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.

How well do you know your fans?

Oftentimes you'll hear people say that the purpose of business is to make money, but that's not true. Making money is the result of a business, and it's essential to keep a business going. But it's not the purpose of business. The purpose of a business is to attract and retain customers. For musicians in the business of making money, your business purpose is to attract and retain fans.

Not all fans are equal, however. You need fans that will buy your music and merchandise, and pay to come to your shows. Your "Superfans", or "1,000 True Fans", whatever. What's difficult, besides making great music and just getting fans, is knowing exactly who these fans are so you can personally reach out to them.

I propose that mobile technology provides a solution to this problem better than any other marketing tool available to musicians.

Check out this screen capture:

(We blocked out the email addresses and names because, hey, it's a real list!!)

This is a fan database from an artist on the Adva Mobile platform. It provides their phone number (for reaching them via our SMS Text Service), and their email address  (for sending them email marketing, either through our service or your own email service like Constant Contact, Mail chimp, or Fan Bridge), details about their age, gender and location. Also, the number of page views of your mobile site / App for that fan. It's incredibly useful to know that two fans on this page (circled in RED) have visited you mobile site pages 204 and 106 times since they joined your site. Those fans are checking you out all the time!!

Mobile can provide so much more, however. Here's another screen capture from our soon to be released new portal, showing enhanced fan data (again, real info, so the name is blocked).

With this information, you can learn more about your fans, how they engage you on mobile phones, and what they are interested in. You can target them precisely - even individually - and you can expect great results from your efforts to market and sell to them.

Mobile is a new world of fan engagement and the ability to data mine fan information and behavior on your mobile site and App will improve your ability to make money with your music.

Postscript:

From Jonathan Ostrow and Music Think Tank

Back in November 2010, Jonathan Ostrow  wrote a blog titled "How well do you know your fans?". It was picked up and re-published by Music Think Tank - you can read it again here. It's a decent attempt to categorize fan types to help Artists spend time cultivating fans that really matter. I remembered this article when I was writing the article above, about what Adva Mobile was doing to help Artists figure out who their best fans were.  Enjoy!