Marketing Tips from Crooked I

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Building a marketing plan for your business is about to get a little bit easier. Reading this article is guaranteed to give you a bit of inspiration from one of the most unlikely sources. I don’t think it’s a secret that I am a huge hip hop fan and for this article I’m going to make sure that I keep the unusual sources of Marketing inspiration series alive (unofficial name) by showcasing some marketing tips that you can learn from the California Emcee, Crooked I.

1. Be an innovator – Crooked I started a Hip Hop Weekly series that allowed him to be first in the hip hop music market by releasing new music every week for an entire year. After his first year was up, a tremendous amount of buzz was building and he recently restarted the process again for his Hip Hop Weekly Reloaded series. Others may do a weekly series like this now, but he will always be who did it first.
2. Be consistent – Just like I mentioned above, Crooked I released music for an entire year straight, each and every week – sometimes he even doubled up and released more than one track. By being consistent with what you’re doing you will be able to reach more of an audience because you will never fade too far out of the public eye.
3. Embrace your ‘self’ – A lot of music from Crooked I involves imagery from his past and his life in general. He doesn’t shy away from the good times and doesn’t pull any punches when he talks about the darker side of his past; the trouble he was into, the depressing times he had, ect. By doing this, he is allowing his listeners to gain a deeper understanding of him & his music so they feel like they know him and will talk about him and his music more often in conversations with friends and family.
4. Align yourself with other power players – One of the biggest moves (in my opinion) in the career of Crooked I was when he teamed up with three other emcees and formed the group Slaughterhouse. The amount of buzz on the internet surrounding the move was massive and they all benefited from each other’s existing fan bases. They’re currently working on a record deal with Eminem’s label, Shady Records as well. If you know of a few power players in your industry that are around the same size as yourself, why not put together a team effort of some sort in order to leverage the buzz built from it and the existing client bases that each person’s already got built up?
5. Showcase your customers – Coming back to the HipHopWeekly series, Crooked I does something during the recordings of each audio that showcases his fan base – he shouts them out (and in one instance, even made a marriage proposal). He doesn’t ask for anything in return, he just does it. By doing this, anyone he sends a shout out to on the audio is guaranteed to show the audio to anyone and everyone who will listen to it, increasing Crooked I’s fan base along the way.
6. Share your faults – One thing that I admire about Crooked I is that when he went to get a Slaughterhouse tattoo, he took pictures of the process – even though it wasn’t spelled right. He didn’t wait for someone to take a picture of him and then show it to the world, he took the picture and exposed the fault himself. Being open and genuine will take you a long way in business.

Crooked I is also big in the social scene, you can follow him on twitter or check out the Planet COB website

More from this series

Don’t forget to check out our previous articles in this series – Marketing tips from Adolf Hitler & Marketing tips from Charles Manson.