Ep. 53: DIY Marketing for Composers, with Musicnotes' Jaleesa Garland

Today’s guest is Jaleesa Garland, the senior marketer for musicnotes.com.

I recently had the opportunity to visit their downtown Nashville office and talk to Jaleesa in person, which is something that I don’t often get to do for this podcast.

It was a lot of fun, and she does such a great job of explaining marketing concepts and principles that you can sort of consider this episode as a primer for those of you that didn’t get to go to business school, which I’m guessing is most of you.

She also has a unique perspective as somebody who’s worked in a lot of different fields, and as somebody who’s relatively new to the music industry, giving her a unique perspective that I think you’ll find valuable.

Jaleesa Garland, welcome to the show.

How are you doing?

I’m good.

I’m good.

How are you?

I’m doing well.

Excited to be back on the couch, as they say.

We’re in the Musicnotes office in Nashville today talking marketing.

Yes.

Yes.

Welcome back.

Welcome back.

I’m really excited to chat with you today about marketing and what we’re doing here at Musicnotes.

Before we get into all of the questions, could you just talk about your background, in particular about your background as a musician?

Because I think it’s important for, you know, people in the industry have these, you know, senior marketer and these sort of business sounding titles.

And I think it’s important for the musicians listening to understand that you really do get where they’re coming from.

Yeah, so what’s interesting is I actually am not a musician, unless you count me playing the clarinet in elementary school.

It totally counts.

Yeah, so yeah, okay, well, great then.

I played the clarinet in middle school and elementary and middle school.

But since then, I, you know, I played sports growing up, but then I, you know, went to college and studied strategic communication.

And yeah, I’ve been in marketing ever since, and I’ve done marketing for all kinds of companies.

So this is, you know, this is a different part of my journey, but it’s been really interesting and really exciting.

Well, and to be perfectly blunt, the fact that you’re not a musician is one of the reasons I’m most excited to talk to you, because I think there’s a lot about marketing that is different in the music industry, or at least that’s the way I view it.

But a lot of the people that have been working in marketing, publishing, you know, roles within the music industry, they’ve been doing it for so long, they’re kind of used to it, right?

And so I’m excited to get the outside perspective of somebody who has worked in other companies, other industries, and now come into the publishing industry and to get your sort of fresh, unfiltered, recent take, right?

Because a lot of the stuff in the sheet music industry has sort of evolved and re-evolved and changed over the last couple of decades.

And so I think you’re able to give us a really objective view at like where things are right now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, yeah.

I mean, it’s been, you know, as someone who has is not a musician, it has been really, really interesting in my time with Musicnotes.

Like there’s a ton of learning that I’ve had to do as someone who is not a musician, who brings a marketing perspective, but there’s still a lot of learning and things that I have to, that I’m like having to navigate to really understand the music industry.

And so that’s all been really interesting.

So let’s start with just your first impression, like coming into this business, like, and looking at just the overall landscape and the sales and the competitors and all the post-COVID garbage.

Like, what’s your take on everything right now?

It is complicated.

It is a very complicated industry.

It’s so I will say the sheet music industry is really interesting in that while it is part of the music industry at its core, it is a digital product.

And so in that from that point of view, having to learn how to market a digital product is fascinating.

It’s very different from what I’ve done before.

And so learning that industry and learning how to market digital products has been kind of a, it’s been enriching.

Well, and of course, there are still publishers that sell physical product.

But I think in general, it’s fair to say that digital is where the industry is headed, if not there already.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And that’s, you know, when I come into work every day, that’s what I’m looking to do.

It’s like, how do I optimize?

How do I bring this digital product in front of people and kind of bring them into the Musicnotes ecosystem so that they’re not only coming back when they want to buy something, but bringing them back to the site for other things too, to engage with us, to read our blog, to listen to our podcast.

You know, what we’re trying to do is really build an ecosystem where people can get, it’s not just an e-commerce site.

