This digital media plan outlines the marketing strategy for Outside The Lines Songwriting company. They aim to find raw musical talent and help develop it into professional songs across many genres. Their target audience is people aged 12-50 who are immersed in digital music and spend time online using sites like YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace. Their competitors include major labels like Sony and independent songwriting companies. Competitors promote themselves through YouTube channels, news feeds on their websites, and listings of songs and artists they've worked with. The objectives of Outside The Lines' marketing campaign are to develop a large fan base through street teams, open mic nights, colleges, and online promotion. They will use websites, Facebook, M

1. Digital Media Plan Outline
Outside The Lines (OTL) Song writing company is
songwriting from the future. We are fully committed to
finding songwriters that coexist as our consumers but also
to training them to mold their compositions into
professional songs ready to face the real world. We provide
songs of all genres, Hip Hop, Rap,Tech-no, Reggae, R&B,
Rock, Punk, Pop, Metal, Heavy Metal, Death Metal, Jazz,
Blues, Bachata, and, Meringue (Ti-pico). Any Popular
genre of todays music that you can find on an urban or
popular music station, we will provide for our customers.
What we do as a company is to take raw and uncensored
talent and craft it to the best it can be and get it to the
mainstream. We then listen to input from the consumer and
see how we can improve upon any dislike by way of new
talent, remixes and fusions between genres. Here at
Outside The Lines we are in the business of songwriting for
the customer not the radio stations. We compete with Major
record labels as well as work with them at the same time
because of their need for good songs and our ability to
produce them. But at the same time every company such as
Sony, Warner, EMI, and Universal all own their own
songwriting combines which creates fierce competition.
They are the 4 major labels which each have separate
songwriting companies which are part of their cycle to
make one brand work for another. None the less we will
still need each other to survive because our fresh out their
spirit which takes a chance on new ideas in music and their
critical, strict, trend operation which would fail on its own.

2. Situation
Analysis
http://walhez.com/wp-content/uploads/
2008/11/twitter-logo.jpg
http://www.pjma.info/images/Myspace_Logo.jpg
http://www.fuzzyopinions.com/
wp-content/uploads/2007/02/
a. Describe your WindowsLiveWriter/
YoutubedealwithCBSfallsapart
_1B74/logo%20youtube
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marketing strategy http://www.blackberrycool.com/wp-content/uploads/facebook_logo_new.jpg
http://www.tomshw.it/articles/20080122/
a.We will use the web in order to market yahoo_logo_c.gif
my music an songs. I will do this http://i.treehugger.com/files/th_images/
through using websites, Youtube, google_logo.jpg
Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Banners,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/accuracast/3462462168/
Wikipedia, Blogs, Vlogs, and Podcast.
b.Through analyzing our competetiors http://www.flickr.com/photos/alvarofelipe/2954694985/
and looking at top keywords and search
methods, we will be the top songwriting
site available to consumers.

3. b. Describe your target market; Who is your audience,
how do they use Internet technology
and where do they spend their time online?
• Are main or target audience would have to be anyone from ages 12 to 50 which are
most of the people submerged in the digital music age. Though the digital age does
target young Americans ages 12- 34 we will reach a little further. These are the
people that we know that are going to log on to our website an hear our latest
compositions, sign up for our song writing competitions, or come to our open mic
nights. They are the people who can be that technologically savvy as well as mobile
and hungry enough to want their own type of music on the radio.
c.This audience is complied with people who are grew up using the internet for
everything. They use internet technology to listen to music, to network, to socialize
and to work and to school work, in short, the internet is the center of
communication for this audience. They are constantly on websites like “Myspace”,
“Facebook”, which have a popular network for music artist and and blogging on
blogspot.com and vlogging (or video blogging) on “Youtube”, which is another
essential part of their world because it is a place for new talent to showcase their
music for free and get maximum exposure all over the internet from it. This is also
the generation that uses and Ipod or an Iphone for everything, constantly
downloading music on the internet. That is a fact that is very important to the
company, this target market loves exposure to new types of music and these days it
does not matter if it comes from major labels or independent labels because the
internet offers them both options.

