We know we just shared some exciting updates to our Analytics product a few weeks ago, but we have yet another one we’re dying to announce: in addition to tracking our clients’ sales and streams of audio and video, Analytics can now track social media data from Facebook! Instead of relying on hunches and guesswork, our clients will be able to look at hard data to see if their social media efforts are driving sales.
There are three new channels that detail Facebook activity: Fans Gained, Fans Lost and Engagement. Fans Gained is the total number of people who “liked” your Facebook fan page. Fans Lost is the total number of people who “unliked” your page. Engagement is how your fans react to your artists’ Facebook content: comments, Likes, mentions, content shares, posts to your Wall, event RSVPs, photo tags, etc. Facebook displays a monthly total of this on a fan page, and calls it “People talking about,” but Analytics can give you daily counts.
That said, these new channels will only show up if you have connected at least one artist’s Facebook account in Artist Builder. You can check this in Artist Builder, under the social connections tab. Make sure each artist or film is connected to its own account. If they aren’t connected to any accounts, they won’t display any social data in Analytics; and if an artist is connected to the same account as other artists (such as a label fan page), all the artists connected to that account will display a skewed daily total in their social channels.
The Orchard Analytics is available to all clients of The Orchard, providing labels, artists and filmmakers with information they can use to make smarter marketing decisions and spends — and now, in particular, evaluate the effectiveness of social media!
In the discographic domain, figures have always been important. Bands, labels, distributors and agencies often rely on numbers.
In that regard, technology and the digital world can really help us make the right decisions. The Orchard implemented a statistical analysis tool that turned out to be extraordinarily useful in a variety of situations.
We are talking about the ‘Analytics’ section that has been available for some time now. Whether you want to keep track of sales, you are planning marketing investments, you want to know what platforms are preferred for digital download vs just streaming, you want to know if an artist’s album or its single tracks are being sold and why not, or even what countries buyers come from, then you could easily use this robust Analytics feature.
This is not all. An iTunes specific section is also available, showing exactly where (even telling you the postal code) and when (exact time) buyers click to purchase music. This could be an alternative and nice way for artists to spot what doors to knock on for a direct meet and greet with their fans! Just kidding.
So why is this information so useful? Simply because it allows you to monitor the digital market growth in almost-real-time and then identify strong and weak points. Let us make some practical examples:
Recently, Italian artist Colapesce shot a very good video for his single “Satellite“ from his new album titled Un meraviglioso declino. This song was released as a single because the artist teamed up with Meg (former 99 Posse singer) to re-release another version of the same song. We noticed that making the single available for purchase, along with the video clip, not only boosted the sales of the song but of the full album as well.
Another example is “Happy!!!,” Sycamore Age’s video of their single. It has collected thousands of click-throughs on Vevo; so many that from the moment the album was available for purchase, the sales of their self-titled album were immediately and positively impacted. Also, Sycamore Age are being appreciated (and downloaded) very much outside of Italy thanks to their excellent English pronunciation. This information allows us to launch specific marketing campaigns to try to bring the band into those countries in Europe that showed more interest towards their music.
We could go on and on with hundreds of different examples but we understand that this could be boring. What we recommend you do is check out all these new possibilities and features since we think that the ‘Analytics’ tool that Orchard has created is a wonderful way to help us avoid mistakes and focus where to spend our energy (and money) on.
- Guest post written by Gabriele Giustini, Audioglobe (Italy)
My mom always used to tell me that money doesn’t grow on trees; you have to work for it. My mom has told me a lot of things, but this one stuck with me – I am still hoping (deep down) that someone is working on that whole money tree idea.
I digress.
After completing Round 1 of a recent client outreach exercise, we’ve been reminded of how imperative it is to listen to your clients and nurture them (thats where the tree analogy came from in case you didn’t get that segue). If you just let them sit there, they (and you) will never reach your full potential. That said, listening to your clients is not always easy. Sometimes, when you listen to your clients, they will actually tell you, “Yes, you do look fat in that dress.” At The Orchard, our product and marketing teams appreciate this honesty. You can see this attention to client feedback simply by noticing all the updates and enhancements to our tools that we roll out continuously throughout the year (we most recently updated our Analytics platform with new feeds and custom Marketable Events and announced new Marketplace partners). Of course, we also welcome the pats on the back from clients when we ask for feedback on The Orchard’s products or tools.
