Why Your Fans Aren’t Buying (And What to Do About It Now)

Have you ever wondered why you can't sell music online or anywhere for that matter? It's because you don't know how to. You only know how to promote, advertise, or even tell a story, but you don't know how to sell—and that's what I'm going to break down for you today!

Your promotion is working but you're not making your D2C sales. Your advertisement is working but people aren't engaging with it, and you're not making sales. Your stories are working and people make it to the sales page but they aren't following through. You're exhausted with the process—money is steadily coming out of your pockets and you're getting close to zero on your budget. The only thing you can think is "What am I doing wrong?" Well, if you guessed it, I was once where you are now.

I started selling online in 2019, and at the time, I didn't know I was selling a product that I needed back in 2014 (5 years prior), but I figured it out later that that's what I was doing. I sold a product called "The Musician's Guide to Self Publishing." It was an ebook, and to be frank, everyone who sells online is in the same boat. I just want to be clear on that.

My sales were slow at first, but as I began to drop more and more content, people began to buy more and more (Aha moment #1). My content was based on my product (Aha moment #2). The more I talked about this topic that my product was related to, I made more money (Aha moment #3)—$20k in the first year. In fact, this was the only talking point I had developed. I had no prior training, by the way, other than selling beats online. I became a trusted source on the topic of music publishing (Aha moment #4). Of course, I didn't learn this until later, but I was so passionate about music publishing that I wanted to tell the whole world (Aha moment #5). Then eventually, I created products for record labels and made a lot more money (Aha moment #6), and then people encroached on my style and products and revenue dipped (Aha moment #7). Did you catch everything? Because I just gave you the psychology of sales. Now let me decipher it for you.

Build trust and break down resistance.

Most new artists think "if I put out a music video, run some ads, and post a few pieces of content a week, then that should get people to buy," right? Wrong! The truth is you're new, and new people can't be trusted. In order for me to buy, I have to trust that I'm going to get my money's worth, so therefore as a consumer, I'll choose to stream and save my money.

Building trust and breaking down resistance is done via your story resonating with your potential customers' or fans' stories. True, you won't resonate with everybody, but you are who you are, and appealing to everyone makes you a master of no audience. Plus, you seem inauthentic.

So be true to yourself, roll those cameras, and start telling that story because this is how we reel people in! Pun intended.

Shape and fulfill your target fans' desire.

Sometimes, as artists, our music doesn't quite match up with our lifestyle, marketing materials, or our content. This means the expressed desire is unclear to our potential customers—if this is the case, we can't get them to do anything, even if they like watching our videos. The desire has to be expressed and shaped on all levels equally. So, we do this by making sure our songs match up with our personal life experience or the life experience of our character. Then we match all of our marketing materials—logo, music videos, album covers, social media content—with our personal life experience desires. This shapes your messaging and it shapes and herds your target audience toward you, and now your expressed desires match up with their longing desires.

Now you would think the customer is ready to buy at this point, but they are just aware of you and they trust you—we've got to move them energetically to buy!

Increase the immediate emotion to buy!

At this point, you can sell even if your quality is low, but we need to improve the quality of the materials we deliver to the target audience with our expressed desire, because this increases immediate emotion. This is that sweet gold that you need for customers to buy. Vibrant Quality! If you want to really turn it up, increase the amount you can produce while reducing the effort to make it and keeping the same quality without over-saturating your audience, and BOOM! We're on Fire! And their emotional fire is burning, ready to buy!

The Mistake to Avoid at the Sale

Don't sell low—sell high. What I mean is that many artists are still doing all of this work to send people to streaming. However, you can't sustain yourself long doing it this way. You have to sell something of greater value so you can gain enough funds to keep growing upwards. The industry wants you to keep streaming, but your customers' desires say otherwise. They actually want something more than just convenience, so give them an immersive experience that they will pay top dollar for.

I learned this when I wrote my second eBook and had to make a course in 6 months and sold it for 5× the price. People will pay more if you offer them a chance to!

All you need is a funnel system to make it happen!

What's on the horizon

As D2C kicks in and artists demand more money, you're going to have to seriously think about your fans like we did pre-2008. If you don't adapt as Streaming 2.0 takes off, you'll be struggling focusing on streaming 1.0 while all new artists begin striving for direct-to-consumer as the norm. When D2C becomes the normal consumer behavior, we will see a renaissance period in music because the extra effort will demand more effort and time put into music.

I want you to focus on these three points so you can change the outcome of your career.

Here's what you can do!

Every other Thursday night, I hold classes on marketing and music industry topics, and I want you to be there as I break down subjects like these all the time. Me and the Music Money Makers crew are here to help you along as well. Again, my mantra is: "The real question isn't 'should you do this?'—it's 'how much longer can you afford NOT to?' Start fixing your selling efforts now!"

Get off the cliff!

Sometimes your content is going to suck, there will be times when you don't have extra money to give to your passion, and sometimes your sales system won't be perfect. However, if you understand that nothing will be perfect, you can move forward a lot easier than waiting for perfect conditions. Because every day you take an actionable step is a closer step to bringing your vision to life.

What's the cost?

If you don't do anything about how you serve your customers, they sure won't help you do anything about your pockets. You'll struggle to get them to purchase, and they'll say no even though you know why and they don't. More than anything that can break a person's spirit or shift them into action, it's your choice. I say you make the correction today.

At the End of the Day

If you were struggling with selling your music online to your fans, you now have the means to get it done with intention, so you can finally see the fruits of your labor that you've always wanted to see.