Yeah, I feel like at any point in time there's
an obvious trend happening that most people are in denial of. For me right now, it's that this ukulele rap
thing is going to be a thing because truly this is like nails on chalkboard my ears. But come on, we're talking about music marketing,
not my taste in music. So I think a lot of musicians are in denial
that in every single genre, TikTok influencer marketing is the hidden hand making songs
popular. I'm seeing this in Midwest emo to hyper pop
to some seriously underground hip hop to the most mainstream pop TikTok marketing. It's where people are blowing up by putting
very little money. And I know people are in denial of this because
they're still stupid enough to defend putting money into Facebook ads or other old dumb
ideas that con artists that take the money from them tell them to do. But the fact is, if you look where the music
business is spending its money, it's here. So this video, I'm going to go step by step
through how you do TikTok influencer marketing on your own and effectively and why it's one
of the best paid marketing methods you could spend your money on today.
So while many people get that TikTok marketing
is what's blowing up so many songs and creating the hit songs on the radio today. I haven't seen musicians changing their strategies
to incorporate it. And admittedly, I've been experimenting on
a few campaigns and it's been crazy to watch how few dollars we spend to get so many people
to listen to a song and build an artist into someone fans are engaged with. It's a funny thing since I've discussed before
that I think most of the artists who complain about fans who find them on playlists aren't
always engaged with going deep on their material. But what I love about fans that we've been
finding for artists on influencer campaigns through TikTok is they really engage with
them. And I think that's because right now the users
of TikTok are the most bored but avid fans of music, and the ones who jump the curiosity
gap to go to Spotify or Apple to go listen to more of a song they loved hearing on TikTok
are the best music fans as they're super engaged.
Whereas the fans that listen to playlists
just want to be served music and never in the mind the fans you get from Facebook ads
are the laziest, worst music fans you can find, which is why the people who buy those
don't turn out to have fans that actually build them up into something bigger. So all this is to say, I really find that
outside of doing the work of finding your community, this is the next most effective
way to promote your music. If you don't know what I mean by finding your
community, please hit the description and watch what I call my most important video.
And it's not just me, but oftentimes the marketing
behind songs is hidden, but many of the artists that are blowing up through TikTok and the
agencies they use are just coming right out and saying they are the not so hidden hand
behind these songs blowing up. And that's mostly because it'd be a little
suss otherwise, since it's not only subtle now, but think of it this way, right now TikTok
is the main catalyst. As to why the two-year-old Glass Animal song
Heat Waves or Bastille's nine-year-old song Pompeii was on the top 40 charts all through
this year, it's all from TikTok, influencer marketing, getting attention to a song that
people really liked, and no one's even trying to hide that or deny it. But some of you, I'm sure are a bit unclear
on what this influencer marketing exactly is. I along with everyone else, keep calling it
influencer marketing, but let's be honest here, it's basically bribing an influencer
to make a video that they then put on TikTok. And you may be wondering how is that effective
for you.
And to you, I say, you are obviously not a
TikTok addict for one of those influencers can often get the clip of your song heard
by more people than anything else you could spend money on. But the pushback I often get is it's just
a clip of your song and a small portion at that. And we all know we often have to hear a song
a few times to become susceptible enough to jump the curiosity gap and give the song a
full listen. But here's the real power of the money you
spend on this. Let's say your song has a lyric and music
vibe that's perfect for let's say a video where a young lady describes how annoyed she
is by male YouTubers with deep voices talking confidently, couldn't be me, but then others
hear that song and then they talk about their gripe with that song in the back of it, this
meme evolution snowball effect happens as more users see it and pick it up.
And as those videos get thousands and millions
of impressions, many users of TikTok jumped the curiosity gap of seeing the artist name
down at the bottom of the video and listen to the full song and become fans. And here's what makes this so explosive, is
you don't have to pay those imitators and you get free promotion that continues to spread
for months and months on end if it catches on. Truly what makes this so much more interesting
compared to past promotion techniques in music, whether they were Facebook ad campaigns or
touring, is once the promotion stops, the numbers would usually fall off. But trends on TikTok can grow for six or more
months at a time long after you've spent the money lighting the initial fire on your marketing
campaign.
