Love it our hate it, you can’t deny the monumental splash that hip-hop and rap music have had on American culture and business. Both celebrated and demonized, the grassroots growth of this popular genre of music can teach a few lessons to just about every company and entrepreneur out there.
I just finished watching Mixtape, Inc. on Hulu.com and it was an interesting documentary to say the least.
Not only did I learn about the underground hip-hop industry, I also picked up some wildly valuable marketing strategies that I can almost guarantee my competitors aren’t using. If you haven’t heard, the quickest way to build a profitable business while gaining an exceptional amount of exposure and notoriety is to utilize an efficient process or successful idea that’s being applied in a separate industry (or market) and then become one of the first players to implement it in your niche. Here’s what I’ll be grabbing from the hip-hop mixtape industry.
The gist of the documentary is pretty straightforward. It chronicles the rise and influence of mixtapes on the business that is hip-hop. For those that don’t know, a mixtape is a bootlegged music album compiled of the most recent, genre specific songs from a number of popular artists. The mixtapes and their distributors capitalize on these individual pieces of original content made by other music artists by creating hip-hop CDs to generate buzz for new music at a grassroots level. Now you may be wondering how this applies to business marketing. Well, my big takeaways from watching this documentary are three-fold:
Note: the insights shared below are for hungry entrepreneurs only! If you’re willing to turn over every rock to find the techniques that boost your bottom-line, read on.
1) Swipe and deploy
2) “If you ain’t first, you’re last!”
3) “Nothing sells music, like music.”
1. Swipe and deploy. That’s a GKIC term stolen from Dan Kennedy. In essence, it’s the art of utilizing something created by someone else and implementing it into your business. As mentioned, mixtape DJ’s and distributors were able to build entire businesses (some in excess of a million dollars), simply by taking songs created by rap artists, compiling them on a hip-hop CD, adding some unique enhancements like voice-overs and scratching, then pushing it out to their own customers. 50 cent, the 5th richest rapper in the world, made a name for himself by rapping over other rap artists’ songs and selling it to hungry fans. To be truthful, what he and other artist are doing is copyright infringement. However, when done in a clever way, it’s legal and can mean big bucks. The folks over at Mycomeup.com and Addicted2Success.com are both using this approach to make money from their blogs. They’re simply grabbing market-specific content (in their case, video) from YouTube.com and posting it up on their site. They’re not selling the videos for a profit, but they’re increasing their blog readership and selling other things.
2. “If you ain’t first, you’re last!” Ahh, I love Talladega Nights. Great American comedy. This quote should say it all. Sometimes the first person with an idea or invention becomes a legend and other times that person gets slaughtered. I like the risk / reward ratio on this one so I encourage everybody reading to think of ways that you can innovate within your marketing, not just your business. For instance, DJ Clue was the first hip-hop DJ to start selling mixtapes on CDs instead of cassettes. By being first, he become a millionaire in the hip-hop industry and is also revered as one of its icons. I plan on having famous graffiti artists and muralists compete on the Wynwood Walls to promote GraphicDesignWars.com. How can you use a novel technique to supercharge your marketing? Not sure? At the very least, learn how to discover your Purple Cow.
3. This one I love. “Nothing sells music, like music.” That’s a 50 Cent quote that rang like a slot machine in my ears while watching the documentary. You see, large record companies now realize that the best way for them to find the next big hip-hop superstar and ultimately balloon their profits, is to utilize the underground mixtape distribution stream to validate new artists. In essence, they’re doing grassroots marketing to see what’s hot and what’s not. If determined to be hot, they dump a bunch of money into promoting their next prize artist. In other words, before they print the signs, and buy the radio and tv ads, they have the artists create music to build a buzz. For your marketing, focus on showcasing your products and services in action to get people interested. I’ll be pubbing (i.e. publicizing) my previous design work on Flickr and Pinterest soon to generate interest for my web app, GraphicDesignWars.com. Why? Because nothing sells design, like design.
As you can see, hip-hop is a multi-billion dollar industry for a reason and creativity is king. Don’t be afraid to check out what makes this industry so damn attractive to entire generations. While you may not have aspirations of becoming the richest rapper in America, you can certainly learn a thing or two from him.
