Use THESE Videos In Your Music Marketing Ads

A lot of artists ask me what types of videos they should use in their ad campaigns to promote their music. And I've given examples in the past when I'm talking about campaigns, but I haven't really had a dedicated video talking about the different types of visuals you can use and showing some actual examples of videos that are actually being used in campaigns with good results. So, I'm filming this video late February. I don't know exactly when it'll go live. Sometimes it's soon, sometimes after, but either way, everything's current, right? This video is not going to go live crazy later. So, if you're seeing this video reasonably close to when it was published, this is kind of currently what's working. Just keep in mind if you're looking at this a year in the future, things may have changed. You may be, you know, check out other more recent videos on my channel as well. But, this is what's working right now. So, we're just going to start looking at some visuals. And this first artist we're going to look at is kind of like a cinematic pop artist, dark pop, I might even say, depending on the song. Their costs we're getting is 24 cents a conversion, which, if you know anything about this type of campaign, it's like a streaming conversion campaign where we send people to a landing page and they convert to either Spotify or Apple Music or whatever, often called a Spotify conversion campaign, but it's not just for Spotify, right? It works for all the streaming platforms. Uh the main I'll show you the main video where that she's using first or that we're using from her stuff is an accurate one first, then I'll show you a second one as a counterpoint. So, this is the one that's getting all the traction. I have the audio muted for copyright reasons. It's a lip sync performance video. She's sitting in the grass, looks like at night. She's got some lighting on her so you can see her clearly, but she's kind of in a black void. And there's just lyrics on there. And the lyrics are very like to the point, right? Kind of intense. And I think her facial expressions and hand expressions and just the overall look and the fact that it's so matter-of-fact and the lyrics are like kind of intense, I think really sells the song um in in that way. And the fact that there's two of her on screen, I think also helps uh just because it makes the shot more interesting, right? There's there's two of her. And you it kind of imagine scrolling on Instagram or Facebook or whatever, and then this just pops on your screen. It's kind of initially like, oh, okay. You know, it's it's eye-catching. And then hopefully you're reading the lyrics and there's a swear right like pretty soon on there. I'm actually This squeaked through. Technically, you're not supposed to have any swears in your ads, but this squeaked through. And honestly, that's probably helping because people probably aren't used to seeing swears in ads, so it makes the ad feel more organic. Just be careful with stuff like that cuz if it gets you get too many rejections like that, it can cause you trouble. Now, she's using another ad, which is more like typical, I'd say. It's not shot in like there's not like two of her on screen and it's it's a more just like standard performance ad. She's at a cool-looking location. There's this kind of filter on the video that makes it feel kind of retro or nostalgic or lo-fi a little bit. Um and another thing worth mentioning that, you know, if you're on in your ad performing your video and you look like a normal person, unless that's your brand, it's probably not going to help, right? Like she's she's got like a whole There's a whole like dress code, so to speak. I don't know if this is how she normally dresses or if she puts a lot of thought into like how she shows herself on camera, right? There's kind of a look going on with all the jewelry and the shirts and the the type of clothes and the tattoos and stuff and so and then the hair and all that stuff. And that gives people like a visual thing to latch onto. When you're scrolling, you just see a normal person. Sometimes that's a good thing, but if you see someone that looks a little larger than life, sometimes that helps sell the vision that like, oh, this is like an artist. So, keep that in mind. Really depends on your brand. But, that's worth noting as well. So, two kind of performance style artist visuals. I would call this like a artist performance visual or a lip sync performance visual or a social media style video. These are just some some terminology that I might use to refer to this type of content that she's using. Now, flipping to a completely different type of artist. The last one was kind of like a pop dark pop cinematic pop singer-songwriter-esque. This example, the visuals are way different and it's a hip hop song. And so, opening up that one, again muting for copyright reasons, it's just an This is what I would call an artwork video. So, we got the artwork of the song. We also got some type of animated version of the artwork in the back with some kind of snow effect. Um and that's it. Super simple and it's doing 20 cents a conversion. And I just checked and this campaign was launched something around February 2nd or late January, something along those those lines. So, 20 cents a conversion and it's fairly recent and it's it's super simple, just artwork visuals, nothing fancy, right? Like you can rig those up pretty quick. You don't even have to be on camera. And you could even be like an anonymous artist making visuals like that. I will say that these visuals aren't like the best typically. Um typically, if I'm going to do a visual like that, I want to have a different visual that's more engaging. So, for some