As independent musicians, we’ve got to do a lot of the marketing on our own - that’s in addition to booking gigs, making music, speaking to producers, negotiating deals and much more. The challenge is in staying consistent with all our tasks and doing them as we should be so that the small tasks on a regular basis can snowball and realize it’s results.

John Jantsch over at the hugely popular Duct Tape Marketing Blog shares a great tip for marketing businesses, and just like your independent music career can be thought of as a business, this tip ‘wowwed’ me with its simplicity that as of today, I’m going to put it into effect in my business and with my team members too.

But it would work so effectively for musicians too. John says that too many people see a crazy idea for marketing and go chase it, only to then drop it within a couple of days and weeks instead of being focused with it. He says, “The key is to understand the work that makes a difference, remained focused and plug away. Chasing the new new thing will drive you crazy and never allow you feel what momentum does for a small business. “

Here’s the tip in his own words:

Here’s a tip if you find the allure of the noisy new thing is too loud to stay focused on what needs doing. Create a score card with no more than ten marketing related action items on it. Rate each of those items for importance - give a new sales presentation five points and a new blog post two for example. Both of those marketing related activities will pay off, but one is clearly more important than the other. Now, set a goal of twenty points every day. (The blog post and sales presentation would have netted you seven.) By turning your little marketing tasks into a game you get two benefits. 1) You might actually keep focused on winning the game by completing important actions and 2) if you find yourself with some free time, you might dive into an important marketing task instead of wasting your time reading email.

Of course, you probably wouldn’t want to do a sales presentation as a musician, but you could replace it with ideas in my “Strategy Guide to Succeeding As A Musician in 2008″ report. It’s free so if you haven’t read it, go get it.

His advice: dream a little smaller. 

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