The only marketing like this in the past I
would see as good long tail results were from radio and video campaigns as they could have
such long shelf lives. But we all know those have gotten ineffective,
but I know you're thinking this has got to cost tens if not hundreds of thousands of
dollars, but here's the good news, I've been a part of campaigns that have received hundreds
of thousands of streams from this for around $2,000. So let's start off discussing who this is
for. While this won't be effective in every genre
of music, it does work for every genre that's consumed by those under 25. And if your audience is mostly in that age
demographic, I really can't think of a more effective way you could spend your money now
when it comes to marketing. But really the way you know if it's for you
is by using TikTok. And if you see a community of people on there
talking about the music you make by exploring the hashtags of your micro genre, then this
can probably work for you.
I should say one of the other reasons I really
like TikTok right now is it gets you the best people for growing a fan base. The addicts, the influencers, the people most
passionate about in your music or discussing music will spread the word about you. So even if your music's micro genre doesn't
have millions of posts, that could be actually be better as it'll be easier and cheaper to
infiltrate the hip people in your genre or engaged on TikTok. And you probably don't want to know what's
the strategies.
So let's get Nathan Fielder for a minute and
break down the plan. The plan. So first off, before anything else, we need
to understand the TikTok landscape of your micro genres. What we need to do here is have a list of
songs by ours who are doing well in your micro genre and are similar to you. In fact, artists with a few hundred thousand
plays rather than millions upon millions tend to be even better for this. And if you have no clue how to find those
songs, perhaps hit Chatmetric and look at the playlists you want to be on and the artist
on them and find some songs of theirs. We don't want these to be huge songs, but
instead one that is blowing up on the playlist most similar to you since that's where we
really need to find the perfect influencers will be goodbyes for this to make your spending
effective, if you're looking through the playlist of your genre of hippie and upcoming artists
closest to you in sound and going through those songs, you'll hopefully have a few songs
targeted at some influencers that we can now find.
We're then going to do a search of these songs
on TikTok by doing what I'm doing on the screen right now on a TikTok search. As you see those songs come up, it's time
to grab a spreadsheet and input the name and how many views in follower account into it
as well as what song they did just like you see on the spreadsheet on the screen. Now because TikTok has changed the way this
is viewed, you do have to often click user profiles to see the views on their video,
but you can often guess how successful the video is by looking at hearts and comments.
But if you want a great shortcut for this
and have some spare budget Chartmetric's upper tier plan allows you to search any artist
and song. And if you click on the TikTok panel, you
can see all the top TikToks that have been made for a song laid out perfectly to easily
choose which users to approach and even download a spreadsheet of them, which is what I do. But we also want to go to their profile and
write how many views their video got of this song and then their follower account as well
as what song they did. But it's important to know what we're looking
for here. When I talk with my friends who get TikTok,
we all talk about how unlike any other social media platform TikTok is.
Because here's the thing, you could think
you have a banger of a TikTok and wolf flop than one that feels mid-breaks all of your
records. And this is evidenced by, there's tons of
people on TikTok with videos with a hundred views that have 10,000 followers, then videos
with 600 views or then videos with 100,000. The disparity is wild and this is why it makes
it such a huge marketing opportunity, but it's also why betting on just one influencer
instead of a few is far less effective since ruling the dice five times is way more effective
than one since the odds of losing versus winning have about the same chances with someone with
less follows.
But this is not to say betting on people with
just 20 followers is necessarily smart since so many people just don't get the attention
span of TikTok. If you don't know what I mean by that, I highly
suggest you watch my playlist on TikTok that's linked in the description below, any who. So we want to bet on a few different horses
or influencers so that the chances of this blowing up are even better. So as we go through the TikToks of the songs
that are similar to you, you need to know what we're looking for, which is users who
make videos to songs in your micro genre that have between five to 100,000 followers, but
commonly make videos that get five times their follower amount.
