Are Musicians Ready for Mobile? The Annual Adva Mobile Survey

This is a simple survey to assess the mobile readiness of musicians as it applies to engaging fans on mobile devices.With more fans engaging their favorite bands on mobile devices, we're interested in learning whether Artists are thinking about  - or using - mobile technologies to connect with fans.

We'll run the survey through the month of December and publish the results in January. We are planning to conduct this survey annually to gauge trends and movement in mobile adoption.

If you enter your email address at the completion of the survey, we'll send you the results of the survey and also enter your email into a random contest to win a $25 iTunes gift card.

Take the Survey by going here.

Adva Mobile Helps Artists Target Fans via Text and Email Through Updated CRM Portal

Adva Mobile has added a set of new features to its Mobile Marketing Portal that helps Artists target fans more precisely with messages about concerts, tickets, new music, merchandise for sale and news.

Fan Filtering to the Nth Degree

The new Fan Filtering feature adds an entirely new dimension to targeted mobile marketing campaigns. The database of fans that have opted in to receive messages from Artists can be sorted and filtered by location, age, number of site visits, phone area code, email, name and a host of other criteria. The sorting engine provides common filtering tools including equal to, great than / less than, does not include, etc.

Once the flter is run, the results can be saved and used for a targeted SMS Text or email blast.

Simplifying SMS Campaigns

Artists access mobile marketing campaign creation through a new setup tool that walks the Artist through a simple four step process:

1. Choose whether to send a SMS Text or Email
2. Compose your message. Choose which mobile page (or none) you want to direct the fan to
3. Send to all fans, Fans within a city radius, or fans in a Filter you created
4. Schedule your message or send it now

Control over your SMS and EMAIL Message

Text and emails sent by Artists to fans can include a URL Link to one of your mobile web pages - Shows, News, or Store, for example. The new software also lets you include "No Link" so that artists can just send messages to fans, or include links to other Web locations, such as their iTunes Store page.

Mobile Marketing Services Help Musicians Engage Fans at the Moment of Inspiration

Adva Mobile provides the most complete Mobile Marketing service for Artists to help them acquire, engage, and sell to their Fans. The service includes incoming SMS shortcode and keyword (text bandname to 88704) to help acquire fans during shows at their moment of inspiration, and the new outgoing SMS Text and Email blast makes it easy to keep in touch with fans through a device that is always with them and personal to them - their mobile phone or tablet.

There's more info, including screen shots of most of the new pages, on Slideshare at http://www.slideshare.net/jackk911/adva-mobile-text-blasts-and-filters

November Newsletter

A new Tutorial on the Fan Blast and Filters features just released

Up now on Slideshare

http://www.slideshare.net/jackk911/adva-mobile-text-blasts-and-filters

and, for Artists on the Adva Mobile platform, on the Tutorials Pages of the Portal.

Enjoy!

You Cannot Devalue Music

This from Tim Quirk, Head of Global Content Programming at Google Play. It was the topic of a speech he gave at the Future of Music Summit last week in Washington D.C. The full speech can be accessed from Digital Music News here.

I was standing up and cheering when I read the speech. Tim was pointing out that, even in the good old days, music was worth different things to different people at different times. The online / digital revolution has only made that position glaringly obvious.

He really gets to a point I've been trying to push since we started this Adva Mobile business. Who are your super fans. Your "1,000 true fans", or whatever. There will always be more fans who don't care about your music than there are fans that care about your music. And, Artists will always start at the bottom of the pyramid. The goal for every Artist is to climb the pyramid, where you have fewer and fewer listeners but those that remain are happy to give you more and more money. These fans will bu anything - alternate versions, deluxe editions, every show, etc.

There's a lot more in the speech, it's really worth the read. And he closes with insight and advice that we here at Adva Mobile also want to promote:

"Capturing people’s attention and holding on to it is the fundamental challenge for artists and labels and their managers in the 21st Century. ....

But if you want to embrace the new ability to engage different types of fans in different ways, people like are here to help however we can."

Amen.

Fan Data - How much is enough?

