7 best ways to promote your song

You’ve just finished your new song, and you’re ready to send it off to mixing and mastering.

Your mind now runs wild with questions – who will listen to my new song? How do I get it out there? What steps do I need to take to make sure the right people hear it?

The best marketing campaigns aren’t necessarily executed perfectly, but they are organized and coordinated. Or, as it has been said:

Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.

So, what follows is an organized, coordinated plan you can follow to meet all your song promotion goals.

1. Find your angle and go where the fans already are

Unless an artist already has gigs lined up, a folder full of video and audio content, a big email list or social media following, and/or a long list of relevant industry contacts (all of this takes time), my advice is to find an angle.

I recently coached an emerging artist to organize a dance party for her release. She loves to dance, and when she’s in her element, the people around her enjoy themselves too. She’s more likely to find the support and attendance she’s looking for if she positions her launch  as a dance party rather than just another “gig.”

Bands who play video game music could plug into international video game conventions – Comic-Con, MAGFest, and BlizzCon, among others.

There is always a way to short-circuit the audience question. The key is to find your angle.

Once you’ve found your angle, PR opportunities also become more viable, and it’s worth sharing your vision with the world through platforms like PR.com, PRWeb, and PR Newswire. Note that you’ll need a press release (and some money) to get your news out there, so if you’re not a professional writer, find someone who can help.

2. Build your EPK

There’s a ton of information associated with new releases – release artwork, artist bio, lyrics, recording credits, metadata, and more.

If you’re a Bandzoogle member, you can take advantage of our built-in electronic press kit functionality to assemble and present relevant information attractively.

This function lets you highlight your best tracks (with a music player), bio, press images, album art, social media links, music videos, and just about anything else you can name.

Whether it’s to get more gigs, set up more press interviews, get radio airplay, or otherwise, an EPK is a powerful tool you can use to spread your message more broadly.

3. Hound the playlists

The playlisting game, like the social media game, is competitive beyond belief. But it is equally necessary, as it is the main way to gain traction on popular streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. Though streaming royalties are poor substitutes for music sales and gig money, if you utilize the attention you gain from streaming platforms well, you can generate opportunities that far outclass the pennies on the dollar reward structure.

Although you can take the long road of finding playlists, building connections, and pitching curators, most artists are opting to pay to put the process on autopilot, and taking advantage of services that do this on their behalf. This comes with the cautionary note that not all services are equally scrupulous, so thoroughly vet who you’re planning to pay before handing over your money.

That said, these are well worth exploring:

• Groover (Save 15% on your first Groover campaign with the code GROOVERBANDZOOGLE)
• SubmitHub

4. Alert and mobilize your tribe

No matter the size of your fan base – small or big – you must let everyone know when you’ve got a new release.

But do not think of this as a self-contained social media and email campaign. Inevitably, you’ll leave opportunities on the table if you focus exclusively on these channels (you’ll be amazed at how many people don’t see your posts or emails).

Consider adding the following tasks to your checklist to ensure your message gets seen:

• Run a pre-save campaign
• Set up a retargeting ad campaign
• Send text/SMS messages
• Have personal phone conversations
• Send postcards and letters via snail mail

It has gotten easier than ever to combine many of these workflows (email, text messages, chatbots, direct mail, etc.) using tools like SendPulse or Mailchimp if you should find the need.

Either way, when you send out notices or updates, remember to make a specific ask of your prospects and fans. Generally, the best thing you can do is ask them to join your email list (if they haven’t already). You can make additional asks once they’re on your list.

Also, if you haven’t already created one, set up a launch team. This would be a group of people who support you in sharing your new release. You could ask them to post your release on social media, or you could even request that they create some hype around your launch party. Don’t hold back – make big asks!

5. Utilize Smart Links

Bandzoogle has a built-in Smart Links feature that makes it easier than ever for you to promote and sell your music.

This feature allows you to organize all your streaming and social media links in an attractive, central, mobile-friendly page. It’s also a great tool for driving fans back to your music website.

With a Smart Link for your music release, you can easily customize and prioritize the destinations you want to send your fans and media contacts to. Your page also prominently features a “Buy” button to encourage more sales.

No matter the shape or intent of your marketing campaign, focus is important. Smart Links and landing pages help you cut down on the clutter while drawing attention to your new release.

Smart Links ought to come in handy when you’re alerting and mobilizing your tribe too.

6. Cultivate an engaging social media following

The modern artist rarely requires reminding of the millions and billions of people gathering on social media daily, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or X.

What has changed is the sheer number of social platforms available, as well as the cutting-edge tools you can use to generate post ideas, edit videos, schedule posts, and track and analyze progress.

Smart artists must use their resources wisely, given the fierce competition and the altogether common conundrum of an imbalanced effort-to-reward ratio.

We’d be here all day if we were to talk about every tool under the sun but consider the following:

• You can use chatbots like ChatGPT and Jasper to generate text-based content (i.e., tweets) fast! Of course, if you aren’t a prompt engineer, you might want to edit the content before you post it.
• Automation tools like MeetEdgar and Fedica go beyond standard social media schedulers and let you create large libraries of content that automatically roll out on a preset schedule. Fedica is also one of the few tools that boasts connectivity to emerging platforms like Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon.
• Some tools, like OnlyWire, let you distribute and share your content to over 20 social media platforms simultaneously.

7. Run a contest or giveaway

Contests and giveaways can help you build a lot of excitement for your new release.

The smart thing to do would be to use it as an opportunity to grow your email list. In other words, if your prospects and fans want to be entered into the contest, they must join your email list.

The offer must be attractive though. Giving away a CD and digital download is a good start, but it might not be enough to gain traction. Think bigger. Throw in a T-shirt and a couple of tickets to your release show.

Contests and giveaways can sometimes build explosive momentum and lead to widespread coverage. But at any given time, you’re contending with a plethora of other distractions, so this is not guaranteed.

Even if your campaign isn’t a runaway success on that scale, it’s well worth doing, because it creates goodwill with your audience. You’ll find that the more unselfish you are, the more your audience trusts and wants to hear from you.

Final thoughts

The methods mentioned here all stack on each other. This means you can create a cohesive song promotion strategy out of them. For best results, don’t apply one tactic at a time or mix and match. Set everything into motion with urgent concurrency.

Getting noticed isn’t necessarily easy, but all the tools you need to be able to do the job are already there. All you need to do is to find the most direct route to your goal. Focus on the activity that moves the needle and leave the rest alone.

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Award-winning composer, best-selling author, and long-time podcaster David Andrew Wiebe is the founder of Content Marketing Musician. His eighth self-published book is the Productivity, Performance & Profits Blackbook, a thorough resource for artists looking to accomplish more in their careers, build a fan base, and create the life they love through music.