Planning For Success in a Fragmented Market

     Since this blog is still very new, and I have only sent out the links a couple of times, I am surprised at having received direct messages on Twitter with questions related to the topics I have covered. First of all, thank you for reading, and for your interest! A few of these messages were written asking me to further describe "hyper-fragmentation" and a handful of questions were in reference to proper ways of researching exactly what territories the writers should be putting their media into. I will try my best to address both of these areas and will include plenty of links for those of you who are truly interested in doing a bit of research, planning, and ultimately executing a plan that will work best for your project or product.

     First, let's discuss hyper-fragmentation in the media market, the basics of what this is, and how you can use this information to your benefit when planning promotion. Imagine you and everyone in your town/city has ten dollars budgeted for personal entertainment per week and imagine there are only four things to choose from to spend that money on. Let's say these are a movie theatre, a new album, a game arcade, and a live show. The choices are fairly limited and the companies offering these services or products can bet on a fairly steady, and predictable, income. Now fast-forward many years and you still have the same ten dollars for entertainment but the choices of how to spend that money have increased exponentially over that time.

     Now there are many companies offering even more services and products like personal video game consoles, individual games, separate controllers, movies available PPV/On Demand/online-rental /home delivery/Red Box, etc. This is in addition to the growing number of music services streaming, selling and embedding everything down to the artist bio, the bands individually doing the same and hosting live concerts online (with associated ticketing), plus the growing number of apps and platform games, and the like. You can see now that each of these industries like movies, music, games, and concerts have all fragmented and the incomes of these companies have been reduced as they now fight for your equally-fragmented entertainment dollar(s). Dig? Moving on...

     How can we use this information to develop a product that will compete in today's marketplace and have a chance of bringing in a return? For one, realize that regardless of the industry you are directly involved in you too will also have to "fragment" and dive into other sectors like mobile/social applications, embeddable stores, social media, games, videos, SEO, etc. To put it plainly, regardless of the "sector" of the industry you find yourself in you must adapt to other sectors to offer your customer or fan a total package. This package should be as interactive as possible and create a "feedback loop" so that those customers or fans can always find new information, as well as hidden and/or exclusive products, as they bounce between your website, your mobile application, social media, Qrickit landing pages, games, etc. You now have a media experience and not just a video, game, a single, or a mixtape for sale.

     Now, for the next question… Which territories (countries, areas) are best for you to release and promote your product in so that you too can have your very own "Rex Manning Day" you ask? This is the fun part, now you get to use some of the information found above, along with the links I'm going to provide below, to do some research! Think globally, there is no excuse for an entertainment product that is not found absolutely everywhere and in every form imaginable. Japan has been completely reinventing the way mobile interactivity and commerce is done, China is an important market, and you can't use Facebook to promote and sell music there so do your homework. The UK, Germany, Ireland, Russia, these are all important markets that should not be ignored.

     Find your niche, use tools like Claritas and Quantcast to find out who you are looking to sell to, and then find out where they hang out. Avoid paying for advertisements that put your product in unfriendly brand positions or using ad services that position your ad near totally dissimilar products from the one you are offering. Be competitive and make sure that if you are selling, say… beats or instrumentals that your advertisement is on a page where beats and instrumentals are sold and the other ads around yours are related, not a washing machine or a stereo.

Effectively Managing Your Online Distribution Plan

     One in five questions I receive working as an entertainment business consultant revolves around distribution of media and more specifically regarding timetables for releases and their promotion. This is completely understandable when you take everything into consideration and this is often a long conversation but we will sum up quickly.

     With so many different types of "stores" available to license holders online and the equal or greater number of  "digital distributors" who are happy to take a fee per single, album, ringtone, and the like, it can be a confusing time for an independent artist or manager who is also working to finalize the product, marketing materials and distribution channels. Each of these "stores" has their own ways and costs of doing business. Most frustrating, each of them also have their own schedules for uploading an artists media once received and often it is up to the artist to "keep an eye out" for its availability once loaded to the platform. Add to this the number of "apps" that are now expected to be integrated into social and mobile experiences that carry their own contracts, fees, and self-serving upload schedule and the time management for releases can be head spinning if not managed very carefully with an emphasis on relevant information.

     Indeed many, many advertising dollars have been completely wasted due to promoting a product as available when fans cannot find it in their favorite stores due to a hasty decision to rely on a quick service that promises quick turnaround for itunes (and the rest of the world in 5-6 weeks). This could be a real bummer if your largest fan bases are outside the United States, and due to the many micro-niche artists out there and the multitude of above-mentioned services this is the case more often than not. Some of the "worst-case scenarios” I have seen involve artists on tour promoting inactive links and unavailable product due to a "set-it-and-forget-it" mentality with their fancy new blanket distribution site online.

     So here are a few quick things to keep in mind to keep both your spending and value-chain effective. First, have a solid pre-release promotion strategy. The project must be managed in a way that sets everything out by time and territory. Which territories are the most important, i.e. where are your fans located? Do your homework and figure out the services you will need to utilize for those territories and contact the rights societies, publishers, and distributors. Try and license your material piece by piece, place by place and then think about blanketing the rest of the world with a quick and easy service. Once this is done choose an online distributor that will allow you to choose a pre-release date and plan spending accordingly (have things in order first). This way you can be extremely specific about when the release will be available and all other efforts like press releases, appearances, touring, etc. can run concurrently towards the same goal, efficiency. This also allows for better measurement of your efforts and makes it easier to attain greater goals with new material rather than contacting press about a song that came out 2 months ago.