It really is a place where they can go and find like-minded people, like-minded experiences and learn.

And so, you know, learning how to do that for an industry that’s very different from what I’ve done before is really interesting.

But I will tell you, I have worked in a lot of different industries.

Talk more about that.

What other companies or products have you worked with?

Yeah, yeah.

So I started out my career in PR, working on video games.

After that, I worked in women’s fashion.

I’ve worked in home decor and home furniture, so selling mattresses online to people.

I’ve done more technology products, so like mechanical keyboards, headphones.

And what’s interesting there is kind of, there’s a little bit of the, like I would say the audiophile industry is in certain ways a lot like the music industry.

There are definitely connections there.

And then I took a little detour and worked in software for a while before coming back to e-commerce, which is how I got here to Musicnotes.

And did your impressions of the industry match the reality when you got inside, or were there things that surprised you?

Oh, definitely things that surprised me.

This industry is really, really dynamic.

And it’s also very challenging because there’s a lot of competition in the industry.

And finding ways to showcase what you have to give to customers is, it’s very different here because you’re not looking at like, when I worked in technology, for example, with physical products, you know, it’s like, I’m the only one who sells this exact product.

You can only buy it here.

But with sheet music, there are so many ways to look at it.

And people who are not necessarily well versed in the differences in sheet music, they can easily say, well, I can find this somewhere else.

So that’s been that’s a challenge.

It’s a really big challenge.

I think it makes sense for this conversation to sort of separate the like DIY composer marketing from the like corporate publisher marketing.

So we kind of because those are kind of different worlds.

Or maybe you disagree.

We can get into that.

When I started getting serious about publishing, one of the first things I did was just go look at the competition, right?

Go look at other publishers, look at other composers and see the kinds of things that they were doing.

And especially in those first couple of years, mostly I was just imitating, right?

If I see Musicnotes is doing a coupon, I’m going to do a coupon.

If I’m going to see Roger Emerson has a video post, like I’m going to do a video post, whatever it happens to be.

But I also noticed that a lot of things that you read online about quote unquote marketing, you know, and especially digital marketing, a lot of those things that I was reading didn’t seem to match up with what was effective in the music industry.

And do you agree with that?

Oh, 100%, 100%.

I’ve been here with the company for almost six months now, and there have been a couple of times where I’m like, in any other industry, this probably would have worked and this did not work here.

And so I think every day is a learning lesson in learning about who our core customer is, what are they looking for, how do we engage with them.

Like I said, it’s been enlightening in that standard marketing does not necessarily work here.

And I think that us being a distributor or publisher of digital product has something to do with that, because there is, again, it’s like when you have a physical good, you’re like, here’s my product, here’s what it is, here’s what it does, look at it.

You can’t buy this product anywhere else.

And while sheet music is very, you know, with Musicnotes, we…

Well, we’re not selling a general product.

It’s not like, here’s our line of t-shirts, anyone can wear a t-shirt.

Exactly.

It’s like, here’s an arrangement for this instrument, and you’re only going to be interested in it if you play that instrument.

Exactly.

There’s a higher barrier to entry with our product.

And that’s really challenging.

And obviously, it’s a very niche industry.

And when you’re speaking to people within the niche industry, first of all, you have to know how to speak to these people because these people have a depth of knowledge about the subject matter and a lot of opinions about the subject matter.

So you really have to understand who they are and how to speak to them before you present things to them.

And that’s unlike what you were saying with a t-shirt, here’s a t-shirt, this t-shirt is great, it’s made out of cotton.

It’s just very different and the barrier to entry is very, very, very high in comparison.

Well, and I’ve talked to a number of, let’s call them long timers in the industry, right?

People that have been doing this for decades.

And I hear sort of a consistent theme, which is we used to know how to reach people really well.

It used to be so easy.

There’s always some variation of that.

All we had to do was send out a mailer to our list, or all we had to do was this or that, and we’d get our people.

