I’m here today with Katie Zaccardi to talk about music launch strategies with Patreon. This comes up a lot with my students. Everyone has heard about it but they do not know what to do with it. Let’s get into how to launch your Patreon in a way that it makes you happy income wise and lets you and your fans work together.
Katie Zaccardi is a musician and studied music business in NYU. She came out of college knowing she did want to have her own business but didn’t know what to do. She ended up working in music publishing while also helping grow a non-profit so she learned about both the corporate side and entrepreneurial side. She eventually quit her jobs and focused on coaching for wellness for musicians. In her private client calls, she already did strategy work so about a year ago she made the official pivot to strategy coaching for women in music while still focusing on wellness and music while making themselves wealthy.
People think once they come up and decide an idea, they can launch their Patreon. It is a longer process. In the creation process of the Patreon, musicians need to validate their offer with their audience so they know what their audience wants. Then, they need to do a pre-launch to get their audience ready to ramp up and buy.
You need to have solid music launch strategies for your Patreon. Some even slide directly to DMs of random people and ask them to buy their stuff. You can expect someone to buy something from you if you don’t have a relationship with them. A lot of artists approach Patreon as a way to come up with money. Your audience needs to know what’s in it for them, why they want to buy and how it benefits them. Launching is a long game. You need to consistently engage with your audience and not just reach out to them when you have launches. You cannot assume that people will just jump on in your launches right away. If you already have a Patreon and you want to give it another push, you can do a relaunch.
3 Important Phases of Your Music Launch Strategies
- Offer creation
- Pre-launch and prep audience warm-up phase
- Actual launch phase
Launching is not just creating the work then promoting and selling. Market research is not something we talk about often in music but is an important part of music launch strategies. Musicians have the tendency to have to look polished and is afraid to ask feedback from your audience. There is no shame in doing your market research upfront. You can get on calls with fans or potential clients. A lot of your problems come from the fact that your audience does not resonate with what you offer. Market research can be comfortable if you feel there is an invisible wall between you and your audience. The best reason to do Patreon is for people who want to connect with you and support you have the opportunity to do so, but they also want to do it in the terms they want to.
Pre-launch is warming up your audience and teasing them about your launch. You’re getting them to the edge of their seat, wanting to join. So when you launch, they are already ready to opt in.
Patreon gets the job done. You can choose to create your own membership platform that works for you but you will need a web developer. That will also cost money for you to have it developed. Patreon is an all-in-one solution.
When you launch, you’re basically pushing it and making the announcement over a certain period of time. Make sure to pick a timeframe, adding a discount, bonus or incentive so you can add a sense of urgency.
Catch Katie on Instagram at @katiezaccardi. She’s currently launching her Out to Launch program. You can also check out her podcast, Out to Be Podcast.
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