If you have read any of our previous posts, you will know what a good music marketing campaign means for the success of an album, a musical work or the video of a song on YouTube.
That’s why today we want to highlight some of the most original campaigns to show you why it’s a good idea to do a music marketing campaign.
What is a music marketing strategy?
A music marketing campaign is to carry out different strategies to get new followers of your work. It is clear that to be successful and to be known to the world, you need to make use of marketing campaigns.
Therefore, our first recommendation is that you look for the strategy that best fits you and your projects, since you must take into account that there are different ways and spaces to create a marketing campaign.
Organize a campaign that fits you and your music
From making a video series on YouTube —or, in its shorter version, YouTube Shorts— to having a billboard on the buildings in Times Square, it’s all up to you!
Before we start with some examples to inspire you, we advise you to read this post about the most popular trends in the music industry, so you will know which strategy will work best!
How to start a music marketing campaign?
If you haven’t promoted your music yet, here are some tips to help you start shaping your music marketing strategy.
1. Create a brand
To begin with, you have to see yourself and your music as a concept. What do you want to transmit to your listeners? What do you want your fans to identify with?
For example, if we focus on Bad Bunny and what his fans say about him he always connects with his followers because of his “good vibes and closeness” as well as constantly encouraging them to feel free to be as they want, something he tries to show in his social networks and with his aesthetics.
Create a concept around your image and music
Therefore, before you start creating music ads, think about the concept you want to give to your music or to a specific album —remember that artists like Taylor Swift or Miley Cyrus divide their albums into “eras”, changing the aesthetics and the concept from one to another completely—.
What’s more, Taylor Swift’s fans loved talking about the differences between the artist’s eras so much that, in the end, the American singer announced this month that her next tour is called “The Eras Tour” in reference to all of her musical stages!
2. Take care of your social media
You already have your music and your concept, now it’s time to share it!
We recommend you to have a calendar in order to organize the posts you want to make in different social media.
This is important because this way your followers will feel that you are in their day-to-day and they will be updated on your latest news when it’s time to share something important.
Some posts you can make on a daily basis:
- Tell curiosities about yourself
- Tell a funny anecdote
- Show your weekend routine
- Do a Q&A with your followers
- Share UGC content that catches your attention
Remember! The good thing about this type of videos is that you can reuse them for other platforms, such as YouTube Shorts. If you want to know more about this new YouTube experience, discover it in our guide to YouTube Shorts.
3. Set the important dates for your music
Something that will help you keep a good organization and get the most out of your posts is to set essential dates in relation to your projects.
If you are going to promote a new song, you will have to organize the launch several months in advance, among other tasks that you can discover in these 7 tips for your music release plan.
We also suggest you keep in mind the anniversaries of your albums so that, when the day comes, you can make a post to promote it!
For example, last year on its tenth anniversary, Justin Bieber released a collection of animated videos for his album Under The Mistletoe, which was released in November 2011.
As a result, he managed to bring back into the spotlight of the music industry and his fans an album he had created 10 years earlier.
4. Find a music marketing strategy
Now that you have planned what you want to share and promote, you need to find the right way to do it.
Throughout this article we have already given you some ideas to promote your content in different ways, and there are many more!
Bringing together your music, your concept and the important dates for your project, find a strategy where everything can fit within your budget.
As you have seen with some of the tips we have given you, you don’t need to have a big budget for your promotion to be successful: first of all, it must be original to catch the attention of users.
If you want to know more about how much it can cost you to promote your music, here’s our guide to YouTube ad prices and what they depend on.
Top 3 best music marketing campaigns
Here are some of the most outstanding campaigns in recent years, so you can see how amazing a marketing campaign can be.
1. Olivia Rodrigo - SOUR
Definitely one of the most original campaigns of recent years. Olivida Rodrigo knew how to target the audience she wanted by releasing a campaign divided in two:
- SOUR Car Wash: A car wash with the aesthetics of her new album, where she was there to welcome fans and give them some gifts.
There was also a banner with a Spotify code that fans could scan to proceed to the album and save it!
- SOUR Prom: A virtual concert on YouTube where the predominant aesthetic was a prom, as the artist had not been able to celebrate her own due to the pandemic, thus connecting with many young people who were in the same situation.
Here’s one of the videos that sums up the experience quite well!
In addition, so that fans would not forget this important event, the artist went to some fans’ houses to personally invite them to her prom:
2. Coldplay - A Head Full Of Dreams
Coldplay also made an impressive campaign for their album A Head Full of Dreams. A few weeks before the release, the London Underground started to be filled with these posters that we show you below:
Coldplay fans quickly noticed that, at the Global Citizen Festival held in September of that year, Chris Martin, lead singer of Coldplay, was wearing this T-shirt on which you can see the same symbol (On the right side of the image, under the pin).
After all this hype, the band finally revealed that their next album would be called A Head Full of Dreams and that, indeed, the symbol would be the album cover.
As you can see, if you make an original campaign in which your followers feel they can participate, it is more likely to work better.
Make your fans participate in the promotional campaign.
And yes, if you were wondering, they also did promotion on Instagram:
If you are interested in exploring other strategies, we share with you this post so you can learn how music and advertising work in social media
3. Avicii - Stories
One of the most remembered campaigns in the music industry was Avicii’s campaign for his album Stories.
This Swedish DJ used Instagram to make a game that his fans still talk about as one of the best campaigns ever.
To begin with, Avicii started uploading a set of photos that formed a larger image to his personal account. From there, fans began to investigate and discovered that there were accounts tagged in the images, which took you to other accounts that were also part of the game.
Take advantage of the tools of the different platforms to be original
In the end, besides announcing the Stories album, Avicii wanted to remind us that we are the main characters of our own story. Isn’t it great?
You can still participate in this adventure! Click on the image or the link, then on the label and let yourself be carried away by this original idea.
Here are some original ideas to create your next music marketing campaign and make it unforgettable! What are you waiting for to promote your next hit?