And now it’s become so much more fragmented.

And I think everyone is kind of trying to figure this out.

Yeah.

Well, I think there’s a lot of noise, a lot of clutter, and we are all kind of vying for the same space at this point.

It’s harder to speak to people.

There are a lot more distractions.

It’s harder to get right in front of people compared to how it used to be.

Like you said, you used to be able to send a piece of direct mail.

I get a piece of mail from Musicnotes.

Oh, I’m going to go purchase from Musicnotes.

Now, it’s like you’re competing within the Google space, paid ads, social media, and there’s just a ton of forces vying for your attention.

So it definitely has gotten harder to reach people, 100%.

So how much of your job would you say is trying to bring new customers into the fold versus trying to sell to the ones you already have?

You know, I think we do spend a lot of time speaking to our current customers, but we’re trying to branch outside of that.

You know, we do have some very loyal core customers, but as with any business, our job is still to bring in new people and show them what we have and show them why they should trust us and purchase with us.

So I would say, you know, as of right now, my job is 75% speaking with our core customer, our existing customer.

But we’re trying to shift that to more of a 50-50 in bringing in new people and telling them about what we do.

Well, the reason I ask that is because my take on things right now is that music making has been democratized, right?

Anyone with a computer can make sheet music, anyone with a computer can put it on the Internet and theoretically sell it to anyone.

And yet there’s so much out there that the only ones that really seem to be successful in doing that are the ones that are able to connect with large audiences, whether that’s through their own virality or through a larger distributor.

You know, if you’re connected with a Musicnotes and Musicnotes one day decides we’re going to start promoting this guy’s stuff and it starts flying off the shelves because they put it in front of that audience.

Right.

Even though that music may have been there for years and didn’t do anything, it’s that attention economy.

100%.

It’s all about surfacing.

And that’s something that I’ve learned on just our own website.

You know, we’ve got a ton of arrangements.

And as soon as you start to surface things to people and say, here, look, here’s what we have, that’s when the attention goes towards those items.

And so, you know, that’s something that I’m trying to also work through and figuring out how we can do more of that.

How do we scale this idea of putting things in front of people?

And, you know, some of the things that I’ve been working on most recently on Musicnotes is creating like a homepage carousel, so when you come to the Musicnotes home page, it’s not just one static image you see.

It’s a rotating carousel of different products and different offerings that we have.

And, you know, that’s one way to do it on a small scale.

But I think that you’re absolutely right.

Like, within the industry, you have to leverage those who are kind of the bigger players to be able to get any kind of FaceTime with people.

It’s a challenge.

Again, I mean, it’s the Internet space where there are a ton of forces vying for your attention at any given point in time.

And so, you know, leveraging someone else’s bigger audience and someone else’s larger dedicated audience is, it’s key.

Say more about that word surfacing.

Is that a marketing thing?

Is that a you thing?

Yeah, no, it’s a marketing thing.

So, you know, surfacing really is just bringing things to to light.

So, for example, like you were saying, if a creator has an arrangement and we decide, OK, we actually really want to promote this arrangement, that we would be surfacing that arrangement to our customer.

So whether that’s putting that in email, promoting it on social, putting up some banners on the website, really showing people that we actually have this.

And when people can see that we have this, that’s when we see an increase in clicks and purchases and just interest in a product.

What are things that you’ve seen work in cutting through the noise?

Because that’s really what we’re talking about here, right?

Is getting noticed, standing out amongst the zillions and zillions of products that are online.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I think it comes down to having a quality product and being able to showcase that product to your customer and creating different experiences for them.

So within, for example, the email platform, when it’s not just about, hey, we have this, but it’s, hey, we have this new product.

Here’s why you may like it.

And really identifying who your core customer is and figuring out how to speak to them.

One thing that I am working a lot on is personalization.

So when customers come to our site and give us their preferences, then everything that we’re going to send to them and what we’re going to surface for them on the website is going to be tailored to their interests.

