The Fan Pyramid: How To Leverage Fan Segmentation in the Music Industry
Level up your digital marketing at: http://joshdviner.com/
Between social media and streaming services, artists have more data than ever to better understand their audience. Using these datasets, The Fan Pyramid is a model that classifies fandom into four segments based off engagement, enabling artists and their teams to (1) discover how audiences in each segment interact with your music and content and (2) subsequently cater content accordingly in order to funnel fans up the pyramid. As a fan moves up the pyramid, they become more engaged with the artist brand. Eventually, the fan becomes an advocate for the artist and in return, gets rewarded and celebrated by the artist. In this light, the goal is to create value, both for an artist and their fans. Below I describe the four stages — Passive, Casual, Engaged, and Advocate — and the actions fans generally take while in each stage. At the end of this article is an example with real life numbers of how to use the Fan Pyramid to your advantage.
*Note: The Fan Pyramid is more about creating value within the broad fanbase, rather than fan acquisition. It can generally be applied to fanbases of all sizes.
*Note: “you” below refers to the artist
Passive: Passive fans are those who listen to your music through a DSP-created playlist they often come back too. They don’t seek out your music but enjoy it when it comes up on their playlist. They most likely do not follow or engage with you on social media nor would attend a show or buy merchandise, unless perhaps a festival.
Casual: Casual fans are those who have your music on a playlist they listen too often and occasionally seek out your artist profile on streaming services. They may follow you on social media, depending on their general usage of platforms, but will probably not attend a show or buy merchandise, unless others in their network encourage them to do so together.
Engaged: Engaged fans are those who have your music on playlists they listen to, actively seek out your music and most likely follow you on social media. They would consider attending a show and buying merchandise.
Advocate: Advocates are those who have your music on playlists, actively seek out your music, follow you on social media, and not only attend shows and buy merchandise but encourage their network to join them in doing so. They act as an advocate for your brand, sharing new music and videos to their network.
Moving Fans Across Stages
This section will review how to engage each segment of fan in order to move them up the pyramid. Note that these are generalizations and these tactics need to consistently be working in tandem to be most effective. For example, you can’t solely focus on exposure and not a compelling social strategy or else, when potential fans land on your page, they won’t be compelled to follow and engage.
Passive: Since passive fans don’t really know your brand, consistent exposure is critical to convert them to a more casual fan. The mere-exposure effect is a phenomenon that explains our tendency to develop a preference for something simply due to being familiar with it. For an artist this can be achieved through social advertising, playlist/YouTube Channel pitching, collaborations with other artists, and more. The goal here is to become a familiar name to your passive fans.
Casual: Casual fans know your music and brand but are not necessarily engaged. A compelling social strategy is vital to convert Casual fans to Engaged fans. Create tons of content — lyric videos, live video content, music video, vlogs, IG Reels, IGTV, TikToks, etc.. Show vulnerability and personality. Reduce friction so that it’s easy for fans to engage with you. The goal here is to bring fans into your community and give them incentive to engage with your brand through powerful storytelling.
Engaged: Engaged fans are happy to follow and lightly interact with your brand but not necessarily share your content. Providing social currency is key with engaged fans, as this will give them a reason to become an advocate. This is a strategy I’ve written about before and derives from Jonah Berger’s book, Contagious. Berger describes “social currency” as “content that gives people a way to look good while promoting the products and ideas along the way.” Strategies to achieve this can be through the use of insiders, encouraging user-generated content, or providing unreleased/exclusive content to a select members of your fanbase. The goal here is to make fans feel special as a reason to become an advocate.
Advocate: Advocates are already your most engaged fans — sharing your content, attending shows, buying merchandise, and more. In order to keep them advocates, surprise and delight is key. Surprise and delight marketing is about providing unexpected rewards to customers just for the sake of being loyal customers. This can be done through social shoutouts, free merchandise, FaceTimes/Zoom calls, and more. Another strategy to retain this segment can be through the use of fan clubs with rewards through platforms such as Patreon or Twitch. The goal with them should be retention.
The Threshold of Commitment
It is crucial to recognize that each fan has a threshold of commitment — a term I use to describe the greatest possible engagement you can obtain from a fan. Some fans will always be passive listeners; others may move from passive to engaged but never become an advocate. Recognizing and empathizing with fan’s threshold is critical for artists to understand. For example, maybe instead of encouraging social sharing of a post, you encourage fan’s to just tag a friend — a lot less public of an act.
Putting The Fan Pyramid to Work
So how do you actually utilize the Fan Pyramid in order to create more engaged fans?
Let’s say you’re an artist with the following metrics (for the sake of simplicity, socials and DSPs are lumped together):
Using The Fan Pyramid we can segment out their fans in a variety of ways. For example, we can identify that their Spotify listeners are fairly Passive (mostly listening via playlists and a high Monthly Listeners-to-Followers ratio), while their social followers are probably a combination of Casual and Engaged (High Social Engagements-to-Impressions Ratio but few link clicks and shares).
Therefore, we can identify some key goals:
- Convert Spotify listeners to Spotify followers
- Migrate social followers to Spotify followers
- Create compelling content to optimize for comments, clicks, and saves/shares
We can then develop strategies on how to move fans up the pyramid:
- Utilize social advertising to promote your Spotify profile to your established social followers.
- Focus on content creation — lyric + music videos, behind-the-scenes, photoshoots, studio content, etc. to create a more engaging narrative.
- Incentivize social comments and sharing through contests and exclusive content.
- If there are a segment of fans that consistently comment on posts (or have a fan page), reward and celebrate those top fans (e.g., free merch, virtual meet and greets, etc.).
Analyzing a fanbase with the Fan Pyramid in mind allows you to develop more specific strategies with clear KPIs, rather than a more general approach to marketing.
The Importance of the Fan Pyramid
As a fan moves up the pyramid, they become a “higher value” fan. They listen, engage, and spend more. In return, the artist rewards them for their fandom. They give them merch, meet and greets, and shoutouts. A win-win.
By using the Fan Pyramid you can increase value for both the artist and fan.
Clap 👏 👏 if you liked this article to help others find it
Comment 💬 if you want to discuss (or just say hello! 👋)
