At first glance, your music promotion goals may seem pretty simple. The point of any artist is to grow your audience, fanbase, and recognition. However, focusing on the end goal is a big mistake, and you may end up ultimately disappointed in the outcome. Setting realistic goals in small, incremental steps is the only way to help create a clear pathway to your ultimate goal.

With this in mind, we've outlined 5 steps to help you craft your music promotion goals.

1. Know your channels

Expanding your audience is your goal, but where exactly do you do that? There are so many places to promote your music, you may feel a little overwhelmed trying to sort through them all and figure out where to allocate your resources best. Make a list of the most important channels for you based on your genre and where your audience usually comes from. Then, focus your efforts on these.

Try researching your genre to find where other successful artists focusing their efforts to help you find the best ones for you to reach your goal. Follow artists who are a step ahead of you to gauge their techniques and have an idea of where to go.

2. Identify the Metrics You Need to Know

After you have nailed down your channels, you have to go to the numbers. Just on Spotify, there are many ways you can measure audience engagement with your music. While number of streams may be important, don't overlook other important metrics like Spotify's Followers and Monthly Listeners as well.

Adjust your goals to align with the metrics you choose that will work best for you and your fans. If your focus isn't Spotify, get familiar with the tools offered by the channels you are choosing to focus on. This way, you can better connect the available metrics with your promotion goals. Once you know what you need to know number-wise and where to look for it, you'll be much better situated to continue advancing your promotional plan through your chosen channels.

3. Track your progress

The sky is the limit for your success, and a sudden explosion in growth or a viral video can happen. However, it's not something you can rely on or even expect. Instead, aim for a steady increase from your continued music promotion efforts. Know where you're at now by tracking your current progress. By doing this, you can better connect your promotional moves to periods of increased growth or sales. Knowing the trends and what gets results will help you maximize the promotional efforts of your upcoming release.

You can use MusicDigi to sell your music and get all the streaming analytics and insights you need. You'll be able to see how your key metrics change and grow over time, as well as identifying which of your actions make the biggest impact. This will give you the insights you need to keep your music promotion headed in the right direction.

4. Celebrate your successes

Making clearly defined and achievable goals lets you celebrate success early wins as you start to meet incremental benchmarks. While this may allow you to bask in your own genius, it also will help you see what is working and what isn't so that you can make before they derail your promotional plan.

For example, doubling your followers isn't too hard when you have a relatively small audience, but it gets a lot more difficult once you have a big following! You'll be able to adapt and change the scope of your milestones along the way, which is also a reason to celebrate!

5. Stick with what works

Once you've seen what works and how it can impact your progress, you will be able to know what works for you and what doesn't. You'll have created a great toolbox of promotional techniques that will help guide you on what to invest your time and resources in. With this, you will have the confidence to construct highly effective promotional goals that are realistic and something you can achieve. If you see your streams increase when you post daily, keep it up! Then, figure out how to up it to twice a day.

Real Results

Before you do anything else, set your goals for music promotion. This is a key part of moving forward with your project. You just can't move forward towards your goals without being able to know where you're at. The metrics will help you stay focused and see your progress.

If you end up setting unclear or unrealistic goals, you'll get discouraged fast. Keep the focus on smaller successes along the way. With these tips, you can achieve all of your music promotion goals.