Alex Brees (Founder/CEO, un:hurd) on streamlining marketing for independent artists

Last week, we were joined for a Water Cooler interview with Alex Brees, CEO of un:hurd — a platform which allows independent artists to create and automate targeted marketing campaigns.

Alex shared some super useful tips and insights, as well as his thoughts on the state of artist marketing more generally.

You can listen to a full recording of our discussion below, or read on for key quotes and takeaways:

When it comes to marketing, artists should be prepared to play the long game

“We’re encouraging artists to think laterally, almost getting back to traditional marketing techniques, with a longer timeline. There really isn’t a quick fix to reaching new fans or going viral. What artists don’t want to do is build momentum then let it drift away. The maintenance of that momentum is really challenging. That has to come from the artist, to some extent — the songs need to be there.”

Target — then target again

“Artists need to build their marketing funnel. You should start off by raising awareness, then you should retarget, and try to bring as many of those originally targeted fans into your core fanbase. It makes sense on a financial level too, since you get a much better cost per click ratio for retargeted ads.”

Investing in early stage marketing can give artists more leverage later on in their career (and allows them to experiment!)

“Recently, there’s been a lot more education around what record deals actually mean for artists. We’re seeing more artists use tools like un:hurd’s to get to a stage where they have more leverage in their record deals, and can focus on doing what they really want to do.

Using external tools also allows artists to try new things, giving them an immediate oversight on what works and what doesn’t, rather than just relying on the label’s marketing function. It’s a good testbed for experimentation.”

(and as @charlotte_elleven noted, running their own marketing campaigns allows artists crucial access to fan data — something you can take with you even after your record deal ends)

Direct-to-Fan continues to be a huge trend in artist marketing

“We’re seeing a lot of energy around direct-to-fan engagement — that’s bringing your fans off social media and onto WhatsApp, or Discord, or even a traditional mailing list. We had an artist approach us who wanted to sell out his UK tour without posting on social media. We worked with him to bring as many of his fans as we could onto a mailing list. We then geofenced the emails to make sure we’re only targeting people who could actually attend the shows. The conversion to sales ratio was really high, because we specifically targeted warm fans, and since it’s email, they aren’t being overwhelmed with other types of social media content.”