everyone to make a list, start brainstorming some cover songs to do next year and just put a couple of them out and see what happens. You'll probably notice that you'll have like a force multiplier on your hands when it comes to cover songs. The whole thing about the stigma around it: Oh, your original artists… Ryan made a really good point that so many big artists, their careers actually blew up when they did an epic cover song. And so it's like: come on, you can't ignore that. So yeah, that was another big one.

Michael: Absolutely. There's a ton of artists that come to mind where they're not necessarily a cover song band, but they use cover songs; they have a few cover songs that have really gotten them on the map. Bringing it back to this tea bag analogy, it's sort of like these audiences, and it could be another artist, it also could just be a community that you think about. There's just little pockets of people and thoughts and relationships. And it's sort of like you want to look and see: where are these other communities that they’re infused with very strong tea that I like the taste of that tea? I like that tea, and then tap into those and basically if you can create a song or music that specifically speaks to those people, whether it's a cover song, that's a great way to do it because you know, that's a community that's steeped in the music, but also it could just be for any cause or any movement that you're you're inspired by, you're passionate about. It could be a particular cause. I know we've had artists in our Gold Artist Program right now that are doing really amazing things for stray cats and dogs or for abandoned pets, and they're using their music as a tool to plug into that community, and have a message that they're connected to. Yeah, I think that there's really something about looking at the different concentrated communities and the tea that settled in that you enjoy the taste of, and then intentionally saying: we want to create something valuable for this community that they might resonate with our music if we really focus on providing value to them. Cover songs are a great way to do that.

Jared: Yeah, absolutely. Causes or different communities, even outside of music. One that comes to mind is Apollo Fresh mixing hip-hop and rap with anime. He used a massive force multiplier there because he's got that community that already has a love and a passion for, and he's just dipping into that and providing value.

Michael: Yeah, talk about a culture that's like steeped in that community; anime. It certainly seems like that's a very strong culture.You have ComicCon where people dress up in wild outfits because it's a part of who they are and expressing themselves.

Jared: Yeah. So, let's see word of mouth recommendations. So just telling a friend. That's another way. It seems not as massive as maybe a cover song that gets millions of views, but it is kind of a downstream multiplier where recommendations go a long way. So, that's how I've learned of some of my favorite artists is through a friend recommendation and word of mouth.

Michael: Yeah, I think that the cards that we're developing now with the ability to scan them to your phone and basically access behind the scenes content and exclusive content from an artist, one of the things that we added to these cards for you when you set up your fan journey template and StreetTeam is there's a button that says “share with a friend”, and if they share that link with a friend and the friend signs up, then they get rewarded for it. They get 100 tokens. We're going to be building some very cool things in 2024 in terms of ways to redeem those tokens. But that seems like one way to sort of tap into this force multiplier because people look to recommendations from friends specifically as it relates to music especially because that community and that connection with other people that are existing relationships to us tends to be where a lot of our music comes from.

Jared: Yeah. I think the last key to this, once you're getting more exposure, you're leveraging these technologies or these strategies to multiply your exposure, there's this term that this guy Shane Morris said on TikTok and I was like: he was giving advice to artists. And he said, URL to IRL. So credit where credit's due. Very clever and got me thinking as well. If you're a serious artist and IRL, it means “in real life” is what IRL stands for, and URL is obviously anything web based or internet based, like a website is a URL. So how do you take them from my website, that discovery phase or from your email list, but then even deeper to a live experience, like a live performance, a concert, a house show, a live meet and greet, shaking people's hands, or even with networking, from the internet to real life. There's something about anything live, even this right now has that specialness to it because it's in the moment. Even just being present with other people, whether it be your fans or fellow music artists, maybe you go to a conference or a mastermind, but taking that experience into real life. URL to IRL is the next component or the logical next step in a lot of ways, or it could just be 1:1. It could be like a 1:1 zoom call. It's still internet based, but it's still more real life. It's in the moment, or in a community. We want to take people from the URL, from the website, from the Spotify link, from the relic cards, wherever the URL is, but then ultimately to experiencing something in the moment in-person is like, I don't know, the grand finale, I think.

