Web Promotion 101: 5 Marketing Lessons from YouTube Cover Artists
October 2nd, 2009There’s literally a million ways you can market a website, a company, a product or even a brand, and one of the easiest, cheapest and quickest ways to do so is by creating your own video and putting it on YouTube.
The following 5 tips show how completely unknown bands have successfully applied everyday marketing ideas to gain big time exposure using YouTube and the cover song. Here’s the 5…
- Piggy Back the Page Views
- Opposites Attract Traffic
- Makeover Your Market
- Do it Well
- Familiarity Has Flow
Piggy Back the Page Views
The idea of the piggy back is exactly as it sounds; ride the back of something already successful. Example? Twitter didn’t build its own search function, someone else did, and it was originally called Summize. The site became popular simply by piggybacking on Twitter and what is now known as trending.
Likewise, Boyce Avenue, a Florida-based rock band, started piggybacking on famous musicians like Cold Play and One Republic by uploading cover versions of songs like Apologize and Viva La Vida. Boyce Avenue covers quickly became some of the top viewed videos of these chart topping songs and gained in popularity with the hit songs themselves. The band is now on tour and released its debut album All You’re Meant to Be in March 2008.
To date, views of Boyce Avenue’s cover songs (and original songs) have topped 50 million views.
Opposites Attract Traffic
Doing something exactly as another company has done seems like a good idea, but customers, and especially journalists have no reason to give attention to a copy cat. If anything, it can cause you harm because you get compared to the original. An original spin on an old concept can give it life and open up new interest. Here’s a cover song example…
Tiger Mountain Peasant Song – (Original)
Tiger Mountain Peasant Song. Sung by First Aid Kit, a band made up of Klara & Johanna Söderberg out of Sweden.
Views: More than 800k. This cover version has had 3x the views as the original.
Make Over Your Market
When was the last time you heard the theme song to the Fresh Prince of Bel Air sung by a silky voice playing folk guitar? Need we say more? Also, see Opposites Attract Traffic.
Do It Well
He can sing. Improve your skills. Test. Practice. Build your own websites to use for promoting ideas. Don’t wait around for that “dream customer.” Enough said.
Hey Ya by Outkast – Covered by Obadiah Parker on acoustic guitar.
Obadiah Parker is a folk/pop band from Scottsdale, Arizona composed of Mat Weddle (vocals, guitar), Jessie Young (piano/keyboards, trumpet, vocals), and Daniel Zehring (bass, vocals). The band has recorded an EP and a live CD, both of which contain a mixture of covers and original material.
Views? It’s hard to say with the number of copies online, but it tops at least 5 million. YouTube has disabled embedding of the video, but you can watch it here.
Familiarity Has Flow
Marie Digby is best known for her acoustic cover version of Rihanna’s No. 1 hit “Umbrella”, which attracted attention on YouTube to the tune of more than 13 14 million views. She took it a step further and promoted her music in the process to make sure she was showing listening music execs that she had her “own” talent for writing music. She has since landed time on Last Call with Carson Daily and now has her own record deal with Disney’s Hollywood Records.