Meaning look at my profile. I currently have about 11,000 followers and
a lot of my videos get two times that, but the occasional one gets three to 13 times
that, meaning I would be a good candidate if I did videos in your genre, which I'm not,
but music business brands keep hitting my inbox since I'm enjoying this influencer cash. We're all looking for people that meet this
criteria since how much you pay is largely determined by follows, not views. So if they're regularly getting a lot of views,
but the follows haven't hit well that's actually perfect. And I know some of you are like, "Jesse, I've
heard that there's a whole parasite economy of influencers who are just watched by smaller
influencers. It's steal everything they do. So why shouldn't I pay for one of those big
influencers?" Yeah, that's true, but you probably don't
have $10,000. And if you do, their agent would love to talk
to you.
But I want you to understand the dynamics
of this. You're a small artist. And finding the people most passionate about
this music to pay for an influencer video also finds the other people who are most passionate
about your type of music since the algorithm serves people who saw the make of video to
that song similar to yours as most likely to find perfect fans, to be your first fans,
which is another reason I love this technique so much is even if you don't get hundreds
of thousands of streams, you're building a really good bedrock of finding the exact right
people who should hear your songs at first and getting your first fans. But when you target those huge influencers,
you're thinking too big and put your eggs in one basket that isn't perfectly honed to
your small dollar spending and your more niche market.
And what we're trying to do here is bet on
a bunch of people cost effectively and hope that one takes off and inspires more. And the more horses you bet on, it seems to
be more and more effective. But also we want to make sure these people
you choose don't have too high a flop to hit rate. So after you've identified a bunch of them,
it's sometimes good to make sure they're not making 300 videos and only one or two of them
have a high number of views and they're a really good candidate if more than half the
videos they make to songs do more than half their follow number.
And I should say I know people who do this
for major labels and they're doing the same technique but across lots of big influencers
for a high price tag. I should also note if your song is doing well,
the bigger influencers will be far more likely to take it on and do it for free. And this could be your test run of smaller
influencers. And if it's doing well for smaller influencers
who are paid less, that could be a good test as to whether you should pour money into marketing
it more and paying for one of those bigger, more expensive influencers. Anyways, so let's say you have like 50 influencers
now in your spreadsheet.
Now the ones that are most important are if
they appear on the list a few times because they're doing the songs in your genre since
those are the people who are really going to reach the fans of your micro genre and
get you the most enthusiastic people to your song. The next that are most important are those
who regularly bat above their weight, meaning that they make videos to songs and if they
get way more plays than they have followers. Either identify a good deal of those depending
on your budget and then start reaching out to the ones who are most ideal. Now here's the knot fun part. TikTok is not like Instagram where you could
slide into anyone's DMs. First, you should follow them since a lot
of people follow back a lot and then you can chat. Next you can comment that you'd love to chat
about an influencer video and ask them how you can get in contact with them. This will get you a follow a lot of the time. And one of the benefits of finding people
in the two to 10K range is they often haven't done much of this, so they're super excited
to get started and way more enthused to do a good job for you.
But if not, it's worth looking for them on
Instagram using whatever clues you could find from their profile. And hopefully there you can get through and
leaving a comment on a photo that you've slid in the DMs is fine. After all, you're trying to give them money. So the big thing here though is you want to
contact them four weeks out from when you're going to make this video. So here's what I would message them. I'd love to discuss how much you would charge
for a paid TikTok of my new song.