We were recently re-reading an older (Jan 2012) blog by music marketer  Jem Bahaijoub,  the founder of Imaginepr, about mobile marketing strategy for musicians and the need for fan data. She wrote:

In order to get any mobile marketing campaign off the ground, you need to own fan data (email addresses, zip codes, cell numbers, etc.). How much fan data is enough I hear you ask? Well this depends on your goal and tactic. If you want to launch a simple SMS campaign to promote an upcoming tour where you need to pull 30-50 people at each venue, then ensure you have at least double this amount in cell numbers in each geographical area. If you still need to work on your database then start collecting now! You can incentivize your fans via your existing marketing platforms. For example, the Black Eyed Peas collected cell numbers on a recent tour by asking fans to text shout-outs during a concert which Will.i.am then incorporated into an improvised rap. Genius. Be clever and creative but always remember to respect your fans’ privacy, and follow the golden rule of opting-in.

Helping Artists collect and manage fan data is one of the cornerstones of what we do here at Adva Mobile. When a fan texts in to you from your show, we collect their phone number, mobile carrier, and other info about their mobile phone. When you offer them exclusive content, we capture their email address, zip code, gender and age. Our fan records all tell you when they signed up, how many times they visit your site, whether they downloaded content or bought anything, the last time they were on your site, and other useful information that will help you understand your fans and target for your next show, purchase pitch, or news.

Having fan data, and tools that help you slice and dice and use the data to your best advantage, is critical if you are going to manage and grow your fan base and ask therm to support your art and your music career.

The three part article set by Jem is really good reading about why and what an Artist needs to think about as you prepare to run a mobile campaign. You can check it out here. 

Capture Fans in the Moment – an interview with Kole Hansen

We recently had the opportunity to speak with Kole Hansen of Kole Media http://kolemedia.com. She’s currently on tour with fellow Utah musician Melody Pulsipher, spreading, as her fan’s call her music, “emotionally charged music dripping with passion.” In the rare moments when Kole is not touring, she spends her time working as a consultant, booking agent, and social media strategist and has collaborated with major labels such as Warner Music Group and Atlantic Records. But her true passion is teaching up and coming artists how to get out on the road and take control over their careers through her company Kole Media.

Adva Mobile (AM): You’ve been out connecting with fans and playing music for quite a while now.

Kole Hansen (KH): That’s right. At one point I stopped playing music for 5 years but now I have been back playing since '09, touring 19 out if the last 24 months across the US 4 times, Canada, Europe, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Israel. I really like being back touring and helping Artists out through Kole Media.

AM: You’re up on the Adva Mobile Platform. How do you think it can help?

KH: We do a lot of house concerts, and I try to connect with everyone there – get their email, talk to them, get them to support my music. You really want to capture fans in the moment. It’s hard to do that, but the text feature should help. Fans can text in, and I can capture their contact info and reach out to them later.

AM: How would you do that?

KH: It would be great to get fans to download music, and then tell them they could get monthly downloads by signing up for like $2 / month. Or $20 / year. I think lots of fans would do that, and that extra income would be a big help to keep me touring, with everything else.

AM: We can do a lot of that now on the platform. Do you think Artists are thinking about mobile web Apps or native Apps?

KH: For a lot of Artists, it’s too early to worry about it. The most important thing for me is capturing fans “in the moment”, and getting them to support me through a small monthy payment for exclusive content.

AM: You do a weekly music show.

KH: That’s right. It’s on Blog Talk Radio about different topics in the music biz. We should do one together on mobile marketing for musicians!

AM: Sure, let’s go. Hey, thanks for taking the time to talk and share your stories.   

More about Kole:

If you’re an independent Artist and need help

·       Finding your fans

·       Choosing your tour route locally/nationally/internationally

·       Being your own agent

·       Building relationships with venues/promoters

·       Negotiating guarantees

·       Prioritizing costs /budget planning (allocating funds)

·       Raising money, crowd funding (kickstarter, pledgemusic)

·       Engaging your fans via social media: do’s and don’t’s

… then get in touch with Kole. Kole's experience in the music space has made her a sought after consultant, booking agent and social media strategist for both major labels and independent artists. And also check out her Episodes on Blog Talk Radio about the Music Business at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/musicbizsuccesscoaching#.UmNLFbzCaBc.email.

Mobile Money

How do we get the sales level? The goal of mobile marketing should always be to connect with fans along the pathway to purchase.

There are many options when it comes to mobile marketing, and these options drive brands - including Artists - towards experimentation. However, experimenting with mobile marketing is only truly valuable when working towards monetization.

We are no longer in a mobile-first world, but rather a mobile-only world.

