How To Get More Demo Singing Clients

Hi Vocalists! So you’ve established yourself as a demo singer or customer songwriter! Major congrats! Now let’s talk about how to get you more clients.

When we think about getting more clients, it makes sense that marketing comes to mind. Getting more eyes on us means landing more clients, right? Well unfortunately I often see singers get more visibility, buy the ads, place the bids, apply to jobs on job boards and still don’t land many gigs. Should we start blaming the customer for not making the effort to come into our store and buy our products? Or should we turn the spotlight on ourselves and see if the problem is possible with our store or our product to begin with. We’re going to tackle the discussion of getting more clients in two phases. 

Phase 1 is Perfecting our Product, Phase 2 is Getting in Front of the Eyes. Let’s dive in. 

Phase 1: Perfecting our Product:

• Leveraging Platforms
• Store Window: Photo, Name, Headline
• Demo Reel
• Description of Services
• Accolades
• The Process
• Terms of Service
• Pricing
• The Proposal

Leveraging Platforms. If you haven’t already, start by creating profiles on some of the best platforms to get demo singing gigs. Leveraging existing platforms can help you to start getting paid gigs much faster than starting from scratch with your own website and marketing (which you should also do someday!). Here are some platforms to get started on: 

• Soundbetter.com
• Airgigs.com
• Vocalizr.com
• Network.landr.com
• Vokaal.com
• Fiverr.com

Store Window. It may be time to renovate your stores! I use this metaphor quite a lot. I like to call the webpages where people land on to buy your services your “storefronts.” Think of when you’ve been walking through the mall to shop for clothes. There are plenty of clothing stores, but what makes you want to walk into one? There are many singers offering their demo singing services in these malls (platforms), so how can yours stand out? 

What does your potential client see first? Your photo, name, and headline. This is like looking through the front window of your store. You may have a great photo already, but it’s worth trying to switch it out to see if it helps grab more attention. The photo that represents your store, your product, needs to be professional. It needs to convey professionalism and show us a little bit of personality. Your photo may just be a pro headshot or it might have glimpses of pop star vibes, or a country quality if that’s your brand. 

Your headline might say something like “Vocalist and Songwriter.” And so does everyone else’s. So why not switch it up and grab our attention with something that’s either one of your accolades or if you have a niche style, put it in your headline to stand apart from the crowd. “Grammy Nominated Songwriter and Vocalist,” or, “Pop Perfect Vocals.” Trying different headlines is your chance to grab the client’s attention, and if you have it for just a moment, they may click the play button on your reel. 

Demo Reel. That’s where the money is. Your reel. This is very often where people lose their potential client, so listen up! 

Rule #1 when it comes to your reel edit it so we hear your voice immediately. If a client has to wait through a 20 second intro, you have likely lost them completely. Secondly, keep in mind your potential clients may have different interests, so it’s wise to showcase the many different tones and ranges you sing, and to accomplish this quickly to cater to the short attention spans of busy artists, you need your reel to be an actual reel. Not just a song. Cut up 3-5 four bar phrases from a variety of songs into a short demo reel that allows us to hear all your skills quickly. 

It takes the average client less than 10 seconds to decide if you’re the one they want. Just like social media, if something  doesn’t grab our attention in like 2 seconds, we’ve already swiped past. So really put a lot of effort into making a reel that accommodates the ever moving mind. 

Your reel is the closest representation of the product you will be delivering your client. Chopping up some songs you have on your harddrive might not be enough. We need to take an honest look (and listen) to this product and evaluate whether or not it’s even ready to go to market. If you play your reel next to recent hit radio releases, how does it compare? Better yet, have a listen to top performers on Soundbetter to get an idea. Are your vocals perfectly tuned (they need to be)? Is your performance amazing? Are your edits clean? Now, I don’t want to scare you if you’re not a total mixing engineer. You don’t need to be a full on mixing engineer because your clients will almost always have their song professionally mixed after you send them the raw stems. But you are in charge of getting a quality recording, and having it tuned and edited. So if you’re not quite there yet, you may consider working with a producer partner and splitting your revenue, OR you may want to take a course to perfect your vocal production skills (plug: I made a course for this exact reason - I want to help singers launch their businesses, but I noticed many of them still need to step up their vocal production game, so I put together this workshop for ya).

Description of Services. Let’s continue on your potential client’s journey and see how we can make it an F yes. So they love your photo, your headline was enticing enough to make them click the play button on your reel, they loooove your voice and think you’d be perfect, so what do they do next? They read a little bit more.

Put yourself in their shoes now, look at your service description and really ask yourself if there is anything off putting in your profile. Is your pricing structure confusing or too expensive? Simplify it or just tell them to contact you for pricing. Are you listing a ton of rules/terms of service in a cold tone of voice? We don’t want to come across like we’re not fun to work with. You still should have terms listed, but be as light hearted as you can. I see it a lot, profiles sounding like the singer is a drill sergeant. This is music making, it should be fun! 

Other than not completely turning the client off, how could you make the client want to work with you even more than your reel made them feel? Answer: accolades. It’s not cringe, it’s not superficial, it’s just the easiest way to build trust. Having accomplishments listed on your profile, famous people you’ve worked with, etc. helps your potential client know that you are someone who knows what they are doing. Like reviews, it’s simple social proof to make them more comfortable hiring you. This can be any awards received or nominated for, contests won, high number of streams on Spotify, number of followers on a given platform, big name producers or artists you’ve worked with (doesn’t mean you needed to have a song released), labels worked with, tv networks your songs are on, famous recording studios you’ve worked at, stages you’ve performed on. Get creative!