music, it works great. And like 4 years ago, you could get by with visuals like that for every song. But nowadays, it's less common that artwork videos just crush it. So, typically, you're going to pair it with another visual of a different style. Honestly, it's great doing multiple styles of visuals anyways, but keep that in mind. The artwork visuals are probably the the kind of lower effort on the totem pole. So, just make sure if you do those, you're doing something else along with them, which we're doing in this other video. It just happened to be the case the artwork videos did pretty by a pretty good margin the the best. So, this next example is a little bit older, but even more recently, it's been doing good, too. So, we got 24 cents a conversion. And this example, it is a a music video. So, this artist is a father-daughter duo. They pretty much always have awesome video content, whether it's pro-shot music videos like this or if they do this thing where they're in their living room doing kind of like a duet, which is more kind of like a raw-looking video. They I I believe it's shot on a webcam, honestly. But, they've gone viral in the past with those videos. That's kind of how they get started making music professionally is making those videos. And then that kind of elevated them to be able to do the actual music videos. But, you know, in the past, you might have heard me say music videos don't do as good as social media content. Well, this is proof that music videos can also work great. Music videos sometimes come across as being like too produced. For them, it works. For their ads. So, again, it's it's worth trying, right? So so far, we have kind of social media clips, so to speak, artist performance clips. We have artwork videos. And then now we're having an example of of a pretty high budget. Like they're on a roof with a full band. And they got like a mandolin player and stuff like that. Like this this is, you know, it's not a crazy video to do, but it's it's a high-budget video with with a team of people filming this. Uh and we've had other videos like this in the past where they've done where they have like crazy drone shots and they're in crazy locations around the world. There's a whole choir or whatever. So, it still is viable if you have a dope music video to use that as your ad creative. Just keep in mind if you do this, it it can be a good idea if you don't know what's going to work to then pair it with something that's a little more social-like. Because remember, these ads run on Instagram and or Facebook. So, if your ad blends in with social media because it is a social media post, sometimes that makes it work better, not worse. Even though it's like a lower quality video, sometimes it's better cuz it blends in with the platform. So, now let's take a detour to metalcore deathcore. Probably probably like the polar opposite of the last few projects that we've looked at. Uh this is a fairly recent campaign it launched, I think, like 10 days ago or something, maybe even less than that. It's only spent It's spent less than $100. This ad set has like 70. And so, the best performing ad is this V1P3, but all the ads are kind of similar. This is another example of of a music video shot, except one, it's for a heavy genre of music, and two, it's completely freaking different. And so, I have it muted for same reasons, but play it. This is a music video shot. And you know, I don't know the details of exactly how they filmed this, but it looks like they're basically just in a dark room with some fog and they put some lights behind them and they're just performing the song, right? Not a crazy video to do. They might have done it with a pro studio and pro camera rig, but keep in mind with some creativity and a phone and some cheap lights, you could pull off shots kind of like all these shots, right? The social media things with the beginning, pretty sure those were just filmed on a phone. Maybe they were done on a nice camera, but they could have been done on a phone. The artwork videos can be done in CapCut. This this video could be done with a phone and some creativity in the lighting. And honestly, like this shot, again, very cool from a perspective and from like a camera perspective. It's shot in this angle of like over the back of the drummer looking at all the members of the band in this a kind of dense fog. And this song is super heavy. Like there's like explosions going off. There's layers of screams like drop-tuned guitars. This is a brutal song. >> [laughter] >> Uh in a good way. And so, you're getting this dark, gritty atmosphere from the video, which lines up with the song very well. And even though it's kind of a professional-looking shot, um you could do this fancy-like or you could do this on a phone, right? Your videos don't have to be expensive. It's more important that they're creative. Um but this, I believe, is from a professional music video, so to speak, but it matches very well with the song and is working. This next example is kind of like a pro music video, but it's also kind of like a performance video. And it's also in a completely different genre. This is kind of like instrumental progressive metal or instrumental modern metal, depending on how you frame it. Um but, it it actually has people that are pretty like well-known in in in this circle, right? The best performing ad has this dude Nolly in it, who is in Periphery, and he's the guy who made Get Good Drums. Like he's kind of a legend in the in in his spheres. Um and so, he's on this song doing a guitar solo and they I him on for the video as well. And which is pretty epic. So it kind of makes sense why this one worked. But this is just a performance video which just happens to be like a pro shot performance