That way, they don’t have to do all the searching.

It’s like, you come to Musicnotes, Musicnotes knows what I like, they know who I am, they know what instrument I play, at what level I play.

And they show me all of the things I need to either perfect my skill or to be able to go out and do the things that I want to do as a musician.

Personalization is huge in marketing and especially within the online space.

And I think that creates those experiences where customers not only trust you, but they’re also going to come back to you because they feel like you know who they are and what they’re looking for.

I think sometimes for composers, it feels hard to justify time spent marketing music.

And I know that sounds a little, I guess, counterintuitive, but, you know, anytime you’re spent creating posts for social media or working on the website or sending out emails or any of that stuff, I mean, that’s time taken away from writing new music.

Yeah.

And I think one of the things that makes it feel hard to get motivated to do, I certainly have trouble feeling motivated to do it at times.

And I think the reason is because the return on that investment is not always immediately obvious, right?

It’s not like I send out an email and boom, everybody’s buying that song today.

That’s just not how the industry works in my experience.

But there have been times where somebody sees a post and then a year later decides to come around and buy something.

And so it’s hard to measure what it is that’s actually bringing in customers.

Yeah.

So with that in mind, how do composers or publishers, how do they measure the results of what they’re doing to figure out whether it’s worth continuing?

That’s a great question.

You know, I think it really is about playing the long game.

Because I see a lot of people just doing the same old thing.

I mean, I get dozens of emails every week and it’s just, here’s the latest product from Blank.

And that’s all the email is.

And I’m like, this can’t really be moving the needle.

Unless it’s just that constant reminder that they exist.

I mean, maybe that does something.

Yeah.

Well, I think that what a lot of people, I don’t want to say get wrong or what they need to understand about marketing is that marketing in a lot of ways is a two-way street.

So when you’re putting things out there and you’re not getting the return on that investment or you’re not getting the feedback that says, this is what I want to see, then that actually tells you a lot.

It tells you a lot about and it should help dictate how you move forward.

With marketing, your job is to understand your customer, understand who your ideal customer is and understand what motivates them to engage with you or to purchase.

And so you’re not necessarily always going to see an increase in sales, but that shouldn’t necessarily always be your goal.

Sometimes it really is about engagement.

It is about having people tell you, oh, this is interesting or giving you a like on a post, re-sharing your post.

Sometimes it really isn’t about the immediate purchase.

And that’s what I mean, I think that that’s what makes marketing really interesting, but that’s what also makes it challenging because sometimes it can be very hard to quantify the return on investment.

But a lot of times it really is about, if someone’s not purchasing from me, are they opening my emails?

Are they engaging at all?

Are they going to my website?

And then figuring out if this is the case, if they are opening my emails, if they are going to my website and looking around, how can I further engage them and move them down the funnel to, at some point, purchase.

So if, for example, you send an email and someone opens it and they click over to your website, at that point, if they don’t purchase, then let’s look at doing some retargeting for them.

Since you know you have their email address and you’re able to see what they’ve done on your website, maybe it’s time to send them a coupon or maybe it’s time to figure out how to engage with them otherwise.

For a lot of smaller, I would say composers or any kind of smaller companies, I would recommend looking at building a funnel and saying, okay, here’s how many people I expect to come into my funnel.

Here’s how I’m going to do some, what they would call top of funnel marketing.

So that’s very much about brand awareness, just about bringing them into the fold.

And then what are the actions I need to take to get them to either purchase or to conduct some other action that I would like them to do, whether it’s giving you a follow on social media, signing up for your email newsletter, and really building out what that funnel looks like.

So that way you have a better understanding of how you engage with people and how you get them to perform that action.

It’s not always about the sale necessarily, at least not in the beginning.

Sometimes it really is about how you’re engaging with people and how you’re bringing them into the fold.

I think that sentiment tracks with what I’ve seen in the industry in my own experience, because it is an industry that’s built so much on personal connections.