Mobile offers a roadmap to engage four pillars of of marketing -reach, social media, impulse and loyalty. The thinking should always be along campaign creation that can actually can look at sales. Experimenting is great, but there's no reason to invest effort and money in the mobile channel if you're not going to learn what’s working and what’s not.

All kinds of different creative mobile campaigns can lead to more revenue.

Reach campaigns - asking your fan base to text in at a concert to join your mobile web App
Social Media Campaigns - Using Facebook and Twitter to drive fans to your mobile web App for a loyalty creating download, or new news
Impulse Campaigns - download a song in exchange for fan's email and location, or make a purchase with a time sensitive discount
Loyalty Campaigns - Engage fans in voting campaigns - their favorite encore song, or contests to win prizes

These all should be part of a program to drive fans to the store to make a purchase.

SMS Texts for Fan Connections

We haven’t written about SMS Texts for a while, what with 
everything else going on here at Adva Mobile. It remains one of the important marketing tools for you to use to help acquire, engage, and sell to your fans. There are two types you can use:

               Incoming: This is where you tell your fans to text in to you to join your App. So, at shows, from the stage, you shout out out “If you like that song, text get to 88704”.

               Outgoing: For all the fans that texted in (and we told them they were subbed in to your App) you can now send them a text, up to four times each month, with a link to your mobile web app.

We came across an article with really good insights into why you should consider using SMS Texts. It’s by Sandra Nichols Marcy, who runs The Social Jazz  http://thesocialjazz.blogspot.com/,( @pecangirl)
 and she provided this great list of why you should include SMS Text in your marketing mix. She writes:

·        You can reach your fans any time, day or night and – unlike email addresses that get forgotten or abandoned – you know they’ll get the message.

·        Somewhere around 94% of SMS messages are read – a higher percentage than email.

·        Because your fans carry their cellphone with them most of the time, you can reach them quickly no matter where they are.  If your gig tomorrow hasn’t sold as many tickets as you’d like, you can reach fans almost immediately.

·        Because they’ve chosen to give you their cellphone number, your fans are already highly engaged with you so you know they’re actively interested in what you have to say.

·        SMS messaging is very personal – make yours friendly and they’re more likely to do what you want them to do.  You can remind them of something they might have forgotten – an upcoming gig or EP release.

·        You can be spontaneous – it’s a great way of getting engagement with your audience before, during or after a gig and get their reactions then and there.

·        You can easily do free stuff – maybe a reduced ticket price to people who show the SMS on the door or quote the code when booking via email.  Subscribers expect exclusivity and they’re more likely to tell their friends about the good stuff they get because they subscribe.

·        Your fans are more likely to tell their friends or colleagues about your SMS when it appears on their phone – it extends your reach beyond the SMS recipient.  Word of mouth is your best advertising tool!

One word of caution – don’t go near SMS messaging unless you can be sure that subscribers who opt-out no longer hear from you  … nothing is more annoying than getting messages from someone you no longer want to hear from.

Sandra’s got a good point on the last one especially, but that’s where Adva Mobile comes in. The text messaging service we provide handles all the background rules of SMS – opting in fans, controlling the number of messages you send them, and opting out if they no longer want to connect with you on their mobile phones.

SMS Texting is a terrific tool to connect with fans and engage them on their phones. Contact us if you need any help or advice setting up your next campaign.

Apps Revisited

There's an interesting dynamic going on now in the world of Apps, and it's an important metric for musicians. The key takeaway is that it's more important to have a App your fans want to use than to have an App.

This applies to both Native Apps and Web Apps, although it's more critical in the Native App world because of the rating systems that are part of the App Stores. What's the point of having an App if it's only going to get a one star rating, or worse?

When Apps first really started to take off (remember, the iTunes App Store is only 5 years old!) there was tremendous pressure to build an App and get it on the App stores. It was like - if you didn't have an App, who were you? Now, those Apps are looking a little tired, a little all-the-same. And, the usage statistics are sobering - the 50 billionth App was downloaded this past May, however one in four Apps are downloaded and used once and then never used again, and 84 percent of iPhone owners use less than 20 Apps.

The effect of this is a new dynamic focused on making Apps useful and easy. Many organizations are replacing their initial Apps with new, focused designs and capabilities. And to a great extent, this dynamic plays out better for companies developing custom, vs prepackaged content based Apps. Of course, App development is still expensive, and a thorough strategy includes iPhone, Android and Mobile Web Apps. Whether a custom App for an Enterprise client or a platform App designed to meet the needs of an industry segment, apps must be beautiful, easy to use, and most importantly - useful.