4. c. Describe your competition; who are your competitors and
how are they currently
marketing/promoting themselves online?
“Sony ATV” is one of our biggest competitors. They are a merger of “ATV” and “Sony music” which is a major
label. Online they have a “Youtube channel” which I feel is essential to the growth of most entertainment
channels, in order to keep consumers updated. It is listed under Sony Music Entertainment on “Youtube”. What
they also have is a news feed on their site telling you a bout new events and the success of their songs as well as
certain articles which have to do with their writers. You would also think because it is “Sony” that they have all
their biggest selling artist exposed all over their website but actually what they show cases are pictures of the
writers, especially the singer songwriters. For example they will show Linda Perry but be playing the Christina
Aguilera song that she wrote, “Keeps Getting Better”, in the background. the site is also separated into what type
of genre you are looking for and gives you not only a list of writers but a list of hits which they have made
recently. You can do a music search, you can contact them and y u can also sign up to receive constant updates
from them, when you register on the site.
There is also “The singer’s studio”, they are a professional song writing company. There is really not
much visual marketing included besides pictures of people playing different instruments. They give you
contact information and they tell you who are artist they have worked for and you can also register to
receive updates from the site. They also keep you updated on events and productions and tell you what
their process of talent development is. Besides the artist that are popular that they have wrote songs for,
they have their own featured artist on the side, which is something that my company wants to do.
Than there is “Speedy 4 life Entertainment” which is a Songwriting company also. Their are not
graphics on the page what so ever, in fact the website is in black and white print. They keep it short and
simple and they just tell you about themselves, the genres of music they write, and how you can get into
contact with them.
There is also a songwriting group called “Songfellowz”. They just give a list of songs they have wrote
and their background and also any press info which is necessary to keep up with them. They also provide
the songs on the website which they have made for you to listen to.

5. Campaign Objectives
Marketing
1.)Street teams (We will personally go out, using the means of flyers, street
representation, as well as scouts in order to find new talent)
2.)Open Mike Nights. (we will utilize all facilities that hold raw and young talent
especially even if untrained. This way we will get a better idea of what everyone is
listening to, opinions on what should be being played as well as finding the next
trend.)
3.)College music centers and record stores (with the support of these organizations
with promotion, they will send us new talent)
4.) Using the internet to post a website as well as a Facebook and Myspace page.
Using Radio and Television Advertisement in order to find new talent and
promote ourselves.
We might use a big record player in times square playing a broken record and have a
live person on it spinning around dancing to it and the broken record sounds good
still. It speaks to a breakaway from convention and perfection and it will turn heads.

6. a. What are the sales and/or promotional
objectives of this campaign?
Some objectives which we have are definitely geared towards the
promotion and sales of our songs, not to mention, to getting the maximum
exposer to our singer-songwriters.
a.One of the first campaign objectives is to develop a great following and
fan base for our company and the music that we write. What we plan to
do is develop a large community in which we can share new music with,
gain feedback on popular songs, and on the artist, which we are
developing.

7. a.Pay per click
a.This is something that will be important to us when monetizing on “Youtube and when
we get our musical material on different sites. When talking about “Youtube”, my
team realizes that it is a very powerful tool in the marketing business. What we would
do was make our business channel which featured music videos and songs written by
our artist and than we would partner with “Youtube” so that as we gained subscribers
we would be able to show more advertisements and get paid for showing our artist
videos.(http://www.insidermusicbusiness.com/blog/social-media-strategy-for-
musicians-using-facebook-myspace-youtube-more/) The videos will not be shown on
any other “Youtube” channel, besides ours and the Label which any of our artist have
gone off to sign with. We can also use this to see fan reviews or fan comments. (http://
www.insidermusicbusiness.com/blog/social-media-strategy-for-musicians-using-
facebook-myspace-youtube-more/)Monetization is a very powerful advertising
gimmick when used right. We could also do video promotions or interviews and
television appearances which people missed of our artist and put them on “Youtube”.
(http://www.insidermusicbusiness.com/blog/social-media-strategy-for-musicians-
using-facebook-myspace-youtube-more/)
b.The way we will use the pay per click tool with other websites is by putting up
pictures of artist that we have written songs for and saying, do you like this artist or
asking them a question like, who is this artist? and when they go to answer, it will
automatically lead them to our site. When they click on an answer to one of these
questions, it should automatically lead them to a survey which should be quick an easy
to fill out. The survey will ultimately let us get to know the viewer better and what
they are looking for in terms of music.