And I think the mistake, you’ve articulated it in a way you haven’t thought of before, but where people make a mistake when they’re trying to promote their music is they get really impersonal about it.

And whether that’s because they’re trying to put on this corporate façade, right?

Or if it’s just they’re not thinking about it in that way.

But it’s got to be more than, here’s a coupon, right?

It’s trying to build that relationship with them.

I think in a very real sense, and you’re right about it being a long-term game too.

I just thought of an example.

Like I did a booth at a convention almost two years ago, and I met somebody.

And then this year, they came out of the blue and emailed me to headline a festival for them.

And so that’s an event that I wouldn’t have been doing unless I had gone and marketed myself at this convention.

But at the time, I didn’t walk out of that booth like, no, and I got it, right?

But it paid off in the future.

And so if you’re able to make those connections with people and maintain them, then I think eventually you either figure out what you need to do to seal the deals, so to speak, or just naturally goes there.

I want to go back to the funnel thing, though, because none of us went to business school and some of us may not know what you’re talking about.

I think we kind of get it just from the general shape, right?

We know what our shapes are.

But talk more about like conceptually, what are the steps?

Like if I want to apply this great advice and put my people through the funnel, I don’t even know what you call it.

See, this is why we need you, right?

Like what are the steps and what’s the timeline for that?

Yeah.

So let’s start with the timeline.

Now, the timeline really varies.

It depends on what you’re trying to sell.

It depends on the price point, the customer.

You know, for more high value purchases, so if we’re talking about trying to sell software, for example, that path to purchase is going to be a lot longer than say a piece of sheet music, for example, because the expenditure is so much less.

But to go back to funnels.

So a marketing funnel really is, the easiest way to describe it is the path to purchase.

So at the top of the funnel, you have all of your brand awareness.

So getting people to understand here’s who, or actually getting people to know I’m out here, this is what I do, here’s who I am.

So step one is like, I exist.

Yes, step one is I exist.

I exist and here’s what I do.

Now at that level, your funnel is going to be a lot bigger.

Like you said, the shape of the funnel, it’s going to be a lot bigger because you want to get as many people to understand that you exist as possible.

And then from there is when you go and weed people out, because all of those people who know you exist are not going to be the people that you want to focus on for purchase, because most of those people, for example, are not going to be interested in your product.

And that’s okay, you need to know that.

So as you go down the funnel, that’s when you start to get really targeted about how you engage with people who actually may be your target customer.

So that’s when you get them to sign up for your email newsletter.

That’s when you start to reach out to them and showcase your product.

That’s when you start to build that relationship with them.

So they see that not only do you exist, but you also understand them and you have something that they may be interested in.

From there, the funnel gets a little bit smaller because there are going to be people who are like, oh, this guy exists, he’s great, but he’s not for me.

So those people we take out of the funnel.

As we get to the bottom parts of the funnel, those are the people that know you exist, those that know what your product is, and they have an interest in your product, they are your target.

And that’s when you have to go in for the sale.

So whether it’s providing them some kind of incentive for purchasing your product or really getting targeted about how you engage with these people and building, again, it’s really about building that relationship with them.

So at that point, they can decide whether to engage with you via purchase or whatever that action is that you’re trying to glean from them.

That makes a lot of sense.

This sounds bad, but are there any sort of gimmicks that tend to work?

You know, specific approaches, specific types of content?

You know, I would say that the type of content that is most useful is the type of content that shows your audience that you understand who they are, especially for an industry like sheet music.

Oh my goodness, people in the sheet music industry, first of all, are very skilled and they understand the product, and they need to understand that you understand the product and you understand their pain points and what they’re looking for.

And if you can do that, if you can create content that shows them, you understand me and you understand my problem and you’re coming with a solution, that is what gets people to purchase because that’s what gets them to trust you.

It’s about so it’s not only about building a relationship, it’s about building trust.