The Artist Portal Message Board

The Artist Portal Message Board went live this week! 

We always wanted to create a dialog among the Artist community where you could ask questions, share insights, and let other Artists know what was working and what was a waste of time as you marketed your music to fans using the mobile ecosystem. When we were designing the Artist Portal Dashboard, we included a Message Board in the design so that you could see and join the conversations when you logged in.

The Message Board is at the bottom of the Dashboard page, right underneath the chart we present that shows your fan growth. For starters, it's a simple board where you can post and respond to messages. Later, if it gets too large, we'll expand it to deal with specific topics, like you see with the large Message Boards on other sites.

Adva Mobile will be monitoring the Message Board also, so you can ask us anything. It should be a great place to ask us questions about mobile campaigns, mobile best practices, new features you're looking for, how something works, etc.

Anything at all. Just ask - us, or your fellow musicians on Adva Mobile.

Adva Mobile at Mass Innovation Nights

Here in the Boston Innovation Economy we regularly brush shoulders with innovative individuals, start-ups and groups who are looking to launch a new idea into the marketplace that could completely change the way we think and act.

Adva Mobile is one of those companies.

One event in the area that does a phenomenal job of gathering such innovators together is Mass Innovation Nights (MIN).

Launched in April 2009, the monthly event showcases ten companies, and the community turns out to visit vendor booths, promote the products via social media and sit in on pitch presentations. In the last two years alone, MIN has helped launch more than 475 products and connect many job seekers with hiring managers.

Adva Mobile was one of the companies presenting our technology at the 51st MIN at the Microsoft New England Research and Development Center (better known as the NERD Center). There's a brief interview with ME (Adva Mobile founder Jack Kelly - put a face to a name) you can watch at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KNIOLnyqQ0&feature=youtu.be&t=4m54s .

We're proud to be part of the Boston Innovation Community and helping Artists with cool, useful technology.

Stream Music Right From Your Phone

The new Adva Mobile platform we launched in March is getting rave reviews (THANKS!) and one feature especially is generating a lot of energy. It's the ability to stream music right inside a mobile web page. We think Adva mobile may be the only mobile marketing company offering this capability for musicians today.

Here's a screen shot from the mobile site of Adva Mobile Artist Illogistical Resource Department (I.R.D.). All these tracks are uploaded to the Content section on the portal and fans stream these songs by clicking on the Play button.

What's especially cool about streaming inside the mobile web app is that the fan doesn't leave your mobile site to play music. The way our old system worked, and the way most other mobile web sites work, is that playing music causes the phone to open the music player app on the phone (iTunes on the iPhone, for example) - so you're off the site.

Another terrific benefit to our new streaming feature is that fan's DON'T get to download this music - they can only stream it. So you can put a song up for sale and the fans can buy it and download it if they want to own it, or just stream it if they want a streaming service.

The analytics on all this is also great. We're capturing which fans, are streaming which music, and how many times, so you have terrific vision into which of your songs are getting the most play.

Use The Shoutout to Attract More Fans

The Adva Mobile platform provides Artists with a terrific tool for capturing fan data at their moment of inspiration - your show! It's the SMS SHORTCODE and KEYWORD we give you to let fans text you. This is So Much Better than collecting email addresses at the merch table because it's immediate, virtually error free, and fans are 99% likely to open a text from you - only about 20% will open your emails.

A refresher - the SHORTCODE is the number fans text to. For all of you, it's 88704. The KEYWORD is your personal text word - usually your band name (but can be anything available) It's the Message fans send to 88704. Most begin with GET. So, fans get to your site by texting getbandname to 88704.

But you have to tell them to do that.

How do you do that? Well, you can make Facebook Posts and Tweets, and that works. But by far the best way is at the show, from the stage - The Shoutout.

Mobile is so new, you have to teach your fans about it. You'll come up with your own style. During the show, you can tell your fans they can get a song for free by texting GETbandname to 88704. After a few shows, it will be completely natural, and part of your show routine, and you'll be building up your fan base.

There's a great Shoutout on this YouTube video here. Try a Shoutout at your next show and watch your fan base grow.

Adding Content to your Mobile Web Site

The new Adva Mobile marketing platform for Artists makes it easy to offer content for your fans to enjoy. This content includes pictures, music and videos and are always fan favorites and often the most visited pages. There are a number of different tools you can use to get content to your fans, including Exclusive Content, which offers something in exchange for an email address, and the Store, where you sell your content. But you can also let fans stream your music, download pictures, and watch your videos, and that's set up on the Content page.