Michael: Yeah, it's super interesting. I think this comes back to the conversation we've been having around live events and what's real or what is in real life; what is real versus not real? To say the digital isn't real is both true and false from a standpoint of, in a lot of cases, we have this social media effect where it's like: everyone's living their best lives always and we compare ourselves. We're like: man! So it certainly can be not real in that sense where it's like there can be a sort of fake front versus what is real. It seems like what's real is not necessarily the mask or the cover, but it's what is; it's what's here. It's connected to that live moment. You can't fake presence. You can't fake reality. Reality just is whether you think it is or not. Even if this is all a simulation, even if none of this is actually happening, you can't deny the fact that there's qualia or there's a thing that's like: we can see shapes and colors and sounds and we're having an experience here. It does seem like when you go down to the root level of reality, there's something precious about this moment that can't be fully replaced. I think that's connected to what makes music special. And when we're all resonating at this frequency when we're all part of that community we get to actually taste that reality. So it's interesting. I think that it's tempting sometimes to disqualify videos or digital content or zoom or something and say it's not real because we're not actually here in person doing it, but I think that zoom is actually a step closer to real from the sense of you're in real-time talking and having a conversation connecting with someone in this present moment. I think what we're doing right now in our community, this live stage, it's very real because we're all here in real-time having this conversation. And so I think that leaning into that for artists is a really powerful opportunity of having content and distributing your content, publishing it in that: those are real reflections. The reflections of you, and it's amazing that we can have these reflections; these recordings. Incredible. But the reflections aren't necessarily the source or the core presence. Giving people a path to come together to the core of the community is powerful. Yeah, we're going to the metaphysical now. I wasn’t expecting for us to go this deep, Jared, but this is fun. I love conversations like this.

Jared: Yeah. I mean, it takes it to just a whole new level. If you can share a moment with somebody like in real-time, whether it be digitally. And it's beautiful that we can do that. All of my band members live in different states. We write music remotely. We meet remotely. It all is very real and impactful, and it's just like such a cool thing that we can do that these days. That's the next step from the top of the funnel, which is just purely exposure, to the middle of the funnel which is more exposure but deeper in, maybe more stories, more content, more connection, and then the course is like anything like in the moment whether it's on the internet or somebody showing you the tattoo that they got of your band or you're hugging somebody after the show when you're all sweaty and sharing that moment with them. There's different layers to what we can give to our fans, and for a lot of us, I think the challenge is just breaking through that exposure algorithm block, cause it feels kind of hard to break through that. So, the techniques of taking advantage of levers like Instagram Reels and TikTok. We've been doing this with our Modern Musician account more recently, and we've been taking clips of these live moments and we've been repurposing them on Instagram, and because it's in the format that's native to it, they've been getting more reach; our exposure’s been getting higher. People have sent us messages like: Hey, I noticed you've been posting a lot more. The same thing goes where you just want to increase your level of exposure wherever anybody's at. If it's top of funnel, it's social media ads and short-form content or YouTube. Live performances do really well because you feel like you're in the moment. There's not this cinematic movie kind of thing. Those top of funnel channels lead to more exposure on your email list or your text list or in your community, all 3 of those things, and then hopefully lead to some more experience with you in the moment where you're interacting back and forth exchange of energy. That's what creates super fans. That's what creates purchases. If we make a product, if we put together any kind of offer, we want somebody to purchase it because it's valuable and we know it's valuable to them, but if they haven't been steeped long enough, it may take 20 more points of exposure for them to take that step, but it's all possible and there to do. And that's what we teach you at Modern Musician. [both laughing] That's probably as much as I have on those 3 things.

Michael: Yeah, it's so good. I love this topic of exposure and in understanding that the tea doesn't go in just one time. It's like: all right, someone's a super fan immediately! It's like, no, like there's a process where it gets steeped and the more that you connect with them, the more value you provide, the more that the tea is steeped. What comes to mind specifically around marketing and retargeting, I don't know where the stat came from but I know it's been passed around, and I think that there's probably a study that went into it, but there was a marketing study that if, I remember correctly, the number was like 7 touch points. It was that the average person needs 7 different touch points before they make a purchase with something. And knowing that, again part of me is like, well, gosh, it just depends on so many different things, 7 is a little bit arbitrary, but I think that the general principle is true, and it comes back to what we're talking about with steeping. Generally there's going to be some sort of warm-up process. It's not going to happen normally. Every once in a while, it will. Every once in a while, you're gonna have a fan who just like… the tea goes in and then they’re like oh my gosh, this is the best most amazing thing in the world. Instantly the tea bag explodes and the tea is done. So it does happen and it's wonderful when that happens, but generally like there's going to be a process of relationship building that happens first. The retargeting, especially I think, is a big opportunity that is sometimes under leveraged. Could you talk really briefly about the idea of retargeting and how anyone here has maybe been a part of our community and has launched their campaigns and they started to build a fan base, in some cases from scratch, but now they actually have the seeds planted and they actually see this blossoming community, how can someone best leverage the power of retargeting?

