In our final industry tips piece for 2021, Beehive PR turns its focus to the idea of building an audience. What exactly does this mean? Well, for any artist, knowing your audience is key. Knowing how to build and maintain that audience is integral to building your presence.
And for us as music publicists, knowing how to read that audience will help amplify our publicity campaigns and generate momentum for you – the client!
To tell us some more about how to immerse yourself in the world of data engagement and audience building, we talk with Mairead Bilton-Gough, Head of CRM at Rolling Stone Australia.
Where did your journey in this field start?
I studied journalism at university and worked as a music journalist for a few years before moving into the world of copy editing. From there I began to realise how much data can impact successful writing – especially in an online context – and was learning tips and tricks to improve writing with the help of techniques like SEO, so my interest in marketing grew from there. Eventually I combined the two – writing and making data driven decisions – and forged them into a successful career in CRM and Email Marketing, where creativity, but also numbers, both contribute to the work.
Everything I know about marketing has been learned on the job, it’s definitely one of those careers you can build off the back of something else, a marketing degree isn’t always necessary!
You’ve been based in Australia and also overseas – how would you compare the two lifestyles with regards to stepping your career ambitions up?
I lived in Berlin, Germany, for three years, and as glad as I am to be home, it still very much feels like a rough break up! One of the things I miss most about living in Europe (besides the endless travelling) is how they approach their work/life balance. In Berlin, the mindset is that family comes first, work second. Even in competitive environments, there’s an understanding that creativity cannot be born from someone who is exhausted. Having time out of the office is crucial.
It’s true Aussies like to work hard, and that was never more apparent than when I moved overseas. But one thing I really gained from the combination of both experiences, is that we should aim to be working smarter, not harder. Spending the time to create easier ways for you to have the same (if not better) output is genius. Automation is key.
In terms of career progression, the opportunities in Europe are endless. New companies and roles are popping up constantly. On the other hand, you’re up against people from so many different countries, so it’s a lot more competitive. In Australia, and especially in the music industry, we have the benefit that it’s quite small so it’s almost like a kind of family. It certainly rings true here that it’s not what you know it’s who you know. Overseas, that’s less important.
Can you tell us a bit about how you stepped into this role with The Brag/Rolling Stone?
I used to write for Tone Deaf many years ago when I was studying, so when I knew I was planning to head home from Berlin in the near future, I put some feelers out to start doing some writing again and get my foot back in the door in the music industry in Australia.
I did some freelance writing for The Brag Media on the weekends for about six months while I was trying to get a flight home (thanks pandemic!), and as I got to know the team more, shared with them my actual desire for a role in CRM. I then progressed from writing to marketing contractor work, running audits and making suggestions for their newsletter network, The Brag Observer.
I still love to write, but marketing is definitely my weapon of choice these days, so the months I spent writing on the weekends was truly only a stepping stone to get my name out there again. Once I finally managed to make it home, I called up, said I was available, and fortunately enough there was room for me on the team! It could not have worked out better.
The main lesson here: put the feelers out in advance and do some side-hustling for a few months. Reconnecting and being introduced to people in the industry where you want to end up – ahead of time – makes all the difference.
To get nerdy: what do you find is the most interesting part of your current job, and with regards to navigating and interpreting any one audience?
My favourite part is being able to combine the creative side with the data side. Being able to make an informed decision on what we should create or what we should work on, with data to back myself, is my absolute bread and butter. It gives you a sense of direction, being able to use numbers to recognise why something might have performed better or worse than a different version.
But I think the most interesting thing is that truly no audience is alike. So it’s super important to never make the assumption that what works to one audience will work to all. For example, our Classic Rock audience much prefers to receive newsletters in the afternoon than the morning, whereas our Industry Observer audience is the opposite.
Our Hip Hop readers do not like to be contacted everyday, and on the other hand, our Film & TV audience perform best if they are contacted everyday – if we miss a day the conversion data really shows. Making sure you treat each audience separately so you can send them the right message at the right time is crucial.
Digital media as a landscape is a complex one and can be overwhelming to a lot of beginners or creatives coming to it for the first time: what advice would you give to someone who may look at stats and data around their release and feel a bit like a fish out of water?
Looking at a spreadsheet of numbers can be daunting to anyone, so try and put some real-world value behind what each number means. Great you gained 1,000 streams in a day, but are they 1,000 unique listeners, or one person listening 1,000 times? This is a huge difference if you want to sell 1,000 tickets to your show.
Think about it like the old school tests that used wording like 3 apples plus 4 oranges, rather than just 3 + 4. Adding the context can make the numbers seem less confronting.
The next step is to make sure you keep clear and easy to understand records of the data – it makes way more sense and is a lot more useful the second time around when you have the first time to compare to. Did you get more streams this time?
Then you can look into what you did differently to work out why that might be the case.
The thing to remember is that data is there to help you. You can use it to your advantage to make informed decisions, which can help you much more than simply acting on a whim could.
How informative can the worlds of marketing and e-commerce in particular be when it comes to building an artist or brand collective today?
PSA artists: if you don’t already have a newsletter database, create one now! Do you know how much easier it is to sell tickets to shows when you have a list of email addresses of people you know are interested in your band? Every time you sell a ticket to a show, sell merch, run a comp, collect the email addresses and start building your own database.
Then when you want to launch something, you have your best audience right there ready for you. Sure, the rest of the world is great to engage too, but this smaller engaged audience is a group of people you know you can rely on to give you solid interest and valuable data. You can test launching things to them before launching to the wider world, and adjust or reevaluate based on the engagement from this small targeted audience you’ve created yourself.
The email database is just one example, but there are so many others alike that you can use to make informed decisions about releases, whether it’s merch, shows, albums, etc.
The main thing is to keep your audience engaged. Whether you go the email route, or maybe it’s a Facebook group, whatever method you choose, give people a reason for sticking around. When there’s value in being a part of something, this is when you will see the best engagement.
Can you give us an example of a particular campaign you’ve been proud of seeing through from beginning to end?
We recently partnered with Ausmusic T-shirt Day to encourage users to donate to the cause while also allowing us to grow our Live Music newsletter database. We ran a giveaway so anyone who signed up to the list went into the running for a $1,000 voucher from THE PEOPLE VS.
What this meant was we had built this super targeted audience of people who were interested in the cause and interested in live music, which meant that over the course of the next few weeks, we could send them targeted messages about Ausmusic T-shirt Day, to remind them to donate and also keep them engaged.
Then when the day came, we could send reminders to that audience again, encouraging them to participate and to donate. This kind of small segmented targeting works so much better than big batch and blast type of emails where you sort of just hope someone on the other end is interested. We already knew they were interested, we just had to work on the right messaging over those few weeks to get them over the line to participate and donate.
Ausmusic T-shirt Day is such a good cause to support so I was super proud to work on this one with them and help contribute to the huge fundraising success they achieved this year.