Consider Using Paid Advertising As Part Of Your Music Video Release Strategy
Even if you contact 100 places to promote your music video, you’ll find that only a small percentage of those places will respond to you and go on to promote your video on their site. The truth is, getting promotion without paying is hit and miss. That’s why, if you have the money, it can be a good idea to pay to get some real eyes in front of your video.
When it comes to music videos, one of your best bets is to pay for Youtube adverts. You can pay to get your music video in front of a relevant audience when they’re watching similar videos to yours. While it costs money, you’re guaranteed views. And if you funnel those people on to your mailing list, you’ll be able to make money back off some of them in future if they go on to buy gig tickets or your music and merch.While paid advertising takes a while to master, it can be a handy at getting you exposure on demand. So if you’ve the budget to spare, consider using it.
Facebook adverts can also be good if you’ve more of an established fanbase.
Use Social Media The Right Way
We all use social media. If youre not on Facebook, and Twitter these days, its almost like you dont exist. However, you may not be using social media to its full potential to promote your music.
Social media is NOT a straight-up marketing platform. Its really a catalyst for conversation and word-of-mouth marketing. About 80% of your posts should be funny, conversational, and interesting, leaving about 20% for promotional material. Here are some examples and checklists that you can use.
Thats not to say that conversational posts cant be promotional! You just need to learn how to frame the content in interesting ways. For example, if youre in the studio recording a new album, try sprinkling little updates on social media. Tell a story about your studio experience that day, share a photo of the mix, or post a short teaser video of a song.
If youre out on tour, take photos at the venues or share short videos or photos of the audiences. These things arent obviously promotional, but they still let fans know whats going on.
Its important to remember, though, that social media isnt the end-all-be-all when it comes to promoting your music. It can easily become a huge time suck that takes you away from your music if you dont manage your time properly .
Ways To Promote Your Music Online
Updated by Melanie Kealey on Sep 14, 2021 in: Music Marketing & Promotion
Posted on Jul 27, 2016
With so many ways to promote your music online – and only so many hours in the day – how do you decide which platforms are worth your time and energy?
If you try to promote your music through every channel available to you, all at the same time, youre going to spread yourself too thin and eventually burn out. On top of that, youll end up frustrated that all of your hard work hasnt actually amounted to much.
So rather than attempt the impossible, focus your efforts on a handful of platforms where your existing and potential fans are most likely to spend their time online. Start by promoting your music independently through the platforms that you most enjoy using, and build from there.
Here are 17 of the best ways to promote your music online.
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Develop A Social Media Marketing Strategy
Whether youre trying to get the word out about a new release, or getting people to show up to your performances, social media is a tool you can use to narrow down who might like your music. From there you can reach out to those people directly.
Use social media as a tool to drive fans back to your website, where they can explore your content and music in more depth – increasing the chances of converting them into true fans who will continue to engage with your music.
When you create a plan to market your music, identify the platforms youre comfortable with and use regularly. Then craft some meaningful social media content. This could include behind the scenes videos, themed posts, and non-music content to help develop your story.
Once youve got your ideas nailed down, stagger your updates and encourage sharing. Play to your strengths: if youre great at sharing impromptu content, keep that in mind. Another option to consider is working some paid social media ads into your strategy to better target and reach potential listeners.
Promote Your Music By Getting A Sponsor
Getting a sponsor can help you with reaching an audience that you didnt have access to. For an upcoming hip hop artist, you could get a clothing line to sponsor you and cross promote each others products. This isnt the easiest because, most upcoming hip hop artist are not offering enough value to the sponsor, but Ive seen it done.
Pandora is popular online radio station platform. Theyre very similar to every other internet radio station, but they have a lot more listeners.
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Create A Killer Press Kit
If youre a smaller indie band theres a good chance the radio station hardly knows anything about you. So, sending along an eye-catching electronic press kit is a great way to introduce yourself to the station.
Just made an EPK. WOO we look good with a little a e s t h e t i c
Acres Even
An electronic press kit, or EPK is a one-page synopsis of what makes your band unique. It should feature promotional photos, a biography, videos, music and anything else the station should know about you.
This helps get them invested in your songs before theyve even listened to them. For further tips on this check out our guide to creating a memorable artist press kit.