Jared: When you first introduced me to ads and retargeting it, retargeting was not something that: oh, I totally understand that right off the bat. The term is understandable, but what do you actually do in order to retarget somebody? Using a platform like MetaAds, TikTok, Google, they all do this. So basically what you can do is you can take… I kind of think of them as buckets. You can take anybody who's liked, commented, followed, anybody who's engaged with your Facebook profile, your Instagram profile, your TikTok profile, your YouTube channel, watched a video, any of these engagements, these platforms are tracking the users who do that. So what you can do is you can create what's called a custom audience and you can put them all in a bucket. Let's say like in the last 30 days you've reached a total of 30,000 users. You're reaching roughly around 1,000 people a day. You can put those in a custom audience, a small pool of people, and then you can say: I just want to put this specific ad in front of those specific people and I'm going to talk to them differently because they're already aware of me. Maybe they've engaged with my content, or they're on my email list, or any type of engagement already. And you can segment this so you can get really dialed in where you can have one ad for people where the frequency of exposure is light. They've maybe engaged with your content, but they're not on your email list yet. So you can send an ad saying: Hey, I noticed that you engaged with my content. It doesn't have to be that direct. A beautiful thing about an ad is it has a button on it and you click the button and people can opt in. So if they're not on your email list, you can target them and say: Hey, join my email list, get VIP access in my community. It's free to join. It's a really easy ask. And it's actually cool of you as an artist to do that because most big artists, I don't know what they do. Maybe they don't have time or they're just not doing it, but they're not as accessible, but you can be accessible to your fans and build an actual true connection. And so at any point, you can put people in a retargeting bucket and then you can serve them a social ad with whatever messaging that you want in order to take them to the next step, whatever that next step is for them, you can do that. So all these platforms can do that. Basically what it is: you're just creating these special little audiences because they're not as big as a cold audience. You can target Beyonce, and it's going to be multiple millions of people. Your retargeting audiences are going to be smaller. What I've recently learned, especially with Meta, so Instagram or Facebook there's a type of campaign where you can control the frequency, because you don't want to bombard somebody with an ad to where they block you because they just see your ad every time they open the app, but with awareness campaigns, those are campaigns where you can actually set the frequency cap on it. And so you can say: I just want to remind these people, expose them 2-3 times per week with this ad until they opt in and then they'll get removed from that audience, and maybe I'll go for a purchase or something that's more for a warmer, hotter audience. That's basically what it is.

Michael: Yeah. Just a huge opportunity with retargeting audiences. I know most of my mentors when they talk about their ad strategy, they say most of the revenue and most of the value is coming in the retargeting. And retargeting can be defined as it relates to ads, right? This is retargeting existing people to help them take the next step. But also like your email marketing is just a form of retargeting. This is someone that has engaged with you and now they're on your list, and now you have the ability to have those other touch points to get to the 7 touch points.

One analogy that came to mind as it relates to retargeting is if you imagine when you first launch a campaign and you share one of your songs or a clip of one of your songs to a new fan, it's sort of like every single person that listens to that song is a seed that you've planted; every person represents a seed that you've planted. If that's all you do, plant a bunch of seeds, then in some cases, they might naturally blossom and bear fruit, but in many cases, it's not unless you continue to nurture those seeds that they actually have the ability to blossom and grow and to bear fruit. And so one way to look at it is like when you're retargeting, you're basically saying: rather than just trying to plant all these different seeds in different places, I'm going to actually focus specifically on this little orchard that I've started to plant, and I want to nurture those existing seeds and there's different ways to do it through email marketing and sequences, community engagement and things you do with your existing community, but I do think that retargeting campaigns and ads in particular is a really powerful opportunity that we all can do a better job of leveraging.

Jared: Yeah, and the ad world has gone through a lot of shifts lately that has made retargeting harder. Especially in the last year and a half or so where some of the social media people are saying: Hey, you're retargeting is in your cold audience, those groups aren't well segmented anymore because Facebook doesn't know X, Y and Z. The good news is that thing for

Together: StreetTeam… [both chuckle]

