How To Promote Your Own Music

In the Now: Mark Roberge

Rock star, turned music veteran, turned company co-founder and CEO, offers his take on the evolving marketing industry and what makes his audience tick 

To listen to the whole interview, click here. 

Nowspeed: Hi, my name is David Reske from Nowspeed Marketing, which offers music & social media marketing services. Welcome to this edition of In the Now. We are thrilled to have our guest today, Mark Roberge from Red 13 Creative and Red 13 Studios. We’re going to be talking today through some issues about digital marketing and Mark’s experience in business. Mark, we’re just thrilled to have you on the show. So thanks again for being here. 

Mark: Thanks for having me, David. I appreciate it. 

Nowspeed: Mark is the CEO and co-founder of Bamrock Entertainment, which is a creative holding company that oversees Red 13 Studios and Creative. Mark, you have a long background in the music industry. You were a founding member, drummer, co-songwriter of the national rock band, Prospect Hill, and you became a veteran of the music industry. And you’ve been doing this for a couple of decades. That must have been a phenomenal experience.

Mark: Yeah, it’s getting up there in regards to time now. It’s funny when I look back, it’s like a decade sounds crazy. But it’s what I’ve been doing since I was a kid, actually since high school. And then from there, we just started touring.

Nowspeed: I have really been looking forward to this interview with your background in music and marketing. You must be like the most interesting guy to meet at a cocktail party.

Mark: Yeah, unless you’re with other guys that are in the band or in my world. I just spoke at an NFT event and after I spoke, everybody was lining up to ask me questions. I forget sometimes that my background is pretty interesting. 

Nowspeed: That’s great. Well, I want to talk a little bit about marketing, because In the Now is really trying to help people understand what’s behind the scenes in digital marketing and in entrepreneurship and leadership. In your experience, can you help us just smash a myth about marketing like something in your experience that most people believe that’s just not true? Something different than what the ordinary person thinks about marketing.

Mark: I would say the biggest thing, especially nowadays, is that a lot of people think that marketing is just putting out as much content as possible. And I think that’s where most people get frustrated because they realize that there are no eyes on any of that content as much as they keep putting it out. There is no actual strategies in order to draw audiences. And so I feel like that’s one of the biggest myths that goes on right now. You need to actually have a marketing strategy to drive an audience to that digital content. In order to ensure that every time you’re releasing something new, there’s more audience there and your audience is growing in between those releases.

Nowspeed: So unpack that for me a little bit. What kind of digital marketing content do you get excited about creating or what do you think is the most impactful content out there for you and for your clients?

Mark: Well, it’s always about, first and foremost, understanding the messaging. What is this brand about? What is it that they’re trying to offer to the world that is a something different or be meaningful and how do we get that across as quickly as possible with the attention span of everybody out there being so short, and with so many different mediums of content being thrown at them from multiple different platforms? How do you cut through that?

I think the most exciting part is prior to content creation, it’s figuring out the content strategy and understanding and really doing an intake on a brand. And finding out exactly: What it is that they have to offer? What’s their message? What can they bring to an audience in order to stand out? Once we figure that out, then, it’s like okay, now how do we creatively come across with a great piece of content with multiple supporting pieces in order to get that attention and start drawing people in? So, then we can start nurturing and building an audience and building an actual fan base around that product or brand or business.

Want to learn more? Click here to listen to the whole interview.