You want people to know that when they come to you, whether it’s Musicnotes or an individual composer, when a person comes to you, they’re going to get the best product because you understand what they’re looking for and you understand how to do that in a way that nobody else can.

And that’s in the product too, not just the marketing.

If you’re selling beginning piano music and then it’s too hard, that shows them you don’t understand.

Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

And you can’t make it.

Or you’re framing it just in the wrong category, right?

There might be nothing wrong with the music.

It might just be in the wrong place.

And maybe you need to shift that and relabel it and target a different audience.

Exactly.

And that, you know, I think that that is where a lot of people go wrong too.

If they don’t achieve success right out the gate, they think that something is wrong with their product versus how they are either marketing their product or showcasing their product.

Like you said, if you have this great piece or, you know, great collection of music for that you’re targeting as easy piano, but easy piano people are like, hey, I can’t do this.

Then maybe it’s not actually the product that’s wrong, but it’s the target.

You’ve got to look at, look at who would really be able to take your product and achieve success from it.

So sometimes it, you know, is it, it is a twofold.

It’s like, it’s not just looking at your product or how you’re marketing it.

It’s also looking at, am I talking to the right person?

If not, it’s not always that your product is wrong.

You may have a great product, but you’re not talking to the right person.

So keeping all of that in mind, how do I decide as a composer how much marketing to put behind a particular product or line of products?

When is one post sufficient and when does it require, you know, a whole campaign?

And what’s the thinking that goes into that?

And what does a campaign even mean?

I mean, is there like a business school definition that might be helpful here?

Yeah.

So I would call a campaign like, I would describe it as a themed approach to showcasing some kind of initiative.

I don’t know if that necessarily makes sense, but-

We’re going to write a new textbook.

Yeah, we’re going to, let’s write that down.

Yeah.

No, but I think when you’re developing a campaign, you start with the goal.

What is the goal here?

Whether it’s to showcase back to school music or holiday music, what is the goal that you’re trying to achieve?

And then let’s break that down.

We’ll start with the end in mind and break it down.

So how do we achieve this goal?

If our goal is to make X amount of money or to engage with X amount of people, break that down into all the steps that you need to take to get there.

And that’s really where the campaign comes from.

Well, because I’ll just butt in here and add a little more context to what I’m thinking about.

I have a lot of different pieces of music, and sometimes I wonder is it better to focus specifically on one and really just constantly beat the drum about this piece of music in the hopes that it will trickle down to the rest of the catalog?

Or is it better to have a more varied approach and each week pop up something different?

You know, I think it depends on what your goal is.

If your goal is to get as many eyes as possible on your entire catalog, then in that case, it might make sense to be really creative with what you’re doing.

So maybe you are highlighting different parts of your catalog.

If you want to be known for someone who has a depth of a catalog and I’ve got all of this content that you can engage with, then in that case, yeah, it would make sense for you to showcase all the different pieces of your catalog.

Now, if your goal is, for example, if there’s one piece that you believe is really your foot in the door to gaining more customers, then yeah, go all in on that.

If it doesn’t work, adjust from there.

Marketing really is about testing.

There’s a lot of trial and error.

I wish I could say that it was a very cut and dry and you just, okay, you should just do this and do that and you’re going to find success, but it really is about testing different things all the time.

So if your initial goal was, I want to just showcase this one piece, but you don’t get any traction from it, then you have to start to get creative and say, okay, well, maybe the market didn’t really respond to that.

So I either need to, if I want to continue down this road, maybe I need to look at how I’m talking about this product, or I need to expand my audience, or I need to target a different audience altogether.

But maybe, you know, maybe the solution is, I need to show people that I not only have this piece, but I have different pieces that they may find interesting.

It really is about that trial and error.

That’s what makes it interesting, but that’s also what makes it challenging, because sometimes you really don’t, you don’t know what people are going to really engage with.

How much of this is a challenge because of music, and how much of this is a challenge because of marketing, and it’s a challenge for everyone, no matter what you’re doing?