Michael: I can speak to that a little bit. One of the things that I've been geeking out about, in the past six months especially, has been Facebook conversion, API, and setting up event tracking, and making sure that like… basically in order for retargeting to work, the platform needs to know who are the seeds; what are the people that you've already connected with so that you can continue nurturing and providing value to those people. I don't want to go too geeky here cause it might not be that entertaining or understandable, but basically how this works in the StreetTeam is: when a fan lands on your funnel in StreetTeam, there's something called a pixel. The pixel is just a way to tell Facebook: Hey, this person clicked on this ad and they listened to the music. And so basically the pixel is on your website. Anywhere someone goes on your funnels in StreetTeam, there's a pixel connected to your ads that basically says: Hey, this person that came from the ads did this thing. What's also happening is when someone opts in to your email list in StreetTeam, they become a contact and basically every contact, they might have an email address for example, what we're able to do is we're able to link up the profile of the Facebook user to your contact in StreetTeam to basically tell them: this contact represents this Facebook user. Therefore, if this contact doesn't go to your website but they go somewhere else and they purchase something from you in StreetTeam, then because we know that that contact is linked to that Facebook user, we can tell Facebook: this event happened. If it hasn't happened yet, then you can tell Facebook this event hasn't happened yet, so we want to reach people to help nurture that relationship to take them to the next step. So that's something that happens for you underneath the hood in StreetTeam. Jared, I know you've done a lot of awesome work basically integrating our Facebook conversion API, pixel ID, and conversion API token now so people can leverage those insights. The good news is that you, yourself, don't have to learn how to write code and set up Facebook conversion API and all this different stuff. It's literally a 2-minute video that just walks through copy and paste these two numbers, and if you do that, it's all set up automatically for you.

Jared: Yes. And this is a huge problem solver for anybody in digital marketing right now is the ability to really have that conversions API. That's the solution to the iOS tracking issues and stuff like that is conversions API. It's basically the plumbing of your website. It allows you to actually segment people from, maybe they've been on my funnel or on my website where my pixel is but they haven't opted in, and so I'm going to retarget them. So you can have layers in your campaigns where you have top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel. That's how I was taught. Tofu, mofu, and bofu are the terms. We've got our ads really nicely set up that way now, and I can see how well it's working because of what we've done with StreetTeam being able to do this all. This is massively valuable. If you don't know how valuable this is, it's massively valuable to use this software along with just adding those 2 numbers. It’s huge.

Michael: We used to use a segment.com, which is fantastic. You can create lookalike audiences and these personas, but it costs $27,000 a year to use. That was part of what drove us with StreetTeam to focus on rebuilding that platform for ourselves so we could personally cancel our segment.com account, but also so we wouldn't have to recommend for new artists who are just starting out that they have to go spend $27,000 on just one software.

Jared: Yeah exactly. Just one software to solve 1 issue or 1 challenge that advertisers are having. It's all built in there in StreetTeam now, which is amazing. There's something called event match quality (EMQ). Like with StreetTeam, the events are just bright green and they say “great event match quality”. So. Yeah, that's super cool. And then also because you're telling Facebook or Instagram, wherever platform you want it… Some people want to just do Instagram, which I totally get, but we're talking about both here. When these signals are properly being sent to Facebook, you can actually see purchase conversion value inside your ads manager, so you can see purchases are happening, which before you couldn't. That's super valuable. And then actually like the algorithm, the machine learning that's happening in the background of your campaigns is getting smarter because you're feeding it more valuable data. You're saying: Hey, this event took place. Somebody opted into my email list. Somebody made a purchase. Let's find more of those people! And it actually points the ship in the direction of more people who are more valuable and more likely to take those actions.

Michael: Yup! 100%, All right, well hey, this is one of my favorite topics to discuss. I think it's pretty geeky, but this is some really powerful force multipliers that we're describing.

So yeah, let's officially wrap up for the day. So let's give a round of applause to Jared. I love doing this. Thank-you for being a part of it. And for anyone who is tuning into this right now who isn't here live in our community and are curious about being a part of the community and actually coming on live, and this is where we host these live streams and these podcasts. And so if you'd like to get your questions answered and be a part of the community, then you can click on the link in the description to join the community for free. Part of the reason that we do this is because we're always looking for new artists to mentor personally, so if you are an artist who you've already recorded at least one song that you feel proud of, and you're just trying to look for how do I get it in front of the right people and build a community around it? How do I make it sustainable and turn it into a business? Then you can apply for a free coaching call with Modern Musician. On that coaching call, we have a chance to ask you some questions and get to know your situation, and based on your situation, we can recommend something different resources based on what's right for you based on where you're at in your music career right now. So if you haven't yet, go ahead and click on the link to join the community for free. I would love to connect with you live in-person, not on the podcast and until next time. 

Hey, it’s Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about our guest today, and if you want to support the podcast then there’s a few ways to help us grow.

First if you hit ‘subscribe’ then that’s make sure you don’t miss a new episode. Secondly if you share it with your friends, on social media, tag us - that really helps us out.

And third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review it’s going to help us reach more musicians like you take their music to the next level. The time to be a Modern Musician is now, and I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.