8. a.Getting the proper communication channels. Now what “OTL” wants
to do is make sure that we develop the proper channels to
communicate with our consumers. We need the referrals in order to
make our site more popular and get well known, so that we can find
the maximum talent which is necessary for us to gain new artist as
well as a bigger fan base. Sites like “Youtube”, “Facebook”,
“Myspace”, and “Twitter” are perfect for reaching the fan base which
we are trying to get through to. On side of some of these websites we
could put a banner that ask the question if they want a record deal, but
have the link when they click on it lead to our website, just to get
traffic going there.
•

9. (http://www.youtube.com/user/PriscillaRenea)
Youtube Marketing
Banner indicating
where you can buy Subscribers
the music at
Company Profile
Where viewers will give
feedback and leave
Live music preview or Where we will comments
new song releases in advertise more
the form of a video PPC
update

10. a.email promotions
a.We will need some kind of newsletter to the people that do sign up and register on our
landing page so that we are constantly keeping them updated. This way they can see
when we are having a show or when we are doing a promotion and that way we can
get a large audience at our shows and make some money off of touring that would not
have normally made.
b.We want to make the site and the sign up as easy as possible so that we get subscribers
or consumers as fast as possible. There should be a lot of things that draw them in like
music they like being offered in the promotion, if we send them free mp3s for signing
up or free posters of artist we have promoted that would be a good deal for them
because than they would be getting something out of signing up. It will be one page
and as short and simple, all they will have to do is enter their email address along with
a password.
c.We plan to make this process simple for people who want to submit songs as well. All
they will have to do is tell us wether it is copywritten or not yet, if they click no, it will
automatically not let them past their song on to platform, but if they click yes it will
give us the song, easily, by copy and pasting in a note to us on our website. But for
songwriters we will need a little more background information if we like the song, in
which case we will email them. If they want to perform the song there will be a second
space where they can upload a “Youtube” video to us, so that we can se their artist
ability or how well the song is put together.

11. Creative Strategy
a. What is the message and creative strategy of this campaign?
a.The message and creative strategy of this campaign is to show
how fun and easy it is to make music and to show how important
it is for independent and underground music to be exposed to
everyone so that it is as popular as mainstream music. The
creative strategy is to reach out to this younger generation which
is our target market and provide them with constant resources to
new music via “Myspace”, “Youtube”, and“Facebook”. Than
what we will do is let them Vlog, by sending video responses to
what they thing of a new song or artist or blog about it in our
online Blogspot or what they can also do is tweet about it on our
twitter.
•

12. b. How does this strategy support the overall
marketing strategy of your business?
b.The feed back from this strategy will prove to be important to
us because it will show us what is selling and what is not and it
will show us what areas we have to fix and what to keep. You
are getting direct feedback from you main audience so it is
important that you listen to what they have to say. This will
help us because we will make it easy for them to share links or
videos with friends so that we will get a wider review on what
works and it will help us to know what to market to this
generation on a better level.
•

13. c. How does your campaign’s message and creative
strategy address the needs of your
target market?
• It addresses the needs of my target market because they want to see
something which is familiar to them which is social networking mixed
with the music of today. If I find a proper way to infuse both of those
media outlets than it will be very easy to draw costumers in. The way that
this generation finds new music is through word of mouth sometimes and
with this new technology of social networking it is like a new version of
that technique. Sometimes you can become a fan on “Facebook” of a style
of music or an artist and everyone will see that in you feed and they will
click on it, to find out more, thus making your site more popular. They
will be offered the chance to view and give feedback on the new music
which is taking their generation by storm. They need to have control in an
industry where 10 years ago the type of music that they were listening to
was something that was picked out for them.
•

14. (www.facebook.com)
Facebook example
a place for
them to
listen to our
music
Where we
will place
ppc adds
feed from
subscribers

15. Media Mix
i.Organic Search/Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
i.Organic Search will help us because if we make sure that we are
coming up first on on a list of sites when they type in
songwriting and publishing company than people will get the
message that we are among the best in the business and want to
see what we have to offer. If people in this particular target group
get word of us though one of our social media outlets than they
will want to know more and we have to make it so that our main
website as will as any other type of site that will give a costumer
information us is going to appear when they search for it.