With this latest project, our “listening” was in the form of “observing.” We took a small group of clients, sent them personal emails reminding them of one of our most beloved tools — Analytics — and watched what happened. I can’t share the results just yet (you’ll have to wait until after Round 2 is complete) but based on the initial outreach, enormous increase in usage and the continued usage of the tool after outreach, we realized that we might be missing something simple here. Maybe our clients just needed a little nudge, or reminder that it is there. They’re dealing with enough on their plate already, so we saw first-hand the value in marketing directly to our clients to remind them of this useful tool (and all of the other valuable tools we offer) and watching how they react.
Whether it be listening to feedback or marketing to clients and observing their behavior, both of these activities give you insight into your client, which in turn, can allow your company to build tools, services, enhancements, etc. to make your client’s experience that much better.
I’ll leave you with something my boss, Jaclyn, mentioned to me… “I always read that, ‘If you’re not measuring marketing, you’re not marketing.’ They fail to mention ‘when you measure marketing, it makes marketing a lot more fun and rewarding’”.
Amen!
Brace yourselves, Orchard clients — we have yet another awesome update to The Orchard Analytics. We are now giving you daily data feeds of AmazonMP3 U.S. sales, and streams from Spotify and Rdio. For video, we’ve fixed the YouTube feed, which now updates weekly, and added video download and rental data from Xbox.
This means that all Orchard clients have access to an unprecedented smorgasbord of digital media intelligence. While the new data feeds are automatically added to your overview graphs, here’s how to see just the new stuff: in the top panel of the Overview page, to the left of the Apply button, there are two dropdown menus. You’ll find the new data feeds under the first one, All Sources. If you only want to see your Amazon numbers, select Amazon from the list, hit apply, and then use Analytics as normal — your results will only show data from Amazon. If you want to compare how you are performing in different stores (say, Rdio and Spotify) you can do that by going to a detail page. Below the graph, select the fourth Breakdown option, “Stores.” Once it’s loaded, you can check on and off the stores you want to see.
We’re thrilled about all this new data, because more data means all out clients can make smarter decisions. AmazonMP3 is our second biggest store besides iTunes, and one of the fastest growing digital marketplaces in the world — we’re only tracking Amazon U.S. for now, but the rest of the world will come soon! Streaming services like Spotify and Rdio are increasingly becoming the go-to option for “checking out this new band.” As social media becomes even more central to marketing and promotion, your plays on streaming music services become a very low-latency barometer of your label’s buzz and impact. With daily feeds, you can now see how many plays your artists and releases are getting, and quickly adjust your marketing efforts for maximum impact.
So go check out all your new data in Analytics! Because we don’t want you to wonder; we want you to know.
For this blog post (and its been a while since I wrote one – sorry Diana!) I thought I’d share some thoughts I’ve been having recently on how we measure return on investment (ROI) of online marketing spends and campaigns.
The music business is a funny old world. This I know for sure having been involved in it for a while now. In my opinion, sometimes it doesn’t seem logical how the business spends money or markets music. I get both frustrated and excited by this industry on a daily basis….but never weary!
I joined this business during a time of change which has been a great thing for me as I have looked on and seen how record labels have poured millions of dollars on initiatives without having a way to measure how effective they really are. I have seen labels spend fortunes on billboards and print ads without being able to, with any degree of real accuracy, measure its true effectiveness or return on investment.
Then I look at the online world, particularly online advertising, and see how it allows for laser precision accuracy in tracking and analyzing data. It’s exciting to see music marketing evolving in this world and beginning to grasp its true potential.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I get it that sometimes ROI is pointless to try and assess too deeply. You can often get too bogged down by metrics. Especially in this world of music and art, it’s not always good to get too scientific. Sometimes you just do something because you know it works. Indeed, I was only recently teased for using too many acronyms like ROI’s and KPI’s. It’s all about creativity right? Well, yes it is but I would argue there is room for a little science in there too, especially when it comes to marketing the creative products we make.
In the world of the social web and online marketing, where data and tracking is so easy, ROI is something that should be simple to see and analyze, yet I rarely see ROI measured in the best possible way and sometimes still not at all.
How do YOU measure return on investment of an online marketing spend? Likes on Facebook? Emails collected? Video views? Album sales?
I guess it depends on goals of the project; there are many ways to look at ROI and all the above have their merits. However, I want to suggest that none of the ways above show the true potential ROI of a modern online marketing spend. I think, in certain scenarios, we should be looking a little further to get a more informed picture of ROI. This is what I want to explore with you a bit more now.
So…… I am going to go off on a slight tangent now but please bear with me as I do have a point to this…….
