Hubspot for Musicians
A step-by-step video guide to using the free version of Hubspot to better manage your press & promoter contacts. FREE ACCESS FOR JAZZFUEL PRO MEMBERS
NOTE: This course is now available exclusively to Jazzfuel PRO members. Get access here.
The problem with booking gigs & getting press
When it comes to booking gigs or getting press coverage, how much of the problem is down to the time it takes you to reach out to these people?
You sit down to work on this for an hour and, by the end, you've not even scratched the surface!
Similarly, how often have you sent a round of pitching emails and never followed up, because you lost track of who got what message?
You mail out a random bunch of emails and then hope some of them will get back to you first time.
In my experience working on both gig bookings and press outreach, there are 2 things that most successful outcomes have in common:
- You were able to connect directly & personally with the right person
- You followed up multiple times with them
To put that another way: I can't remember the last time I sent a single copy-paste email to a new contact and got a gig or an album review in return!
A technical system to help booking gigs & getting press
Of course, building your network of promoters and press contacts usually starts naturally by meeting people and 'keeping in touch.'
But at some point, if you're looking to build a long term (and perhaps even international) career, there needs to be a slightly more systematic approach.
Storing names and info in your head and randomly reaching out to people when you think of them is not effective enough!
Personally, I've spent many years using spreadsheets to keep track of contacts and remind myself who to follow up with - and when.
I still think that spreadsheets can be a totally effective method if they work for you.
But about 3 years ago I started to using the free version of an online 'CRM' tool called Hubspot, which has revolutionised the way I work and which I'm going to share with you in this course.
As a taste, here's how I use it...
Gig pitching with Hubspot
When it comes to pitching for gigs, I can log into my Hubspot account and quickly:
- Filter by country/city/month
- See who I haven't contacted in the last X days/months
- Bring up a target list of festivals or clubs I'm working on
- Follow up with an promoters where there's an option (pending concert)
In all of these situations, once I've identified a contact, I can email them from right inside the platform!
Press pitching with Hubspot
Similarly, for press outreach, I can quickly:
- Filter by country/city
- Search by blog/magazine name
- See contacts who have recently reviewed one of my projects
- Follow up with anyone who has shown interest in a new release
Again, once I've identified a contact, I can email them from right inside the platform!
Ready to remove some friction?
As I think you can see, this tool can massively speed up the 'networking' process as well as make it more successful.
Of course, it's not magic.
Success still depends on you making great music, reaching out to the right people and motivating them to work with you. But using a system like this reduces the friction of actually managing these contacts and doing the outreach.
If this sounds like something you'd like to use for your project, I'd invite you to join me in the earlybird edition of this course where I'll show you exactly how to use it.
Hubspot is a very powerful 'CRM' tool for managing your contacts and making sure you're following up with them personally and efficiently.
However, it wasn't designed for musicians specifically, so it's not as simple as signing up and using it 'out-of-the-box.'
Because of this, I've put together this video course to take you step-by-step through the set up process, so you can be sure you're using it correctly and effectively.
It's taken me many hours or trial and error to figure out the best ways to use this to book gigs and get press coverage, and the aim is to save you a lot of time and wrong moves in getting it up for your project.
To be clear: this course will show you how to set up Hubspot to manage your own network more efficiently - not to give you my (or someone else's) contacts. It's down to you to have the 'right' people to add to this, and to keep it growing going forwards.
Your Instructor
Hi, I'm Matt Fripp.
When I first started out as a booking agent, I was fortunate enough to work for an agent with a big database of contacts.
But despite having hundred of email addresses at my fingertips, there was still a problem:
I didn't really know who these people were and, as a result, I couldn't figure out easily which bands they would like and how to talk to them.
My solution was to build a folder of sample tours.
- I bought a ton of jazz magazines and cut out the gig listings
- I printed out tour schedules from artists similar to mine
- I searched for jazz festivals and made notes on their bookings
Once I'd been doing this a while, I started to get a better idea of what each promoter was looking for.
Finally, I could approach them with more relevant offers which meant better results for me and (hopefully) less irrelevant emails for them to read.
Of course, I'm not saying I immediately booked hundreds more gigs.
But I started to notice a steady improvement in the engagement with these people and a steady increase in the number of positive responses and, as a result, bookings I was getting"
Frequently Asked Questions
NOTE: This course is now available exclusively to Jazzfuel PRO members. Get access here.