Music Promotion Through Paid Advertising
Music marketing through paid digital advertising only works when your brand foundation, organic social media strategy and content are in place.
But this is where brilliant strategies really make the difference as you bolster on top of your current brand and messaging.
You can push this excitement and messaging out through digital advertising where you can reach hundreds of thousands of your target audience with a very small budget .
I get a lot of questions about social media advertising budgets, music promotion and music marketing on a low budget.
One strategy is to put your money into brand awareness and video view campaigns.
If youre marketing on a low budget, you need to keep people on the platform. Its cheaper and more cost-effective in the long run.
Traffic and conversion campaigns are more expensive as they take people away from the platform.
If you are going to put money into marketing your music online, remember to target effectively and concisely.
Platforms like Facebook and Instagram allow you to hyper-target specific demographics on things like age, interests, location and so much more. The more focused and defined your audience, the more likely you are to get great results for your ads and expand your follower count.
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B There Is A Strong Community
People like to feel like theyre part of something , so you need to make people feel like individuals rather than just numbers, you can do this by responding to every single comment. Even if some of the comments you receive in the early stages are from bots, still reply as this increases the engagement and displays to your potential real followers that youre willing to engage, and if they were to leave a comment you are likely to reply.
Use Ads And Sponsored Posts
One of the best usage of Instagram ads to promotePortugal.The Mans show back in 2018.
Organic reach is declining on social media. In some ways, social media marketing is slowly becoming a pay-to-win.
Instagram is no exception, and by convertingyour Instagram account to a business account, you can now invest in Instagramads, allowing you to engage a wider audience and reach new fans.
There are : single image, video, carousel,and Stories.
Its virtually guaranteed to generate resultsfairly quickly, the main challenge in advertising on Instagramand other socialmedia networks is managing costs: it can be extremely expensive if you are notcareful.
So, the main thing to focus on here is how wecan reach as many people as possible with the advertising while spending aslittle as possible. Specific to the purpose of promoting your music, there aretwo different factors to consider: targeting, and the content of your ad.
- Targeting: that is, finding the best possibleaudience to display your advertising
- Content: publishing an engaging post that canattract the target audience defined above
You need to get people to stop scrolling andclick on your ad. While the most obvious thing is to simply use your musicvideos as the Instagram ad, remember that most people watch videos with thesound turned off. So, unless the visuals of your music videos are reallyattractive, they might not click on the ad even if your song is really good.
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Create An Ongoing Theme And Message
In order to create content which people want to see more, you need to have an ongoing theme, your audience needs to know what theyre buying in to. Therefore, you need to have an ongoing theme or message which your audience can buy in to. If youre a musician who plays multiple instruments, you can build your audience through creating content for an audience interested in musical instruments, an example of this would be HANNIE who managed to accumulate 300,000 followers combined through creating content around their songwriting, production and instruments, you can check read more about them here.
Using a KISS strategy this will allow your audience to easily identify your themes and messages and know exactly what theyre going to be seeing show up on their feed after theyve hit the follow button. These themes and messages can be anything you like, heres some examples: Inspirational content where you create music to be played over inspiring videos.
Political, environment or for a cause type of content where your content stands for something which will attract others who have similar beliefs to follow.
Documentary style content which has a strong story line of your journey as an emerging artist.
Educational content teaching your audience new skills such as live production or songwriting sessions.
Want To Go Further With Your Marketing And Promotion Efforts
- The modern strategies for music marketing, branding and promotion that will work best for you.
- Tools to identify and create goals for marketing your music.
- How to build your brand and leverage the power of sponsorships to drive awareness of your music.
- See exactly how to develop and enhance your website and create an electronic press kit to attract attention.
- See how to master digital marketing including how to build an email list and create effective communications for your audience.
- How to effectively promote your music on social media and how you can leverage these channels to build your audience on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and via email.
Get the knowledge to understand marketing and branding and what works for you and your fanbase. Gain the confidence to excel by building alliances with people who can help you grow your audience. See exactly how to sell more music, tickets and merchandise using modern social media marketing techniques. Get more fans and sell more music. Learn how to tap into new revenue streams. See how to leverage your interests to find real fans and harness momentum. Discover the power of niche marketing and how to find your exact niche. Learn how to differentiate yourself and stand out from the crowd by tapping into like-minded people, sponsorships and causes to find and grow your audience.
