I think I’ve hit upon something that might impact upon a lot of people’s approach to marketing: fear of failure.  Is that what sometimes holds us back when thrusting ourselves into the limelight? Hmmm.

One thing I’ve noticed is that our band operates in a niche and that is regarded as the model for independent bands moving forward.  Mainstream isn’t for everyone;  what you do is find your own niche, a small but dedicated fanbase, engage them and they become your dedicated customers.  That isn’t just when it comes to music by the way, that’s most forms of marketing/sales these days.   However, trying to market outside of your existing niche is maybe what I’m having difficulty with because that involves the possibility of failure.

I think it’s safe to say that after a number of years I’ve developed a routine in my marketing.  I do the things which I know will work and because they work I’m happy with the end results.  I’m now having to bite the bullet and accept that as I’m marketing outside of my niche for the first time in a few years I’m going to get some doors slammed in my face.  I’ve DMed a high profile DJ who follows us on Twitter offering them a copy of the new album…no reply, not even a ‘I’ll think about it”.  Cheers!  Perhaps this is where pluggers and press companies have their advantages.  Not only do they have the contacts, they can act as a buffer to some degree to these rejections.  That said, you’ll still pay a large amount of money to get a piece of paper listing a load of people in the media who aren’t interested in your music!

The lyric video is now on YouTube and after 48 hours it’s got 888 hits.  A little disappointing however compared to our other lyric videos it’s not doing too badly.  It was only meant as a stopgap before the real video and in reality it has only served to delay the real video but let’s not go into that again.  I’ll at least upload at the end of the week or start of next week to Facebook to get a bigger impact.

I’ve started to create some video track ‘previews’ the first of which I’ll post tonight on Facebook video, Twitter video and YouTube.  This should start to familiarise people with album content and hopefully be a good way of gaining more pre-orders.  Yesterday I filmed most of the additional green screen work for our unusual video.  Just a little more filming with a final band member tomorrow.

Recreating a Radiohead concert, using dolls!

I posted off a few promo copies of the album yesterday.  I’ve targeted some blogs to promo, some I’ll approach sooner (with the lyric video) some later once I’ve completed the actual video.