How To Market As A Music Artist With Margarita Monet

Maya Dolan | June 3, 2021 at 7:30 AM

Using Social Media Marketing To Drive Success

Have you always wanted to start a band? Are you curious about the music industry?

Recently, our CEO, Stacy Jones sat down with an expert in music marketing and heard about her experience as a musician and how marketing and social media have been important tools to drive the band's success. In this blog, Hollywood Branded learns how to market as a music artist from the expertise of Margarita Monet, lead singer of Edge of Paradise.

A Little More About Margarita Monet

Margarita is the founder of rock band Edge Of Paradise, and is a triple threat of a singer songwriter and pianist. After moving to LA back in 2011 and writing songs, she met Dave Bates and formed their band Edge Of Paradise, which has released three charting records, over 10 music videos, and has toured over 40 states, Japan and Europe. The band's third studio album called Universe was released on November 8th by Frontier Records and has over five million streams already.

Interview Transcript Highlights

Question: Can you share with our listeners what got you here today? Obviously, you have a love of music and performing, but what started you off on this journey and resulted in you having a successful band?

Answer: Well, definitely a love for music, a lot of hard work and perseverance because it's definitely a tough market. These days you really have to be not only a musician, you have to be a business person, you have to be a marketer. You also have to learn what people are attracted to visually as well, and make the visual aspect of the band compliment the sonic aspect so everything works together. You have to engage people on all senses. We definitely went through a lot of hurdles and made a ton of mistakes. Everything that we've gone through brought us here and in a way shaped us into better songwriters, because everything that you go through really makes you grow as a person across all aspects.

Question: Now, you're a classically trained pianist, right? That's how you started, I am assuming when you were a little girl.

Answer: You're right. I started when I was four in Russia. I practice five hours a day and it definitely helps me in what I do. In a lot of ways, I think it is best to learn as much as you can. Then, when you're creating something of your own, forget everything and just use it as a tool because you really have to follow your imagination and your passion. Try not to follow trends because it's so easy to just try to chase after what's popular, but what's popular today may not be popular tomorrow. It's important to stay true to what you create and make it as great as you can, and people will follow because you really believe in it. It really takes a lot of work to make it the best it can be, but I think it's really important to make whatever you do the best it can be. Then it will fall into place.

Question: When you go all the way back to four and then into your tween and teenage years, did you want to be in a band? Is that what you thought you'd be doing?

Answer: No. I never imagined that I would be in a band. Maybe secretly, I wanted to. I remember my parents had old VHS tapes of Led Zeppelin and Queen live concerts and it just seemed like another dimension. I did not even come close to thinking that I could be doing something remotely close to that. My life kind of happened by chance. A lot of things made the other things happen, it was kind of a domino effect. I just followed it and it led me here. I really worked hard at everything I did, and I really also approached it with a business aspect and a marketing mindset. I also come from a theater background, I love both art and theater. I've really tried to bring that into the music and create a world for people who want to be a part of it. So they have music and also all of the visual aspects of it.

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Question: So, here you are, you have a band. How do you make sure that you actually get fans for your band? Fans who are going to listen to you? Who are actually going to come to concerts? Who are going to attend the venues you're booking? Because the venues aren't going to care about booking you again, unless people actually show up. So marketing's actually incredibly important to you.

Answer: Incredibly important, and we made a ton of mistakes. When we just started, Dave had a 67 Chevelle and he sold it. We had $20,000 and we were like, "We're going to invest this into this band." So we used $10,000 to make the first album and the other $10,000, we handed to a publicist. We had some idea, but we were really new to everything. The publicist did his thing and he did some good things, but it didn't really get us anywhere. A lot of people tend to think you have to throw money right away, and you do have to throw money, but you have to be really careful on how you spend it and you have to have a product. After we made the album, we toured a lot.

I started to really think about how to package the band in a way that it's not just music. Obviously, we had to keep evolving our music and making the music better and better. I had to make sure we bring the visual aspect of it to create that experience. I think these days it's important to have the experience for people. In a general aspect, you really need to trigger people's attention in many different ways. It's coming from music videos and photos. The way you present the photo and how you edit it has to be coherent. Everything has to have a story. Once you have that, you have to learn what works the best for you online.

When we started, Instagram wasn't even that popular and it was all about Facebook. We kind of built our fan base on Facebook and then Facebook started introducing the ads. Everything changes so quickly. We learned that it's important to have great imagery with the message you're trying to send, and that translated into Instagram. With every post, you have to be very focused and not mention a lot of things at once. It's important to have a clear message with each post and be frequent and coherent. I noticed a lot of people write long posts and the message gets lost. These days people don't have a lot of patience so they just keep scrolling.

For us, it works to just have something visually stunning with very clear messaging. Always have a call to action in some way, whether it is to watch the video or listen to a song or ask people for their input. You can ask what their favorite lyric is. What's their favorite song? Something along those lines, just be very clear in what you want people to get from the post. These days, you have a lot of tools for promoting ads. When you do promote, you have to be very clear on the audience you select. There is a great tool on Facebook and Instagram, where they give you the bands that you sound similar to, or the areas or demographics. You really have to be smart on how you're spending your money in that regard.

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Question: I know you have your own personal social pages. Does your band also have their own social pages? Are you keeping them separate and how you're focused and growing?

Answer: For me, everything right now is focused on the band page and because I handle a lot of the social media. It gets a little bit difficult, so I don't tend to post as much on my own profile every day.

I tried to gear everybody towards the band, Instagram and Facebook and Twitter, then you have Spotify. We're lucky, we have built enough, and we have a great team of people. We have a label in the US and a label in Italy. We have Howard Benson's label and Neil from Three Days Grace. Benson is great with marketing on social media and he really understands algorithms. He brings great advice, but I'm still in charge of all the creative aspects of it. We also have TikTok now, which I've been very resistant to, but unfortunately that's where a lot of people are. To be honest, when you go on TikTok to the "for you" section, you kind of get horrified by everything that comes your way. I think it's important to not get overwhelmed by the type of content that's out there and really stick to your brand and what you're trying to create. You have to find your niche within the platform.

Check Out The Podcast!

Margarita has so much great information from her experience with marketing in the music industry, check out the podcast below to learn more about how to drive your business from her advice and expertise!

Each week we have a marketing professional on our show to share their tips, tricks and lessons learned from their professional experience. Check out some of our podcast blogs from earlier this year:

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