16. i.Wikipedia is a good site to be on simply because many people use wikipedia to get
educated on something which they did not know about. If someone wanted to know about
our company or artist and songs than they could go to Wikipedia. We would also lock the
page so that none would be able to mess with any of our content
ii.This is also a good because it is free and it doesn't take any money out of our marketing
budget
c.What we also need is a main website set up so that people can register for updates and
newsletters and see what we are about and the kind of artist that we work with.
e. When talking about my company website, I find that this is one of the best places to
advertise, for a small fee of 10 dollars a month I will get a domain name and a webmaster
which will post everything from photos of my artist and writers, as well as list hits that
they have written with lyrics attached. I would definitely put music on my website but
make sure that others could not copy it and that they could only stream it and not download
it. On there, there would also be music videos, done by my song writers, fan contact an
review blogs as wells updates to what my artist are working on next.(http://
www.thesitewizard.com/gettingstarted/cost-setting-up-website.shtml) I could also use
godaddy.com for a starters fee of 9.99 per month or site like unlimiteddownladhosting.com
for $3.95 per month

17. Website Example
Newsletter page with
events and
promotions
Contact easy to join
mailing list
(www.loisaidas.com)

18. ii.Paid Search
ii.We will have to use paid search to our advantage, but what we will do is
use search words at a low cost. We will need paid search words like free
music download and the word mp3. I found them to be among the most
clicked on or searched for when it comes to music searches.(http://
www.goodbidwords.com/music.php)
iii.Promotion and PR
iii.Promotion and PR will go and in hand in getting our campaign of the
ground. We will need the press release to make us sound innovative and
young, just like the target audience is. We will need it to speak to people
and we will need to put it on every social media outlet possible and get
it sent to others through a series of referrals. This is also where customer
reviews will help us look better to others interested in our services.
iv.Most of the budget is spent here. A proper P.R. person could cost us up
to 120,000 dollars annually, if we get them to do P.R. on the web as well
as outside. This may include articles about our company which will not
only appear in magazines but on the magazines websites and and in
news papers, which could be as little as 2,000 dollars per add, but the
review is worth it.

19. iv.Display advertising (banners, pop-ups, etc)
iv.Banners are also something which we can use to our
advantage. They are like a form of quick advertising used on
all the sites like Myspace, Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter. If
you click on the banner it should lead you to either our
website or a link to our artist and a place to buy the music.
They will give a caption or a headline with a nice photo that
represents us, but it has to be interesting so that people will
take the time to click on it.
v.At first I did not want to use pop ups because many people
just discard them or they find a way to block them, but I figure
if we put a popup of their favorite artist and a link to where
they can either get to listen to their music for free for filing out
one our surveys or get a special deal of some kind, than people
would eventually click on it.
•

20. Myspace Example
Banners, where we
can place PPC on also
music which is (www.myspace.com/loisaidasnyc)
available for
downloading
Links to similar
websites
Videos from Youtube
which leads to a
Youtube link as well
as a company
Biography and Blog on
the side
fans as well as fan
comments, they can
tell us what they
think of our music

21. v.Social Media
Facebook is another good side to market online with. We can set up fan pages for our company as
well as for our artist. Something that Facebook also allows us to do is post new events such as shows or
when albums drop or when you can hear a song on the radio. It is another way of making the customer
alert of our music.(http://www.insidermusicbusiness.com/blog/social-media-strategy-for-musicians-using-
facebook-myspace-youtube-more/)
Myspace Music is special in the way that it is very close to having another website. We can also
stream lots of songs on Myspace without making them downloadable, but if the customer wishes to
download any of the music we will send them a direct link to one of our online stores which we signed up
with to pay for the music.(http://www.insidermusicbusiness.com/blog/social-media-strategy-for-musicians-
using-facebook-myspace-youtube-more/) This is good because it is a good way to build a fan base which
all of the sites do and at the same time promote whatever new song that you have out. Sites like Myspace,
Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter are all interconnected and you should take the fan base that you are
marketing to on one site and drag them over to the next with links, you can also do this by using your main
page. Perhaps the best part about most of these sites are that they are free ways to promote your product.
Ning which is also a free business marketing tool. It is a social network which will let us net work
with other professionals or customers so they see what our product is about.
Blogs/Vlogs/Podcast are important to my company. In the beginning, I always said that I would use
sites like this as a way of finding new talent and songwriters or as a new way to showcases the music that
they already may have. Something of an “Unplugged” session or one on one with people who liked the
fans can see the writers play their songs as well as a way for us to showcase talent of our current artist.
Not to mention, all of these social media outlets are free, so they do not take any money out of the
marketing campaign.
•