It couldn't be easier. From the Portal Dashboard, you select Content from the menu, and that brings you to the content page. Each type of content has it's own creation page - Add Music, Add Video, and Add Photos. For Music and Photos, you're going to upload the content and give it a name. For video, you're going to enter the URL to your video - YouTube, Vimeo, etc.

On your mobile site, your Home Page has a Content link that brings fans to a page where they can choose Music, Videos and Photos. For now, our service supports an unlimited amount of content, and you can continue to change it out to give your fans a fresh new experience when they visit your mobile site. We also keep track of which content is most popular with your fans -helpful info as you target and market to them.

Mobile - Centric Marketing

Bands continually find their way to Adva Mobile for mobile websites and Apps, and discover something else – a marketing platform to acquire fans, engage them and sell to them. That’s marketing (at least the acquire and engage parts). Mobile marketing has become one of the most popular ways to promote your band to your fans. It works when fans opt in to receiving text messages from you and by you sending messages to your fans mobile phones. This can be a great way to find and keep fans buying since studies have shown that people pay far more attention to messages on their phone than they do to things like email. That being said, mobile marketing is just a small part of the total process of making sales. You have to integrate mobile into your total marketing campaign.

Just so you know, mobile, as our way of understanding, reaching and engaging with fans, is the life-giving sun around which we craft the orbit of our marketing campaigns. And the idea that mobile marketing for musicians is the most likely candidate to become the beating heart of your brand will soon be self-evident. 

That’s the message of big brands today. And it’s coming to small businesses, and Artists. 
Just like the big brands recognize:  The promise of persistent availability, the promise of personal treatment and instant outcomes, real-time targeted fan benefits. The at-your- fingertips quality of a whole new kind of always-on Artist – fan experience. 

I remain astonished that the music industry continues to fret over whether “mobile” is really about CRM more than it is acquisition, or “mobile” is simply an additive media channel, or how “mobile” is really about applications (sigh …). 

Artists that “get it” are transforming their brands themselves, as all around us a single, stunning fresh fact of life becomes clearer every day: mobile is changing everything.

If you are responsible for marketing your band, I propose you need to pay a new-found attention to something you may have been missing completely: the simple yet profoundly insightful behavior of people interacting with their mobile phones – and each other.  

Real marketing seeks to attach to the existing behavior of your fans by offering up and inserting perfectly placed instants of value, maybe even magic, into the mix of mobile behaviors currently in play with your fans. 

This article proposes it is time to not simply move mobile onto center-stage of our Artist to fan relationships. It is time to completely rethink the nature and effect of every inch of your brand within the context of mobile. 

The context of ubiquity and transparency. The context of near-frictionless distribution and reach of message and content. The context of empowered devices in the hands of people already transforming their lives in ways that could never have been foreseen. 

The context of stronger Artist to fan relationships, that lead to paying fans.

Some Great Press about the Adva Mobile Launch

HTML5 ARTICLE
March 22, 2013
Adva Mobile Relaunches Free Mobile Sites Helping Musicians Connect with Fans
By Steve Anderson , Contributing TMCnet Writer

While the music industry has changed somewhat in the last few years, with some acts emerging to earn livings strictly from their own efforts, one key point in the concept is still the sheer power of marketing. For Adva Mobile, offering a little help on that front looks to be at the head of the list, and to that end, it's recently undergone a complete redesign and an accompanying re-launch of its mobile sites and its primary website as well.

It's not just aesthetics that brought Adva Mobile to change its sites up; it was also a point of improving functionality. Following the original launch of Adva Mobile, some believed that the feature set was certainly worthwhile--especially for a free offering--but the design needed some help. To that end, Adva Mobile launched a crowdfunding effort in late 2011 geared toward getting cash in on a redesign. With that proving successful, Adva Mobile could then turn its attention to not only a redesign, but also toward adding extra features.

The mobile sites, for example, are all now built in HTML5, making them accessible from any mobile device, while also allowing them to be distributed as native apps on the main app stores, still where many get their apps. That's a great start, but the Adva Mobile platforms also boast SMS text messaging at no charge, as well as a text messaging system that's part of the analytics features.