If you want help with your music career, consider signing up for the Music Business Accelerator program .
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Never Make Any Weak Moves
Ok, so this one is more of a tip of how not to promote your music. That said, focusing on not losing fans is just as important as gaining new fans ).
If you can make good songs but also make the occasional dud, it’s important to know what to do with that dud song. Even if you’re spent money to record it, don’t use it.
Don’t give it out to fans. Instead, put it in a deep folder in your computer that will never be found by anyone!
This song will do you more harm than good, and work at chipping away at your reputation.
Similarly, when you’re starting to do well, it’s easy to want to scale up quick, or rinse and repeat what’s been working for you. This is a good idea, but only if you don’t let the quality of what you’re doing slide.
In general, you want to avoid doing anything that will have a negative impact on your reputation. You want people to think of you as one of the best musicians in your genre, and you want to give people who havent heard you before the best first impression.
If you’re putting out weak songs though or weak artwork, a percentage of people will first hear you through that weak song, and possibly never give you another chance.
So keep everything you’re doing to a consistently high level, and people will regard you as a higher quality of musician.
Talking About More Than Just Your Music On Your Site
Remember the above point about posting more content on your site?
Well who’s to say that you have to talk about you all the time?
This will mean more traffic to your site in the long-run, as you’ll be using relevant terms which people will be searching for to find your kind of music. This strategy is definitely worth using, so get started with it asap!
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Engage Your Fans On Social Media
Social media got its name for a reason. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram are built around sparking conversations, growing networks, and engaging people. But sometimes, independent artists forget all this. Instead, they see social media as a one-sided marketing channeljust a space to post up an endless stream of promotional content.
You need to treat social media as a conversation. Respond to your followers comments, ask them questions, thank them for their support. Dont be afraid to let your personality shine through, because fans arent just investing in your music, theyre investing in the creators behind the music.
Another thing to focus on is the content you post. A feed full of release announcements is far from engaging. Theres a wealth of interesting content for musicians to choose from, like backstage videos, lyric sheets, demo recordings, conversations between band members, other music you like the list goes on!
For more tips on social media marketing, check out our article How to promote your music on social media.
C There Is Content People Would Like To See More Of
Gaining followers isnt about looking cool, people dont follow accounts because they are visually pleasing, nor do they decide to listen to your music because youve given them a pitch in your bio, they look to see if your account is something theyd like to be involved with as well as whether your content is something that theyd like to see more of. People hit the follow but not to reward you for having a great page already but because they intend to consume more of your content. If you are creating content which has an ongoing story or theme which tells your audience there is more to come this will get people to hit the follow button when they come across your account.
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Promote Your Album Live
These days, album releases are becoming more and more digital. You dont need to worry about getting your album in the big stores and then going to signings on the day of release. Instead, you just have to press the upload button, send out a few tweets, and call it a day. However, just because you can release entirely online doesnt mean you should. The person-to-person experience is still extremely important in the music industry.
Premiere unreleased music.
I know recording an album can be a little chaotic as you scramble to get everything done on time, but this is exactly when you want to start playing some gigs. Let your fans know that youll be premiering a new song at your shows. Not only will this bring people out and get them excited for the album, youll also have a chance to tweak the songs based on your audiences reaction. If it doesnt sound quite how you wanted when played loud, you can still make some changes! You could even schedule four shows in the month leading up to the release and tell your fans that youll play the entire album at one of them. This way, if they really want to hear the new songs early, theyll have to come to every show.
Throw an album release party.
Set A Timeline And Be Patient
Yes, part of the benefit of singles is that theyre low pressure and you can drop them quickly. But dont be in TOO much of a rush. Plan ahead. Do it right. You wont be able to launch this song again.
Depending on the scope of your campaign, you might even need 1-3 months of preparation.
Here are just some of the things you could do to promote your single, if you have enough time:
- Communicating with reps from your distributor, licensing agency, etc.
- A Show.co page to feature your video
- Playlist and radio promotion
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