A little bit of both, but I think it’s especially challenging within the sheet music industry, just because there is so much competition.

And again, it’s that digital product.

Like at this point, we’re all so used to being able to have access to our sheet music instantly.

And so trying to get in and market to these people when they can make a purchase in 2.5 seconds is really challenging.

And you want to make sure that when they’re making that decision within that 2.5 seconds, that you are the one that they’ve chosen to go with.

It’s really challenging.

Well, and not only that, sheet music is cheap.

I mean, don’t hate me.

I know everybody’s struggling with their budgets, but like, come on, five bucks for a piece of music or two bucks or 50 or whatever.

I mean, these are all reasonable dollar amounts.

And I think as a result, some of the traditional marketing things, like, here’s my 50% off sale only today.

Like, nobody cares, right?

If my arrangement for $5 is now $2, that’s not going to get people off the couch to buy it.

And so I think that’s part of what makes it hard too, because as musicians, we look at sort of how other companies are marketing their stuff.

And we’re like, oh, well, I’ll try that.

And then it doesn’t work.

And we’re just like, well, okay.

Yeah, yeah.

It’s interesting because you really are dependent upon what your competitors are doing in that aspect, because you kind of have to continue to play in that arena.

Now, obviously, like, our goal is to show the value of our product.

So maybe our product isn’t $2, but the value that you get for spending $5.99 is incredible.

I mean, that’s a whole nother podcast, right?

The devaluation of music and all of that.

But I just wanted to throw that in there to ask, like, when you’re trying to make this value statement, right?

When you’re trying to show your customer that you understand them, are there certain ways of doing that that are more effective than others?

Like, obviously, the coupon isn’t going to do it, but is it explaining what’s in the music?

Is it talking about, like, the backstory?

Like, are there certain things that you’ve seen, oh, this works really well?

Yeah, I think it really goes back to knowing the customer and being able to give them a personalized experience.

So, it’s not just, here I have this product, it’s here I have this product, and because I know who you are, I know that you play this, I know that you’re at this level, this is why I’m showing this product or showcasing this product for you.

I think that personalization is absolutely key, and I think that that’s where you actually show your value.

So, it’s not just about talking about the piece and all the things that makes this piece better than someone else’s.

It’s about saying, yeah, I actually understand who you are, what motivates you, what you like to play, and I’m going to show you this product because I think this is something that you would like to buy.

So, it’s challenging.

It’s very challenging.

All right.

Well, I’ve avoided talking about social media for as long as I can, and I’m impressed we’ve made it this far, but we got to do it.

And one of the things that I immediately notice about Musicnotes specifically is they have a very large following on social media relative to other companies.

I’m not going to name names, but I know of a lot of big companies in the sheet music industry that I know have millions of customers and millions of sales, and then I look at their Instagram page and like I have more followers than they do, right?

And the disconnect between the size of some of these companies and the importance of some of these companies and their social media followings is really interesting.

And I don’t know if you want to comment about that, but it suggests to me that maybe social media doesn’t matter or does it?

I mean, like if you can be a publisher and have hundreds of millions of dollars in sales every year and not really need to have a TikTok account, then like, why do I need to do that?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I think that with social media, there’s this opportunity to learn.

And I think that if your company or you as a composer or publisher takes the approach of, this is not just a sales tool, but it really is a place where people can come to learn and to engage with other people and build that ecosystem.

I think that that’s what’s most important.

One thing that I will say that I think Musicnotes has done really well with their social media is we’ve given a personal face to our company.

So when you go on our social media, it’s not just we have these products for sale or we have these things, but you see Musicnotes employees and you get to understand who they are, what their specialties are.

And I think that that creates a level of trust with our company that is actually invaluable.

And for other companies, they may not have to do that because they’re able to leverage either a lower price point or whatever other mechanics that they are able to employ.

But in the long run, people love to speak to other people and people love that personal touch.

