YouTube Ads for musicians: Music video promotion for beginners

Gone are the days of complex promotion strategies involving third-party platforms and hefty budgets. YouTube has made it incredibly simple for artists to boost their music videos directly through the platform. By setting up a campaign via YouTube Studio, you can bypass services like Prodvigate, Veefly, or Yougrowpromo, ensuring all your investment goes directly into your content.

Keep in mind that you'll need a Google Ads account to get started. Setting one up is easy – just log in to a Google account and visit ads.google.com.

So, how do you promote your music or lyric video on YouTube?

Step 1: Locate the Promotions part. You can access it in two ways:

• Directly under your video: Find the Promote button beneath a video your account uploaded. Clicking it will start the process.

• In your YouTube Studio: Open YouTube Studio, navigate to the Content section on the left bar and click on the Promotions tab. Here, you'll find a button marked + New promotion to create a new video boosting campaign.

Step 2: Define your goal. YouTube offers three primary goals for your promotion:

• Audience growth: Ideal for increasing views as well as subscriber count.
• Video views: Focuses on generating the most possible views for the specific video.
• Website visits: If you have an official website or merchandise store (and the video promotes that), this option can drive traffic there.

For most artists, the primary goal will be Audience growth – because you want views that can turn your viewers into fans, right? However, if you're focused on sheer numbers and want the biggest view count for your money, the Video views option is your best bet.

Website visits will only be right for you if you're promoting an event, merch, or anything else in the video, and want to direct people there.

Step 3: Select the video you want to promote. Usually, you'll want to promote your newest upload – thus, your latest release. Reminding people of older content or boosting something that’s proven popular with your audience is also a solid strategy.

In this step, you can optionally add a custom headline and description. Even if you don’t want to add anything special, make sure to review them to ensure they’re relevant and engaging (and to check that nothing weird or random snuck in there).

Step 4: Target your audience. There aren’t many targeting options available, so making the most of the ones you have is crucial to maximizing your promotion’s impact. Make sure to focus on the right:

• Countries: Target places where your music already resonates. Use Spotify for Artists and Apple Music for Artists data to find those. Consider including your home country and neighboring relevant ones as well – a local approach often works wonders.

Leaving the "Countries" section empty might get you cheaper views but can waste your budget on less impactful (= cheaper) areas (often India). This approach is only advisable if you're solely aiming for the highest view count without concern for long-term engagement.

• Language: Specify the language of your song to reach listeners who understand it. It's fine to include other languages if your music is popular with certain communities. However, too much experimenting can backfire – like targeting Chinese listeners for a song in German might result in (much) lower engagement.

Step 5: Set Your Budget. Determine how much you’re willing to spend on the promotion – you can take into account that YouTube provides estimates of potential reach based on your budget.

Good to know: Longer promotion periods often yield better results and lower costs per view, so try and click around to see how different duration does, or doesn't influence the cost-result ratio.

If you’re unsure how much to invest, start with a budget of at least $30–$50 for a two-week campaign. It’s totally okay to go with a smaller budget if you simply cannot afford this much.

Why should you promote your music videos? (the benefits of promoting your YouTube content)

Promoting your YouTube videos on YouTube itself can be quite effective. YouTube's promotion tool often delivers more views than promised, making it a cost-effective alternative to other advertising platforms, such as running Meta ads on Facebook and Instagram to drive people to your channel. While those ads can also work well, they usually require more effort to set up, compared to YouTube’s (much more) straightforward setup, partly because people (and Meta itself) don't want to leave the place they're at. 

With a solid enough music or lyric video, YouTube ads can drive a lot of likes and, with a $50 budget, may even boost your subscribers by the hundreds.

Moreover, promoting on YouTube introduces your work to a different audience than streaming platforms like Spotify or Apple Music. Not everyone uses those services, but nearly everyone is familiar with YouTube (ask your grandma 😉). Additionally, YouTube adds a visual dimension to your music, whether it’s a full video, an AI-generated clip, or a lyric video – so make sure it's appealing enough. 

This diversification can help you reach new listeners and grow your fanbase in a new way.

Tips for success to remember

• Prioritize Audience growth goal: If you don’t have a clear goal, focus on building a fanbase. This will benefit you in the long run.
• Narrow down targeting: Concentrate on countries and languages where your music is likely to resonate.
• Experiment with promotion durations: Longer campaigns (at least 2 weeks) often yield better results and lower costs per view.
• Start small: Begin with a modest budget to test the waters before scaling up.

Promoting your music, including music video/YouTube promotion, is like a many-headed hydra. You need to “hunt” in different places and find people who might love your music in their “natural habitat.” Expecting them to come to you is a bit naïve, given that 120,000 songs are released each day. By promoting your (quality) content right on YouTube, you can reach new listeners, convert a part of them into fans, and boost both your views and follower count – and it's now easier than ever.