Worldwide Marketing on a Shoestring Budget

My apologies, but humble buckets will be dumped temporarily as i enjoy the momentary thrill of being featured on the cover and in a double article in this month's Piano magazine!

What makes this publication particularly interesting is not for my personal content contribution per se, but rather in the way such a nice stroke of marketing publicity came about with virtually no financial expenditure on my part. 

As classical musicians, we spend the vast majority of our time perfecting our art and honing our skills.  A noble end in itself, to be sure, but imagine the impact we could have on the cultural landscape if we just invested a fraction of that time and effort into learning how to effectively market ourselves.  This magazine feature is a case in point: apparently, the editor (Jeremy Siepmann) was interested in featuring a pianist with some insights into technology.  He found my blog (www.hughsung.com) thanks to an internet search, read up on some of my articles on digital pianos, and graciously extended an email invitation to contribute and be interviewed.  The components i'd like to point out are as follows:

• A defined marketing niche - in my case, my passion for how technology can enhance art and lifestyle for the classical musician
• A consistent internet presence - the goal of my website was to develop ongoing content to give readers a reason to return, hence the decision to develop a dynamic blog as opposed to a static publicity website.  Multiple presence points were established at sites like www.MySpace.com/hughsung , Facebook, and www.youtube.com/hughsung to help direct more traffic to my main website, but content is still king.  Drawing people to your site is one thing, but it's another challenge entirely to give them a reason to return.
• A library of multimedia - i know a lot of folks spend a great deal of time and expense to put together beautiful paper press kits with flyers, CD's, brochures and whatnot, but more and more i suspect that these tools are becoming more ineffective simply due to the overwhelming volume of artists doing exactly the same thing.  Having an online repository where not only your bio and publicity photos are available, but also MP3/audio tracks of your work as well as video clips and storefront links to your products can be easily accessible gives you a tremendous edge over paper-bound artists.  Material can be transmitted/downloaded quickly and easily on demand, and integrated into a presenter's/publisher's medium seamlessly.

Oh, by the way - total costs for my current online marketing campaign? 

• monthly website hosting costs: $7.95
• annual domain name registration for www.hughsung.com: ~$12/year

At those prices, there really is no reason for any serious classical musician to be without a dynamic website!

We'll go into greater depths on the subject of building your own web presence and online marketing in future articles.  Feel free to send me questions in the meantime - you can always email me at hughsung@gmail.com