This could be the reason your music ads aren’t working 

A top-performing music ad relies on three things—the song, the budget, and the visuals. 

But which one is the greatest driver of success?  

There’s no doubt the music matters most—it is the product we’re selling, after all—but I’ve seen plenty of, let’s say, decent songs overcome their deficiencies with a big enough marketing budget. 

However, even artists with little to no budget are driving fans to their music all the time on social media, despite producing music that is often “ok” at best. 

Why? 

Because, these days, the greatest asset in an artist’s marketing arsenal isn’t budget or even necessarily the song—it’s visual storytelling. 

The power of sight  

Did you know that nearly 50% of the human brain is devoted to processing visual information? 

Contrast that with the roughly 8% devoted to sound, and it’s no stretch to understand that what we see comes first. 

Put simply, sight is the way to capture attention. 

We discover things with our eyes, perhaps not in every conceivable situation, but certainly online. 

And considering we’re running ads and posting to social media to promote our music, this is the playground that matters most. 

What we do visually has to grab people. 

Whether we’re advertising or posting organically (ideally, we’re doing both), strong visual storytelling has an outsized impact on the success of our music. 

The right visuals can overcome a low budget and even a song that may be lacking. 

If one 15-second section of your song is catchy, and you pair it with the right video, you can move mountains. 

This is the world we live in. 

I have seen great songs fail because of bad visual content. 

In ads. 

On social media. 

And I have seen average songs catapult forward because of the right video. 

I’ve witnessed ad campaigns derail for targeting and budget too, but independent of song, artist, or genre, bad visual content is the most common show stopper, by far. 

So what can we do? 

First, we can develop a video-first mentality. 

Some talking heads say the music video is dead. 

I disagree. 

The music video isn’t dead, the format has just changed. 

Everything continues to trend toward short-form and vertical, especially in the realm of music, but that doesn’t mean a long-form music video is a waste of time. 

In fact, it’s probably a time saver, if anything. 

Now look, don’t go blowing your budget on some high-production music video when you have all the tools you need in your pocket. 

Grab a friend and use your phone to film yourself performing your song a handful of times from different angles and shot lengths, then stitch it all together. 

Or, use a tripod and do it yourself. 

Add some b-roll from stock footage sites like pexels, Motion Array, or any of another number of options, slap on a LUT to color grade and, if done correctly, you should end up with something compelling. 

From there, chop that long-form video into a half a dozen short, vertical pieces, and you’ll have a suite of promotional content to work with. 

And it doesn’t take a ton of time to do this. 

Maybe a day? 

If you have the time and are short on funds, learn to do it yourself. 

If you’re lacking in time but have the budget, hire someone else and delegate it out. 

But don’t overlook it. 

Obviously, you always want to put your best foot forward with every release, and obviously, you want to maximize your promotional budget as well, but putting more energy into your cover art and video content to accompany each release is always a good move. 

And the more you work at it, the better you’ll become at understanding what works for your audience and what doesn’t. 

With each subsequent release, and as your skills develop, you can devise a predictable and repeatable system to release better music, tell a better visual story, and maximize every dollar of your ad spend.