I'd like to do whatever you see fit as we
enjoy your content, but we'd like you to use a particular portion of the song caption and
pick the date you will post it. And if you successfully get through one of
these ways, make sure to add it to your spreadsheet, how you successfully contacted them so you
can write them for your next campaign. Which brings us to the money part of this. So here's a fun fact. No one knows what influencer marketing costs
and a lot of people we're going to target are just going to be flattered your offering
to pay them at all. Whereas other people are going to ask for
dumb money and you can just keep it moving. If you Google on the internet how much to
pay an influencer, it's a penny of follower. And while you may be thinking that's more
than Spotify pays you per listen, I would say take that up with a guillotine in their
corporate board meeting.
Oh yeah, my lawyer told me to say I'm totally
joking about that. Anyway. But as I was saying, look, no one actually
pays that rate. If you really want the influencer but they
want too much money, ask if they'd be willing to come down. They often will. Now you'll eventually have to make some budget
decisions. And since a lot of smaller influencers will
do this for 50 to 200, if you have $1,000 budget, you can have somewhere between five
to 20 videos from different influencers. And another thing to remember about this is
some people are going to flake out.
If you concentrate this in a few weeks, you
can keep reaching out or add money if things are going well and add more influencers after
the campaign's already started. The super cool part of this marketing is really
that it could be an ongoing thing, especially since so many TikToks are still getting watched
months after they're made. And this could be a long tail that continues
paying off for you at promotion. Okay, so let's say you agree on a rate. Now we need an agreement and what I want you
to do is identify some terms. We want to make sure they understand that
they're being paid to make a video with your song in it and you're going to approve it
after they make it. And once they agree to that, just get them
to write back in an email that they agree. This will be after you pay them using PayPal
since that's what PayPal is actually good for is secure transactions. Or you could use the Venmo switch, since they're
the same company, where it says you're paying for goods as it allows you to get a refund
if they flake out.
And like I said, some of these people are
going to flake since I have shocking news for you, being an influencer doesn't exactly
attract those with impeccable work ethic. And I know a lot of you are wondering what
to do if you hate the TikTok that the influencer makes for you. If you do, send them a 25% kill fee, just
agree to have them refund it aside from 25% for their effort means since you were dumb
enough to have faith in them, you'll pay them for the time they took to make this, but you're
not paying for them to post it. If you think it sucks and it is going nowhere,
they at least get some money. But honestly it doesn't usually hurt you if
they make a bad video unless it's super embarrassing because it's probably going nowhere. But if you like it, green light it and ask
them to post it on a particular day. And also remember it's not just green light
or red light.
You could ask them to filter it or change
the caption or do tiny tweaks to it. TikTok is a creative art form and often trusting
the influencer's instincts is good, but collaboration and objectivity is also helpful. But here's a fun one. I know musicians as someone who's been both
a record producer and a marketer, no one knows more than me that musicians are too close
to their songs and bad at picking wood is good about them. So I highly suggest you set the influencer
of the song and let them choose what part to do. But here's the annoying part, if all your
influencers do a different lyric are part of the song, then it doesn't get the earworm
of TikTok's audience hearing the song repeatedly so it feels familiar, which is part of what
we need to do to get people to jump the curiosity gap and listen to the Spotify, is they need
to keep feeling like they've heard the song before and want to hear it again.
And so much of this is we're trying to get
people to hear that song numerous times so it becomes an earworm, which is why we also
have these TikTok influencers space these videos out so it feels organic to TikTok and
that it's spreading and people are creating around the song, but it also works well for
getting in people's heads. So you have to decide what part of the song
it's going to be. And often you want to have the most important
influencers, try to find that first and see if they agree on it. And here's the thing, these influencers often
hear where the song can be viral. So one way to do this is if you could only
afford a few influencers is send it to the ones who trust the most first and see what
they say is the best part of the song to do a TikTok to.
If your spend is flexible, you could let a
wild card or too loose and if one goes better than the rest, then follow up with more influencers
doing the part that is working better. And here's why this ad spending is unlike
none I've ever seen and as long as I've ever watched marketing. So one Fred and I got drunk and we found some
people to do this for his song, but a funny thing is a girl found his song from the other
girls who he paid and she made a video that is four times bigger than the one he paid
for and from another part of the song that she found better and now he's paying everybody
to make that part of the song.
