[Editor’s Note: This article was written by Hugh McIntyre. In a three-part series, Hugh will outline the key components to getting the most marketing power out of your music videos. Stay tuned for the next installments!]
Music videos are expensive and time-consuming pieces of content to create, and you want to make sure when your next one drops, it’s not just another thing for people to watch (or ignore). It’s an event.
But how can artists accomplish this? There is a lot that goes into a proper music video premiere, and the entire process doesn’t begin when the visual is out. It starts days, or perhaps even weeks before that.
Below are five music video premiere tactics for just before your work arrives. This is the first in a three-part series that will help you get the most out of your just-released treatment.
1. Hint That Something’s Coming
Some artists prefer to simply give everything away upfront and tell their fans what’s coming and when in one fell swoop (perhaps in a tweet or an email blast), but that tactic doesn’t allow you to hype up the release, and not to mention you miss out on some fun.
That plan can work for superstars who see their social media posts garner an incredible amount of media attention, but for those acts still just building a fan base, anticipation can be a very powerful tool.
You can start the process of premiering a music video with something very cryptic. Perhaps just the name of the tune, a still, or something else that suggests that something important is coming, but which gives very little away. This should spark the interest of fans, who will then be interested in seeing what’s next.
2. Share The Details
After a small suggestion that a new video is on the way, it’s time to actually tell fans when it’s going to arrive so they can make sure to catch it when it does.
Give them the day, date, and time, if applicable. Tell them what song it will accompany as well, if that wasn’t already made clear. If the video is for a track that’s already been released, that may change your wording than if it’s for something nobody has heard yet.
There are tons of creative and visual ways to make this information public, but don’t make it difficult to understand. You actually want people to catch it, after all!
3. Tease It
You may have already posted a picture or two from the set or from the actual music video, but there is so much more than can be shared before the video arrives in full!
Take to your social platforms and upload more snaps, or, even better, a clip from the treatment. It can be two seconds long or 30, depending on your visual and what you want to give away. You may choose to edit it so everyone watching gets a full sense of what they’re going to see (like a trailer), or select a single segment that you believe will intrigue your followers the most.
While giving your followers a handful of still images from the video over time is easy to do, you probably don’t want to share more than one teaser clip, unless they’re very short. If you end up exposing several 30 second-long snippets of the entire piece before it airs, how much is there left for them to be excited about?
4. The Day Before
This is the time to get people really jazzed for what’s about to drop.
Even if you haven’t gotten around to doing much teasing and posting, you will want to make sure you convey just how thrilled you are to be sharing your latest music video, and if you do that well, your fan base will pick up on the energy and they’ll feel the same way.
Make sure you reiterate the details you’ve already made public, such as what platforms the visual will be available on (YouTube is best, since you can make money from ads, and it’s where the vast majority of people go to watch videos) and exactly when they can watch.
5. Tell Everyone
You should be focusing the majority of your promotional efforts before your music video arrives on social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, but you must also go out of your way to tease the clip and share the info of when it’ll be viewable elsewhere as well.
Write everything fans need to know in your bio on social sites, put it on your website (whether just in text or in some fun visual format), tell everyone you know personally, and make sure to include it in your email newsletter that goes out before it’s up. You will even want to schedule that email blast to go out at the perfect time to promote your upcoming video.
Hugh McIntyre writes about music and the music industry and regularly contributes to Forbes, Sonicbids, and more.
Tags: featuring marketing music video premier