And I think that even if it’s not necessarily a big driver of sales, it’s still really, really important.

And I should add too that it’s clear that some of these companies are focusing on one or two of the platforms at the expense of the others.

And that’s a totally valid strategy, right?

There are some, there are some publishers that, you know, they go all in for YouTube and they don’t really try that hard with Facebook and Instagram.

And I’m sure it’s because they’ve seen the results from that, right?

So it’s smart, but here’s, and I know you’re new to Musicnotes, but how do you know that your posts are reaching the people that you want to reach?

Because this goes back to the T-shirt thing, right?

Like you can post funny memes about music and get all sorts of people to follow you that have no intention of ever buying a single piece of music.

Yep, yep.

And I think that that’s, you know, with social media, you have to have a good mix of that because people love the memes.

They really, I mean, those are kind of, those are our top performing posts every single time.

It is guaranteed that people are going to engage with memes, but again, I think it’s about playing the long game.

Sometimes it’s not about knowing whether you’re going to actually land in the timeline of your target customer all the time.

It is about when people do discover who you are, and they go to look at your social media, they can see just a wealth of posts and information and engagement.

And, you know, and I think in this world, especially considering just how much kind of mess there is in online, having that validation of, oh, like this company, like there are real people working here, they are actually doing things, they’re posting things, there are real people, that’s really valuable to a company, even if it’s not necessarily driving sales or, you know, in today’s social media scape, it’s very much pay to play.

So you’re not necessarily going to get in front of your target customer every single time.

But if you’re looking at your analytics and you’re seeing that people are, even if it’s few people, they are engaging with the posts, they are taking the action that you would like them to take based on what you’ve posted about, I think that that would be considered a success.

I think it’s very interesting.

In sort of all of your answers, we keep coming back to this theme of needing to keep it personal and to make a connection.

And I think it’s spot on.

I just think it’s fascinating that that is where we are right now in this sort of hyper online, flood the zone, over saturation of content, right?

As there’s more and more content online, we haven’t even talked about the AI thing, right?

But there’s more and more content online.

There’s more and more music online.

These companies are getting bigger and bigger.

Everyone keeps getting acquired by bigger fish.

And the industry keeps growing, but as that’s happening, the focus it feels like is getting smaller and connecting with people.

And I think that’s really interesting.

Yeah, well, I think that that’s what people are looking for at this point.

I think that we have, like you said, we’ve just grown and grown and grown, and we’ve kind of lost that personal touch, the personal touch that made social media what it was 10 years ago, 15 years ago.

We’ve lost that.

And so, but people are still looking for that.

People are still looking for that human touch and to engage with others, especially after going through the pandemic and that period where we were isolated from each other.

So finding community online is still very important to people.

And it’s also not just about finding community, but it’s finding where you belong, finding a group of people that understand you, that you can identify with.

And I think that’s especially important for musicians because there are so many different places that they can go, but being a place where, or a community, where they can go to find what they need and they know that they are amongst people who are like-minded, I think that’s just, it’s really important and really valuable.

Well, and that’s what music is, right?

It’s literally human beings on stage connecting with each other, connecting with their audience.

I mean, so we’re, in a sense, we’re just reflecting that in the way we interact online, or at least in the ideal circumstance, that’s what we’re doing.

Yeah, yeah.

And people can see through fakeness.

They can see, like you said, we didn’t touch on AI or anything, but people can see through that.

We’ve all been around long enough that we can see through false attempts at building community or false attempts at engaging with people.

And I think that as a business, it’s just really, it’s critical.

It’s critical to show your target customer that you understand who they are, that you’re listening and that you are interested in who they are and building the best product to help them be better at their craft.

Well, I think that’s a good place to leave it.

This has been a fantastic conversation and I hope our listeners will take it to heart and check out Musicnotes and check out your work with the company.

And looking forward to see everything that you bring to the industry.

Thanks, Garrett.

It’s been great.