This allows for an interesting scenario that starts when a fan sends a certain text message to get access to the band's material. The incoming number associated with the text message is stored as part of the artist's own database, which can then be re-used to send followup messages and identify those users who send in. Fans that buy content are also logged accordingly so they can receive further messages about the band's operations and about any new content to follow.

What's more, artists can start to identify "core fans" based on the activity logged, and in turn start providing special incentives for these important parts of any musician's career. This kind of "fan engagement," as it's often called, can help bolster a career.

Though many of Adva Mobile's services are available at no charge, some advanced functions are available on a for-pay basis. Adva Mobile offers a set of e-commerce services at no charge, with artists setting prices for digital content that is then fulfilled with a 10 percent fee. Basic designs are free, and custom designs are available at $1000, with a wider range of designs expected available in the future. Adva Mobile will even handle the submissions process on HTML5 mobile Web apps for a $400 setup fee and $500 per year, or $50 a month.

Adva Mobile has a lot of room to build outward, and the best part is that it already has a sound stock of features to begin with, thus any development it does will simply be augmenting what looks to be an already solid experience. Good marketing is central to any artist's career. It's never enough to simply have a good painting or a good sculpture or a good story or a good song; if no one hears it, sees it or reads it, what good, inevitably, is it? Part of art is its impact on other people, and without that impact, art is largely useless. Adva Mobile looks to put marketing more in the hands of artists, and in turn, get more art out in front of people.




Edited by Brooke Neuman



http://www.html5report.com/topics/html5/articles/331525-adva-mobile-relaunches-free-mobile-sites-helping-musicians.htm

Adva Mobile Portal Launch Press Release

March 15, 2013

Musicians Gain Fans and Revenue With New Adva Mobile Marketing Portal 

Driven by Feedback from Artists and Labels, the new Mobile Marketing Portal is more efficient, relevant and useful

Adva Mobile, the leading mobile marketing portal for Artists using mobile technology to acquire, engage, and sell to fans, delivered a redesigned website and Artist portal today, aimed at helping Artists connect to fans on mobile devices more efficiently. The new design - over a year in the making, with teams from Argentina, Pakistan, India and the US – includes improvements in how Artists reach fans on mobile phones and integrates mobile commerce into their fan engagement efforts. 

The improvements to the Adva Mobile Portal were largely driven by requests from Artists and Labels, who seek to take advantage of unprecedented new opportunities to create loyalty and drive sales through the mobile channel. In addition to the new design, increased functionality was added, including enhancements to the Artist Mobile Store to help digital sales direct to the fan and new capabilities through HTML5/CSS3 – for example, an embedded music player.

Jack Kelly, Adva Mobile CEO, oversaw the redesign and directed the international teams that designed the new website, Artist portal user interface, and new Artist mobile sites and Hybrid Apps. “This should be a huge advantage for our Artist users who will benefit from a better experience as they manage their mobile outreach efforts. Fans will also appreciate the new, clean designs of Artist mobile sites & Apps and new features that engage them with their favorite bands.”

Regarding the new site design, Kelly said “It has a great look and feel. The portal is more personalized and easier to navigate. For example, the new Dashboard is organized to simplify the Artist’s management of their fans, mobile assets, campaigns and activity analytics.” Artists using the new platform have found it more useful, fun, helpful and relevant.

In addition to simplifying the Artist Portal experience, new mobile web and Hybrid App template designs provide a better experience for the fan. Fans that opt in to the Artist site receive personalized experiences that become more relevant as the fan increases his or her engagement with the band.

“We have been aggressive in acquiring new Artists and helping them use our platform to make money.” Kelly said. “Still, I always want to go faster.”

About Adva Mobile
Adva Mobile is a marketing services and technology company dedicated to helping Touring Bands, Recording Artists, Labels and music industry professionals reach, market and sell to their fans on mobile devices. More information can be found at www.advamobile.com

Adva Mobile Launch News – The New Website

We started this project knowing that we needed a new design for the Artist Portal and mobile websites/ Apps that drive the Artist -- fan relationship. But it was easy to see that the design of the portal would drive an entirely new Website.


We are really pleased with the new Website because it is simple and elegant. For most of the people who access the Website, they are Artists that use Adva Mobile and what's most important to them is an easy login. For those Artists that are not yet Adva Mobile users, and everyone else who is interested in learning what we're all about, the site is minimalist but provides a good overview of what we offer and our philosophy for helping Artists.