video and that's why I said it's kind of like a music video but kind of like a social media clip as well. It's worth noting that this ad account's in Australian dollars. So 51 cents Australian is like it's it's 36 cents uh USD. So it's quite a bit better. Australians get really screwed with when it comes to the currency conversion. Canadians do. Every time I do the conversion I'm like, "Whoa, okay. That's intense." But anyways, like 36 cents US. Um and they had another feature on the song too. So that we tried the solo with that. We also tried the main two two guitarists on there as separate different videos. But the same goal goes back to it's the artist on screen performing their song. Whether that means playing guitar, whether that means singing or lip syncing or miming, right? It's This is It's kind of a music video but it's social media content. And yet another time going to something completely different. This is kind of like commercial pop. Uh this artist I think calls his stuff LA pop. He's He's evolved a good amount over the over the years I've known him as well. But that's kind of the world he's he's operating Some stuff's a little more dark pop or singer-songwriter. Some of it's even acoustic. Some of it's super upbeat. He's He's a pop artist. Um but he has amazing videos that are all all things again anyone can do with a phone and some creativity. Nothing he's doing is out of reach and nothing's with a crazy budget camera. Let me show you these two in particular that are doing the best out of this particular song. So this one he's just floating in a pool or what I hope is a pool >> [laughter] >> or assume is a pool. And he's just lip syncing the song. The song is kind of it's like got this like vocoder effect and it's very just atmospheric and minimal. So it kind of looks like he's just floating and gasping for air. But think of how simple this video is to make. If you got a pool or a hot tub or something or you can go to someone's place that has that just go float and lip sync your song and get the camera right and then you just made it black and white. There's nothing Again, nothing crazy here. Like this is this would very likely be a free video to make. You could even do this yourself. And then he has another one where he's on a dirt bike which this one's a little dangerous probably. But again, not not crazy expensive shot. This is something that you can do with a phone and some friends. Someone's got a dirt bike. Someone's got a car. Drive down the road. Have someone filming. Have you lip syncing your song while the car is blasting the music so you can get it in sync. Very awesome shot. There's a lot of this movement. Why is he wearing a tucked-in shirt, dress pants, and a tie while riding a dirt bike? And oh my god is he going to fall over? So you you you you what you This video pops in your screen and it's immediately like, "Whoa, right?" And then hopefully by the time you're even realize what's going on you're like, "Oh, this is a cool song. I want to go check this song out." So I think it's worth pointing out that this artist Crash, who is worth checking out if this is your cup of tea for music, consistently just has awesome videos that I think are a great example of what you can do not with like budget but with just creative ideas for filming videos, right? This one he's just out of public playground uh hanging upside down on the monkey bars while someone films. He has this thing where he's singing the song and people are just throwing water at him. They're getting glitter thrown at him. He's get They're getting paint brushes and painting his face. Later they stick band-aids on his face. No cost to make this stuff other than just having a couple friends come over and have fun. He choreographed a fight scene. Oh no, this is stock footage. This other one he choreographed a fight scene uh with I think a friend of his or relative of his that would like does choreography or something. Um and he just coordinated this with him and I think he said it was really difficult but again it wasn't this like crazy thing that's out of reach. And then there's one just running around his house uh in in like shorts uh just kind of being an overall crazy person in his house. All examples of not what you can do like, "Oh, I got a bunch of money to film videos. I got to make something fancy." But what can I do that's creative that matches the vision for my song? If you went and heard the song you'd be like, "Oh yeah, these videos all make sense with the story lyrics of the song too but also just with the vibe of the track." Now we also have the section on our agency website that breaks down some of these videos that we talked about like there's this topic style where you're putting stuff on screen. There is this music video style. There's this animated artwork thing. You could have an AI morphing video, an anime music video. These are all different options that that you can kind of have and some of them which we covered in the examples. But if you're looking to have someone help you with these visuals, we actually just have a service on our site where you can choose uh one of these categories that you want and uh we can either chop up your existing footage for you or go out and make these videos uh for you so you can go run them in your campaign. We would do of course also have an agency which you can find links down below. But if you're just looking to have someone help you with your visuals, we can do that too. Anyways, I hope you found this video super helpful to know what kind of ads to make. If you want to see how to run campaigns like this, check out this video right here to see the entire process from start to finish. And thanks for watching. I'll see you in the next video. Bye.