Marketing a new singer as she puts out her first CD and downloadable music is a long process, but it's similar to other direct-response marketing.

You have to get people to Know, Like, and Trust the artist and then purchasing a $15 CD will be simple.

As an example, I'm marketing Liz Seymour, a 25 year old singer - actress - dancer - choreographer - director, who is the Fifth Generation of her family to direct in the same small theater outside of Philadelphia, PA

When she decided to produce her first CD of music, we set up her website so that people could get to know her. The site is http://LizSeymour.com (pretty easy to remember when you know who she is... but you'd be surprised how many people don't establish their own name for at least ONE of the websites they use: there are other Liz Seymours, including one who writes for the Washington Post, so I was surprised that this domain name was still available 4 months ago when this work began).

This site is created on WordPress software so that the Search Engine Optimization is enhanced automatically by the XHTML language and not simply the HTML. WordPress (with the SemiologicPro addon) is particularly good at getting attention from Google and other search engines - within two hours, most of the blogs and videos we post have been indexed by Google as evidenced by the Google Alerts I get for the keyword "Liz Seymour."

If you check Google now, you'll see that even after only a few weeks of concentrated effort, THIS Liz Seymour ranks well on the first and second pages of Google... quite a good feat since so many other Liz Seymours had a head start.

So... what did we do to create this website and what did we do first?

1. List a good profile page (in this case a theater and music resume) so that people visiting the site will see that Liz is quite experienced. AND, be sure to have a name-capture form right on the front of the site so that you will have email addresses for those who want to learn more... nothing is worse than "Not Knowing Marketing" where you allow people to visit your site (or your store or your restaurant) and then don't capture their basic information so that you can follow up.

2. Start her blogging at least 2x a week. She comes close to doing that and I keep emphasizing to her how important it is for her public for her to speak in her own voice. AND, since Google now gives higher ranking to something that is more current, frequent blog posts are essential.

3. Liz had several audio and video files from recent years, and as a teaser we put some of them on the site. Each video is published through TubeMogul which speeds them to multiple locations at one time, saving us much time and effort. (Places like YouTube, Yahoo, MySpace, and AOL are sent the videos automatically by TubeMogul - I just have to upload to TubeMogul and it does the rest for me.)

4. Photos of Liz are on the site. She photographs well and is very animated in modeling sessions, which is a big help. But it's important to get several photos onto the main site immediately so that people can build a bond with her.

5. Facebook is an important vehicle to spread the word. Not only does Liz have her own profile page, but we created a Liz Seymour PAGE in Facebook which links directly to her main site. Facebook allows "businesses" to produce Pages and this has one huge extra benefit: Pages can be viewed by search engines while profiles are protected behind logins and NOT seen by search engines. Oh, sure... MySpace is still important to certain aspects of the music business, but it's mostly for rock bands and singers and for those who don't know how to create their own "real" website (as opposed to the mini site that MySpace allows you to create).

6. Liz also blogs on one of my websites: http://RaisingGreatFamilies.com. By doing this, Google sees her link from another website to her own main site AND those reading this second site learn about Liz at the same time.

7. When music videos for two of the songs on the CD are completed, they will also be put on the main site and sent through TubeMogul to other video sites and then sent virally to everyone who wants to see them, building traffic back to the main site.

8. Another key is writing here on Hubpages.com. This is a very important site for telling people how to do things, so even writing this article is important to building traffic for Liz's site, since Hubpages has such terrific viewership.

Too many people in the music business wait for a singer to become famous and THEN they start to market her. CDs can be expensive to create and often without a national tour and TV sponsors, a new artist can only produce a demo of 3-4 songs.

But by working Social Marketing and other Direct Response Marketing avenues, we can build traffic to her site, sell CDs directly from there, and not wait for some huge publishing house to discover her.