Groovy Kaiju (Aaron Turner)

Please give us a brief overview of the Introduction Phase of your Buddy system:
The Introduction Phase of My Buddy System Happens in Two Ways:

1. I run a follower finder campaign using Meta Ads. The two main creatives are: me scrolling through my Spotify page with some anime GIFs to make it look like an Instagram Story someone might actually post, and a live performance video asking viewers to follow me on Spotify. These creatives provide great insight into what I'm about and encourage people to explore my music by checking it out on streaming services.

2. I run a cold Free + Shipping & Handling funnel using Meta Ads, where I sell my most popular album as a CD. This skips straight to an affirmation step, but it has been fantastic for introducing fans to me and what my music is about. It also serves as a great first touchpoint via the comment section on the ads. I reply to every single comment, giving a great first impression of myself and my personality!

Overall, these two methods are the main spark for getting someone to seek out my music, or stop scrolling and check it out the next few times they see my name pop up on their algorithms! 🙂

Please give us a brief overview of the Education Phase of your Buddy system:
The Education Phase of My Buddy System Happens in Two Different Places:

1. If the person is introduced to me via a Follower Finder campaign, Spotify algorithm, etc., then I have plenty of music for them to discover and dive into a rabbit hole with. And if they are seeking out my music manually, I have a bunch of interviews and recorded live performances they can find and watch to learn more about what I’m all about! 🙂

2. If someone skips past any of the early stages of the buddy system (for example, if they’ve already affirmed via my F+SH funnel), then as soon as they join my email list, I send a first email introducing myself and providing a video that perfectly showcases what I’m about (it’s a video of me doing a tier list of albums in my genre). I follow that with more videos, such as a song breakdown from the album they purchased, and all the “greatest hits” emails I’ve sent to my email fan club over the past year. This ensures they’re stoked to interact with me and be a part of my world! 🙂

Please give us a brief overview of the Permission Phase of your Buddy system:
The Permission Phase of My Buddy System Happens in a Few Different Ways:

1. I use third-party music platforms to farm emails for me! For example, I use proper tagging on Bandcamp to help people discover my music. Bandcamp provides the emails of anyone who downloads my albums, so once a week, I add all these emails to my email list and introduce them to me and my fan club!

2. I funnel almost everything to my Linktree website: https://groovykaiju.com. Whenever anyone clicks on a link about me anywhere, they most likely pass through my website, which includes a section for people to join my free email fan club. This strategy works really well!

3. Finally, my F+SH funnel drives most of my permission phase. This is because I achieve a super high ~90.5% email opt-in rate from my F+SH customers. I optimized this by editing my Shopify opt-in text from: "Get exclusive offers from this store" to: "Add me to the fan club for free exclusive music, merch discounts, and more!" After the initial purchase, I also send a bonus free live performance video as part of their order. This gives me a second opportunity to encourage them to join the fan club, and it works really, really well!

Please give us a brief overview of the Nurturing Phase of your Buddy system:
The Nurturing Phase of my Buddy System happens mostly through my email fan club!

Each year, I set up an "Evergreen Nurturing" workflow in my CRM. I fill it with fun, cool things to share with my fan club, sent about every other week. This could be fan-made anime videos I've found, Y2K video game sample CDs I thrifted and ripped, or my review of attending the Godzilla Minus One red carpet premiere—whatever I think my fans will enjoy!

I always ensure there's an email queued up for long-time fans at the "front" of the list. New fans start at the beginning of the workflow and "catch up" with the others over time. This system keeps new fans engaged while ensuring I can maintain consistency, even if I get busy or sick. Plus, every email includes my signature and offers for my paid fan club! Fans are also encouraged to reach out anytime, which has led to some amazing conversations.

On Instagram, I post about once a week and frequently share stories. I reply to every comment on my ads and posts, but I redirect DMs to email since my inbox got a little out of hand!

Please give us a brief overview of the Affirmation Phase of your Buddy system:
I run both warm and cold F+SH funnels through the introduction series in my email fan club and Meta Ads, offering my most popular album for free, just pay $9.99 for shipping and handling (covers the CD, shipping, payment fees, and I have a Third Party Logistic company to handle fulfilling the CD for me, so their costs as well!). This leaves me with a tiny ~$0.30 gross profit on the CD itself, but here's the fun part: customers can pay their own price on the CD or grab upsells like: cassette or vinyl upgrades, more CDs, and merch like stickers and keychains. Plus, the shipping price drops with more items in the cart—boosting conversions while keeping fans happy!