It's hard to get guess this stuff as it's
an art form. And also remember it doesn't need to be a
dance. It could be a trend about depression or acting
out a lyric or even just doing something dumb like flipping a table when a part of the song
happens. It could be whatever. And if you don't get this, if an influencer
seems psyched to interact with you, you can get their opinion. And this is the craziest part of this advertising,
is it could spawn organic marketing and reiteration that starts a fire from a spark, which is
why it's the most effective way to spend money in my opinion, in marketing right now.
And truly why when I keep telling you that
Facebook and Instagram ads are a clown show of a thing and obsolete, this is it because
you only have so much money and you could putting it into this instead of Facebook ads. But you're probably wondering how much should
you spread these out? So at a recent campaign I advised on, we saw
some really good evidence that when we concentrated all of our promotions across five days, it
was way worse than we spread it, the 10 influencers we paid over 10 days. So get this, we paid 10 influencers to do
three singles for the artist. And this is important to understand. Since unlike say Twitter, Facebook or Instagram,
TikTok have a bit more of a long tail and that posts that are months old could still
get surges in huge engagement.
And much like YouTube videos, they don't go
out of style fast, but they do have initial spikes that sustained for a few days most
times. And we found whatever familiarity of people
hearing the song over time really seem to help. And if I'm being honest, if I had say 5K to
spend, I would probably spread the influencers out way more and have 20 of them making videos
over a month. But this also brings me to another point of
how this is effective. There's one last part of the secret sauce,
which is having the video target the same hashtags. And you should determine this as many of the
influencers are good at making videos because they're at a smaller follower size, they'd
always get the hashtag thing. So if you've done your community research
and figured out some hashtags that are going to get your music to people who are interested
in your micro genre, I would suggest adding three of them in addition to whatever the
influencer normally does.
But if you notice this influencer didn't use
them in the video you found them through, encouraged them to use the ones you have found
in your targets and make sure you approve their description. Just make sure that they're putting the right
hashtags and keywords in the description so that it gets to an audience that your genre
would be interested in. If you're thinking they're going to be annoyed
by all this approving, you're right. But trust me, as someone who produces ads
for these YouTube video sponsors and podcast sponsors all damn day, this is part of the
game. If they're interested in being an influencer,
they know this is part of the job and as Don Draper would say, "This is what the money's
for." So you're probably wondering though, what
do you do after all these TikToks are out? TikTok, at least for now as a repost button.
Or you could stitch the videos and spread
them to your audience through your own account. But doing a funny stitch is what really makes
them spread, but at the very least, like comment and bookmark the video that the TikTokers
make to cue the algorithm that you want to see more of it and give it a boost to the
algorithm. This will also tell the algorithm to show
you more videos like this, which could only be helpful so that you see videos made about
your song. And remember, this influencer is now on your
team so boosting all of their videos that come down your feet helps the one they make
for you too. So making sure your whole team now sees this
person as on your team, is crucial to getting the TikToks they make of your song to spread
in the coming months. Also, one of the last thoughts I want to leave
you with is I want you to get that even if this doesn't get you into top 40 radio or
one of the longest running hits of all time, like Glass Animals, what I've seen it do is
get a lot of people enough streams that they set their next song up to get on big playlists.
It becomes a catalyst for managers reaching
out and big things starting to happen. While this marketing technique is huge right
now, oftentimes it's just a step along the staircase that helps get things going. So manage expectations, put in the work and
start getting your music heard. Okay, that's it. Just remember I have a whole playlist that's
linked to the description on how to blow up on TikTok. And on the screen now though is a video that
if you have never watched will blow your mind on how you market your music effectively. And that doesn't cost you a dime to do it
and is guaranteed to up your streams. Click and keep learning..
