You may think that your work is done once the filming of your music video is finished, but in reality, your work has only just begun. The next step is to promote it and, as an independent artist, that’s where things can get tricky because, unlike the biggest names in the music industry, you don’t have the backing of a record label or an already large and established fanbase.
You have to promote it all by yourself and when coming up with a good marketing strategy, the thing to keep in mind is that not only do you want your number of views to climb steadily, but you also want your viewers to actively engage with your music video by liking it or by leaving a comment.
This may seem like a lot but don’t worry, here are a few strategies that can help you promote your music video on the Internet.
1. The better you target your audience, the better results you will get
If you’re hoping to get real results from a video marketing strategy, the first thing you need to do is target the right audience for your music. In other words, you need to find your niche.
The truth is that not everyone is going to like or even understand your music, and that’s okay. There are over 8 billion people in the world and your job is to find those who will resonate with your art and you need to share your music video with them. By narrowing your range, you’re actually much more likely to grow your audience and fanbase organically.
With that in mind, the first thing you need to do is define your musical genre, be it hip-hop, rap, country, or flamenco … Once you have your genre, you can find your target audience and the next step is to find out where they like to spend their time online. Is it YouTube? Instagram? TikTok? Facebook? All of the above? Bear in mind that unless you’re creating a very particular type of music that only appeals to a certain age group, it’s most likely that you will have to promote your music video on multiple social media platforms.
2. Make sure you optimize your music video when you upload it to YouTube
One of the most important online platforms for promoting a music video is YouTube, as it’s one of the biggest online music discovery platforms with almost 2.5 billion users.
With this in mind, the first thing to do if you don’t already have one, is to create a YouTube account. Similarly, if you haven’t set up your channel page yet, make sure that it is clear and complete as you want to come across as professional.
Ok, so you’ve got your music video ready to go and you want to upload it to YouTube to finally share it with the world. The problem is, there are over three million videos uploaded to YouTube every day. Yes, you read that right. That’s a huge amount of content and if you want to give your own video a fighting chance against the competition, you need to optimize it.
To do, this, you want to choose the title of your video carefully and make it as attention-grabbing as possible. YouTube also allows you to write a description of your video, so include all the relevant information about it. Another thing to do is align your music video’s tags with those of other popular videos in your genre, as this will allow your video to appear as a recommendation, which is a great way to drive traffic to it.
Finally, you should add any relevant Google keywords to your video’s metadata to increase the chances of your music video appearing in search results (and therefore getting more views!).
3. There’s no way around it, you need to use YouTube advertising
You’ve optimized your music video and it is now up on YouTube. You may think that there’s nothing more you can do to promote it on the platform but actually, there is.
You now need to look into YouTube advertising. Essentially, it is a service that promotes your video by showing it to potential fans.
From a practical point of view, it’s important to know that you need a Google account to use YouTube advertising. It can also be a YouTube account or a Gmail account.
Now, the problem with advertising on YouTube is that it costs money and since you’re not signed to a record label, this will have to come out of your own pocket. With this in mind, an important thing to consider when looking into YouTube ads is your budget. Bear in mind that even a small budget can have a big impact on your number of views and it’s better to start small and increase the amount you invest later if the campaign is working.
On the YouTube advertising platform, you can choose a daily budget or a campaign total and you need to make sure you select a start date and an end date for your campaign, whether it’s one week, one month, or six months…
When deciding on your campaign, one thing you have to put in is some keywords. Remember that an effective promotional strategy is about targeting the right audience so with that in mind, you need to be as specific as possible with the keywords you choose.
A good way to do this is to ask yourself: who does my music sound like? And on whose video would I like my music video to appear as an advert?
You’ve got a name, great! Write it down along with a few other words. Since you want to be as specific as possible, you don’t need to have a lot of keywords, just a few very specific ones.
Once you’ve submitted your form, your campaign needs to be approved and once it’s launched, you need to keep an eye on the results. Are the views climbing as much as you’d hoped? Are the results better than you expected and, if so, do you perhaps want to extend the campaign?
4. You need to engage with other music videos and submit your own to YouTube playlists
It’s important to always keep in mind that YouTube is a lively and buzzing community where content creators share their work and viewers share their thoughts and engage with said content.
This is why each video has a comment section under it and you need to promote your music video in that space as well.
Not only do you need to respond to any comments made on your own music video, but a great way to drive traffic to your video from another channel or page is to like and comment on similar videos to yours. This may be a bit time consuming but the results are worth it as it’s one of the best ways to grow organically on the platform, as well as build an active and engaged community around your music.
Another great way to drive traffic to your music video on the platform is to be featured in a video playlist. This works in the way as being featured on a popular Spotify playlist and can be a huge help in promoting your music video.
For this to happen, you need to submit your music video to YouTube playlist curators, maybe some that create playlists featuring indie music and independent artists.
You can either reach out to them independantly by using any email you may find on their website or YouTube channel, or you can even message them directly on social media platforms and interact with them there. Or, if you want to simplify the process, you can go through a music promotion service such as Groover that can put you in touch with these curators and submit your music video on your behalf.
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Get in touch with Youtube channels 👇
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The online world is not only vast, but also interconnected and you can use one online platform to promote content on another.
Regardless of how many followers you have, be it one or one million, you need to share and promote your music video on your social media platforms and make sure you get your music heard.
To do this, you need to have good content and it needs to be about your music video, or at least, about your music. A great way to use Instagram reels or TikTok for example is to show a short 30 second extract of your music video. You can also share some behind-the scene moments, any interviews you may have done to promote the music video… really, anything that is relevant.
Another thing you can do on social media that is quite effective and could be a good addition to your social media strategy, is to use influencer marketing.
To do this, you need to look up people who have a larger social media following than you in your niche and offer to collaborate with them, whether this be featuring them in a music video, or asking them to share your music video to their followers and subscribers in order to reach new fans.
As a quick final word on social media, similarly to YouTube ads, you can run social media ads such as Facebook ads or Instagram ads to target specific audiences and demographics. These can be incredibly useful to grab people’s attention and reach a larger fanbase than you would otherwise.
6. Keep in mind other online platforms to promote your music video
Music blogs sure aren’t as big as social media nowdays but they can still be a helpful tool to promote your music video. Not only that, but being featured on one as an unsigned artist can help you gain credibility amongst industry professionals and within the music industry in general.
Now, circling back to the first section, proper targeting is key to an effective promotional strategy so always keep in mind the genre of music you’re creating and reach out to blogs specialised in that genre.
What you want to do once you’ve pinned down your genre and have made a list of the possible online blogs, magazines, or even radio stations, that could suit you, is to search their website for their contact information or any sort of submission page. When contacting bloggers for a chance to feature your music video, always make sure that you give them all the important information so as to make it easier for them to go over your submission. Similarly to curated YouTube playlists, you can go through Groover to contact various media outlets that can help promote your music video.
To conclude, there are plenty of ways to promote a music video on the internet and by combining a proper use of Youtube as well as promoting your video on other media platforms, you can increase your number of views and get your music heard.
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