You may include a section that tells us what your process is. Whatever it is, make it feel simple and enjoyable. Don’t be rigid. 

The Proposal. OK! So now all aspects of your storefront entice your potential client enough for them to actually contact you and tell you about their song. What they need now is a price and a vibe. It’s time to send them a proposal. Keep it short and sweet. Say hello in a friendly way, find something about their song that you like and compliment them, maybe even ask them if they have a link to their Spotify page because you’d love to hear more. Ask one question about the project itself, and tell them to please feel free to ask you any questions they may have! Asking questions gets them engaged, and once it feels like a conversation, it will likely lead to a booking.

This is really just the time to show your personality, make them feel excited to work with you, and also feel good about their own song baby. This is NOT the time to start listing rules, asking about royalty splits (just have that policy listed on your profile). If they ask you about your terms, happily answer them, but anything important should already be listed on your profile and hopefully doesn’t need to put a damper on the vibes. 

There is one not so fun fact to keep in mind. It’s just a fact, so do not get discouraged. A high percentage of clients who reach out to you will not write back to your proposal at all. Try to adopt the mindset to not even remember who they are once your proposal is sent. If they write you back and it begins a conversation, THEN remember them. Otherwise it can feel really disappointing to be hoping they respond. Many of them just don’t and it’s not your fault. Some people out there think you’ll record a song for $25 or for free even, and they can kindly get out of your inbox. Making music is fun, but some people forget it is a business to us. Forgive them for they know not how they offend. We move on. 

These platforms tend to be a great template for how we can show up elsewhere. Whether it’s on our own websites, our social media pages, and even in the DMs. Getting these storefronts up to a high standard is truly the first thing we should be focused on in regard to landing more clients. THEN you can think about how to get in front of more eyes. 

Phase 2: Getting your product in front of more eyes:

• Be everywhere
• Job Boards
• Platform Ads
• Algorithms
• Upload Rate
• Social Media
• Other Marketing Endeavors

Be everywhere. Want eyes on you? Be where eyes are looking. Make it a goal to be on as many platforms as possible because you never know where your client is looking. One of my favorite clients came to me unexpectedly from Beatstars.com where I have beats with hooks for sale. That wasn’t even a place where I advertise my demo singing services, but it was a place where someone could hear my voice and contact me. Over time, I’ve had the privilege to work with clients who actually have big followings. Doing a feature using my name on bigger DJs single releases has put me in front of other DJs who have reached out to hire me. I have even been hired by fellow students in courses I’ve taken. Just being present in as many places as you can, while being open about what you do can lead to cool opportunities. 

Job Boards. Some of these platforms have job boards where you can actually see postings of projects that people need singers for. Apply for the ones you’d be amazing at! 

Platform Ads. Places like Airgigs.com and Beatstars do have options for you to pay to promote your services. A paid boost in visibility that leads to a paid job at 3x what the ad cost is worth every penny. 

Algorithms. Get to know what certain websites respond to to boost your visibility and trust factors. Things like fast response time, landing 5 star reviews, repeat customers, and even just staying logged in to the site might all contribute to better visibility. 

Upload Rate. Some websites like Vokaal and Voclio have a pretty cool way of letting us increase visibility. These are sites primarily focused on selling licenses to your acapellas, less about demo singing services, but like my Beatstars story, you never know where your next client will find you. When you upload a new acapella on these sites, you automatically end up on the top of the list for new acapellas until other singers upload and start pushing your song down the list. So it’s a good idea to space out your uploads and maintain a higher position more often. 

Social Media. Time to treat social media like a business. Some personal posts here and there are great to show people more of who you are, but keep most of your posts and your bio related to your singing business. This may mean doing videos of you lipsyncing along to something you recorded, and sharing recent releases, and other music type posts. Build up your social media fastest by creating content people will want to share to their own profiles, and do collaborative posts with other artists to cross promote and share audiences.

Other Marketing Endeavours. It’s really endless what you can do to market yourself. If you have your own website, you’ll want to dive into SEO (search engine optimization) so you can train Google how to find you. This includes writing blog posts with keywords in them. You can buy Facebook, Google, Youtube, Tik Tok etc. ads to advertise your service, but they tend to work best when you offer people some sort of discount or freebie. Freebies also help you build your email list so you can start sending out newsletters. 

There you have it, a ton of ways to land more clients. I wish it was as simple as buying an ad, but how often do you click buy on ads? You probably see a hundred ads a day and click on one a week. Think about what would make you click and start putting yourself in the shoes of the other human beings you’d like to work with. This is a building process, but it is so worth it. Think about what the success of your demo singing business is going to mean for your life. It’s truly an incredible feeling to become not only self sufficient, your own business, but to do this with music. To have a career making music on your own schedule. You can nurture your talent, grow your online presence, and have the life you want. You just have to start and then optimize from there. What can you do today to get started? What can you do today to optimize what you have started? 

I’m rooting for you! WE’RE rooting for you. Come hang with the other singers like you who are pursuing this fabulous life of sharing our gifts with those who want to hire us to help express themselves. We meet up for a mastermind chat on Zoom on the first Friday of every month. Sign up to attend at singerssuccesspath.com, it’s free. Ciao!