Please give us a brief overview of the Ascension Phase of your Buddy system:
Here's the different ways I get my affirmed fans and customers to buy again and ascend!

1. Fan-Powered Merch Drops: I run an annual survey in my Email Fan Club asking fans who have already bought merch, what future merch they'd actually buy and at what price. Then, I turn the winning ideas into a big merch drop every two months in a promotional calendar. This strategy has worked wonders in turning first-time buyers into loyal repeat customers!

2. Paid Monthly Subscription (Patreon): My monthly subscription gives fans access to my entire back catalog, exclusive live recordings, and one-of-a-kind merch. Every 6 months, I invite my most active free fan club members to level up and join the paid expanded version of my fan club.

3. "Funky Fan Favorites" Offer: After fans join my Email Fan Club through my Free + Shipping CD offer, I follow up with a special deal on my most-loved merch items, but this time with free shipping! It's my way of saying, "You covered shipping last time, this one's on me!"

4. Fan Club Super Signature: Every fun nurturing email I send ends with a friendly P.S. that gently reminds fans of the things I mentioned above so they can ascend whenever they are ready!

Please give us a brief overview of the Referral Phase of your Buddy system:
I'm STOKED on my referral system! If you're reading this, feel free to steal this idea! 🙂

My Free + Shipping CD offer has been super successful at creating affirmed fans. So, I thought, "What's the best way to get more fans like them? Probably my affirmed fans friends!" So, I happened to read the book Growth Hacking by Sean Ellis, and I tested different ways to encourage fans to share my music and my email fan club. After a lot of trial and error, I found that the best approach was a simple one-way referral bonus: give fans an easy way to gift something completely free to their friends.

Here's how I do it: Inside every Free CD, I include QR codes for digital bonus content. One of them says, "Give your friends a free download of this album!" And When their friends scan the code, they can choose either a free digital download or go to the exact same Free plus shipping offer their friend got the CD from!

This is DOPE, because this gets around USPS rules about marketing material in media mail packages! And! On average, I get two unique emails every week that come in from friends sharing with friends.

Beyond this system, my fans are naturally incredible at spreading the word. They've brought their friends to shows, shared my music online, and helped me grow in a BUNCH of different ways! Thankfully, even outside of this CD QR code idea, music has some built in referral! 🙂

Please describe your growth, achievements, and success, over the last 12 months:
Over the last 12 months I have:

* Generated $168,314.08 in Revenue
* Achieved Monthly Operational Profitability in music business (~$1,600 per month in the last 3 months)
* Demonstrated that Generating Cohorts in my music business can generate an 11.84% annual R.O.I
* Generated 6,129 New Customers (9,709 Total)
* Grew My Email Fan Club by 5,729 Active Subscribers (7,270 Total)
* Played Multiple Sold Out Shows in Los Angeles (~200 capacity)
* Booked, organized, ran and performed at 9 of my own shows
* Grew My Instagram Followers by 11,600 (23.1k Total)
* Grew My Spotify Monthly Listeners by 14,140 (74k Total)
* Grew My Spotify Followers by 15,516 (46k Total)
* Most importantly, made a genuine positive impact on a BUNCH of people's lives who listen and support my music!
* And Many More! 🙂

Lastly, please tell us why you think you should be a finalist for the Indie Of The Year Award:
I should be a finalist because my music and business are building a sustainable direct-to-fan connection where my fans and I provide financial support, personal stories, good vibes, and awesome experiences for each other. From plushies to cassettes to vinyl to even the way I make new music, every release has been inspired by my fans and crafted to make them feel like they're part of the journey. This year, I took risks to scale up, tested new ideas, learned from my mistakes, and created a system that's now finally consistently profitable and deeply personal to me and my fans! I'm honored and beyond thankful for everything this hard work, honest connections, and fun music have been able to build! Not just for me, but for everyone listening to and supporting my artistry!