Who are your fans?

In order to determine who your fans are, you have to ask them some questions. With the advent of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other sites like it that allow fans to input information about themselves, it's much simpler to acquire as much information about them as they have about you. In addition, there are widgets now that you can put up @ your band site(s) that give fans the opportunity to let you get to know them better, both for more personal connections to your base and for marketing purposes.


Below are some questions you can research for yourself from your fan base(s) that will give you a statistical sampling of very useful information on where to go on your tour, what venues to target and whether to concentrate on urban or suburban settings. By taking some educated guesses as to income, you can even determine what to give away as incentives to loyalty and viral marketing:

What age group are they on average?
What gender?

Image by luc legay via Flickr

Do you appeal to one ethnic group or is your music broadly popular?
What are their education levels?
Are they spiritual or agnostic? Atheists?
Political party?
What are their hobbies?
Where do they shop?
Where do they eat?
What do they eat?
Favorite movies?
Books?
Television shows?
Do they volunteer? If so, where?
What do they do online (other than go to your website)?
Shopping? Games?
What other bands do they listen to and are they similar to yours?

A quick way to get to know your fans is to put up a survey with a list of questions about themselves. Make it clear it's just for you, not to sell to list makers. Your core fan base will beat each other over the head to get to tell you more about who they are. You could reward them for filling out the survey by giving them a discount off of your next CD or a free T-Shirt/bumper sticker.

The ones who answer that survey will be LOYAL fans. Find out who they are, what they do and where they shop, volunteer, go for recreation and education and/or work and that's where you'll find more loyal fans. You can use the same tactic over again to dig deep into what makes your fan base tick. Each time reward those who fill out the surveys with something only they can get.

Got a video camera?

Image by pantagrapher via Flickr

Stop filming yourselves.
Film your fans and review the tape.

What are they dressed like?
What are their ages?
Did they just get off work or out of class before coming to your concert?
Do they bring their kids to see you?
Their nieces and nephews?
Their friends and/or co-workers?

Don't expect your fans to always come to you and have your interests. Find out their interests and come to them where they live, work and play. They'll meet you more than half way and become even more loyal because you showed an interest in them other than their wallets.
Molly