22. Twitter and Blog Marketing
subscribers or
followers
Company
updates and
follower
RSS Feeds gadget
too keep track of
updates Company profile
and Press release
(www.twitter.com/shanaericka and Google analytics
shanaericka.blogspot.com) tracker and RSS
feeds

23. b. How will your marketing budget be distributed among these channels?
Diagram from Tom Williams (http://www.insidermusicbusiness.com/blog/social-media-
strategy-for-musicians-using-facebook-myspace-youtube-more/)
• So the budget
will be spent
mostly on PR
and the website
because most of
our media

24. c. How is this mix of media the best option to meet
the campaign’s creative strategy?
• This mix of media is the best option to meet the campaign’s creative strategy
because it will find a way to not only include my target audience but to
capture other markets. More and more people are starting to use different
media outlets. I can recall when I was in 9th grade 10 years ago, I was the
only one with a blog and 5 years later everyone including business associates
had one, the same goes for “Facebook” which was originally intended for
colleges which than was expanded to all types of different networks. By
gaining a fan-base or an audience through these outlets, we than we will
begin to get more feedback and develop more songs that people want to hear
and we will know its what they want because we will have gotten their direct
opinion on the issue.
•

25. Campaign Management
a. What is your schedule for the deploying/launch each activity in
your Media Mix (4.a)?
(In other words, will they all start at the same time? Different times?)
•
Once the official website is up which we will do first, we will than put
up the social media networks and than we will include a blog. The reason
that we do it in this order is because when we set up a facebook page when
want them to be able to link back to our main website in order to get more
information on us.
•

26. b. What metrics will be used to measure performance in each
of the media channels
described in Media Plan (section 4)?
• We will use a variety of sites to help us measure our success when
it comes to the plan.
For social networks what we are going to do is measure how many
comments we may have or how many subscribers, followers, friends, or
fans we may have gained since we started. The amount of people we
have will let us see how big our network is while comment counting will
let us see how much interaction we are getting with these people.
•

27. c. What kinds of web analytics and reports will the
campaign use to monitor metrics in each
channel?
• We will also use RSS fees to help us see what is new, in
terms of news and updates. If someone posted something new
or how well people are keeping up with our site. Not to mention
“Google analytics” which lets us put a tracker in our site to see
how many viewers we have and to keep track of the amount of
activity, each viewer is making. We can also use these tools to
see how many people which are currently on the site are
subscribed and who is a visitor.
•

28. Works Cited
• 1. Retrieved on October 20th, 2009 from http://www.thesitewizard.com/gettingstarted/cost-setting-up-website.shtml
2.) Retrieved on October 20th, 2009 from http://www.gaebler.com/Music+Row-magazine-advertising-costs++36920
3.) Retrieved on October 20th, 2009 from http://www.insidermusicbusiness.com/blog/social-media-strategy-for-musicians-using-facebook-myspace-youtube-more/
4.) www.myspace.com./loisaidasnyc
5.)www.youtube.com/pricillarena
5.)www.loisaidas.com
6.)twitter.com/shanaericka
• 7.)http://walhez.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/twitter-logo.jpg
• 8.) http://www.pjma.info/images/Myspace_Logo.jpg
• 9.) http://www.fuzzyopinions.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/WindowsLiveWriter/YoutubedealwithCBSfallsapart_1B74/logo%20youtube%5b8%5d.jpg
• 10.) http://www.blackberrycool.com/wp-content/uploads/facebook_logo_new.jpg
• 11.) http://www.tomshw.it/articles/20080122/yahoo_logo_c.gif
• 12.) http://www.flickr.com/photos/accuracast/3462462168/
• 13.)www.facebook.com/shanaericka