So, the bulk of this year-long effort has been to make the Artist portal an easy and attractive platform for managing fans, mobile content, and marketing campaigns so that Artists can have a more personal relationship with their fans. The website is a nice introduction to that concept.

Adva Mobile Launch News – The Dashboard

The Dashboard is the most important new page on the portal because it directs you to all of the activities of the Adva Mobile marketing system for Artists. But we really need to hear from you about whether it works for you, and how we can continually make improvements.

Artists, especially those managing their own fan outreach efforts, don't always know what to use mobile for, so the Dashboard starts with a simple HELP suggestions that tell you what you're supposed to do. The top navigation headers for both Account Management and Mobile Site Design are straightforward, and the Quick Links can be an easier navigation tool for the Artist to get to exactly where they want on this portal.

We especially hope that the Message Board will be a communications tool between Adva Mobile Artists to share best practices that work for them, and also to talk to us. The Dashboard is a really important new feature of the Portal, and we’re always looking for your insight about how to make it better. Let us know.

Adva Mobile Launch News - While We Were At It

The redesign of our entire platform -- our Website, the Artist Portal, and the Artist Websites/Apps -- was a major project. A number of new features were also added and really are to the benefit of Artist -- fan relationships.

One feature that was really fun to add was the result of the progress that HTML5 has made. Our Artists told us that, when a fan wants to play some of their music, we would send them away from the Artist website and open the music player that was part of the mobile phone operating system. ITunes player, for example. And this wasn’t supporting the Artist goals. But with HTML5, you can now embed a music player right into a mobile website. So we did that, and it's really a much better experience for the fan.

Another cool new feature is digital sales. Now, Artists can sell their songs directly to their fans, and unlike iTunes & Amazon, know exactly which fans made a purchase.

We think Amanda Palmer has it right -- it's not about figuring out how to get your fans to buy your music. It's about letting your fans buying your music. And that includes making it easy for them to purchase your products on mobile.

Adva Mobile Launch News – Why Mobile at all?

I am a big fan of Theodore Levitt. He was a Harvard professor who wrote about marketing principles, primarily in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Very famous. One of his famous quotes is that, when buying a drill bit, people do not want a quarter inch drill bit. They want a quarter inch hole.

Same with Artists. You do not want a mobile website. You do not want an iPhone App. You do not want an Android App. You want engaged fans who will support you with their money.

When we went about creating Adva Mobile, we thought that the mobile environment could provide a new capability for Artists to sustain their careers by connecting with fans in a very personal way that was only available through the mobile ecosystem. So, building a platform to provide this toolset for Artists was our mission. We started with Mobile Web because it was a platform available to every fan. Today, the advances of HTML5 are such that the experience of the fan on a Mobile Site is equivalent to the experience of a fan on an App. 

The platform you use to manage your mobile strategy is a single platform that propagates to your mobile site, your Android App, and your IPhone App, simplifying your marketing management. The strategy provides confidence that all of your fans get a terrific experience when they are experiencing you on a mobile phone. Your mobile marketing program can be cost-effectively across all of the platforms because you are not paying for individual development over multiple platforms. 

The endgame, of course, is that you don't care about Mobile Web, Android Apps, iPhone Apps, or marketing platforms. You don't want quarter inch drill bits, you want quarter inch holes. You care about your fans and your relationship with your fans.

Adva Mobile Launch News - OK …. We Learned

OK, We Learned …. You really need a mobile website and App that is beautiful to look at and that you are proud of and want to show to your friends and your fans.

The new mobile sites we are offering for Artists who take advantage of our Free level are elegant, modern and visually attractive. They're designed to give your fans a terrific user experience when they engage you on a mobile phone and we want your mobile site to help you create loyalty with your fans and engage them in ways that will let you sell to them. For these emerging Artists, we offer our Free platform with a visually attractive mobile website and a very comprehensive marketing toolset to help you attract, engage, and begin a mobile commerce relationship with your fans.

For Artists that are making money and need a more comprehensive strategy, our Plus service ads Android and iPhone Apps so that you are everywhere mobile is and can demonstrate that you are hip with mobile. Not all of your fans are smart phone users, but some of those who are want an App experience.

Brand conscious Artists want to move beyond the very slick templates that we offer for mobile website and App Design to a mobile strategy that maintains their Brand across all of their digital platforms. We provide these Artists customized HTML5/App designs and these can be anything that you imagine.

Check out what we can provide you at www.advamobile.com