Music plays an interesting role in altering human emotions. It can make people smile, cry, dance, feel nostalgic, and even trigger memories, experiences, or events. Thus, it has become an essential part of the human experience – and marketers know this.
For decades, marketers and advertisers have leveraged the power of music to captivate audiences by elevating a concept with strategically placed sounds. They’ve used music and sound to tell stories on TV, radio, and now on social media to evoke the required emotions and responses – something that can’t be done with visuals alone.
Today, music is central to the harmony of video-based marketing content and is used to help drive a specific narrative or bring attention to certain actions. However, since sound typically works within a video’s background, its subtlety is often overlooked. As a result, many marketing teams shy away from using music in their videos out of fear of high costs.
However, there are ways to strategically pair music and videos to get the desired results you need in terms of storytelling and response. In this post, we’ll share how to captivate your audience with music by providing four powerful tips.
Let’s get started!
Why Music Plays A Crucial Role in Marketing and Branding
Before we dive into our powerful tips, it’s important to understand the role of music in marketing and branding so you can get the most out of it when engaging your target audience. Although most people are aware that music is a key component in the video, non-marketers may overlook its importance or choose a soundtrack for the wrong reasons.
Experienced marketers pick music that communicates the message they’re trying to send to their audiences while enhancing their videos’ quality. Here are the key ways in which music can help your brand:
1. Capturing Attention
Music has the power to hold the attention of listeners and shape their emotions in different ways. Whether it’s motivational or sad music, it helps audiences how to feel and understand what to pay close attention to. In terms of marketing and advertising, music is used to build value by making products or services more memorable.
Whether it’s a high-energy product launch commercial or a simple how-to video, you want your background music to be unique, just like in commercials and radio stations. This will get you the emotional connection you need to improve brand recognition and drive prospectus customers to engage with your business.
2. Brand Recognition
Music has become an essential component of brand recognition, especially when conveying your brand message. It’s one of the few things that can distinguish your business from your competitors, even if you offer the same products and services. Music can reinforce a specific message to your desired audience and reveal your brand’s personality by eliciting certain emotions.
For instance, Coca-Cola’s Open Happiness commercial strategically fuses beats, melodies, and rhythms to engage viewers with their flagship product and induce the idea that Coca-Cola should be a part of every celebration or happy moment.
With the right music, you can make your audience take an interest in your brand and product. With music being a part of our daily lives, marketers can use it to enable customers to imagine their brand’s identity and comprehend its key message.
How to Captivate Your Target Audience With Music – 4 Powerful Tips
Now that you’re no longer on the fence regarding the relevance of music in marketing and branding, here are 4 tips for markets to captivate audiences with the power of music:
1. Learn About Your Target Audience
When it comes to customer segmentation, data is key. The same principle applies to choosing the right music for your video content. Simply put, you need to apply the same demographic and psychographic factors, such as age, location, personality, interests, etc., to group your potential viewers.
Once you have audience insight, you’ll notice a significant difference in your video campaigns. The idea here is to cater to your target audience and their music choices, not yours. This will help you accurately represent the community you’re trying to engage. However, this doesn’t mean you make sweeping generalizations.
For example, all people in New Orleans love Jazz, or everyone in Tennessee loves country rock.
2. Be Engaging
When choosing music for your video content, you want to pick something unexpected and engaging. However, at the same time, it should represent your brand, so people think of you when they listen to it. Brands spend an awful lot of time finding music that fits their brand identity to ensure their customers can encapsulate their tune into their memories.
Ideally, you should look for soundtracks and audio collections that trigger the emotion you’re trying to draw out from your potential customers.
3. Less is More
Over 80% of marketers claim video ads and commercials perform better with music as long as you keep it simple and not use tracks that clash with each other. Using too many tracks can easily distract viewers and even alter their mood negatively. Even if you’re trying to mix genres, you should make sure it suits the imagery, so viewers understand the reason behind the change.
4. Learn About Intellectual Property Rights
As tempting as it can be to pull an awesome track of the internet, marketers have to be extremely careful. Most social media platforms flag licensed audio due to usage restrictions. So, if you use it in your videos, the platform could take down the content. Even if you plan to use third-party soundtracks, you need to give proper credits and abide by acceptable use conditions.
Wrapping Up
Hopefully, with these 4 simple yet effective tips, you can get the most out of your video content in terms of viewership, engagement, conversion, and profit. By hooking viewers with music, you can tell your brand story, explain your products and services, and make your new offers sound more exciting. These benefits are just the tip of the iceberg, so feel free to explore this concept more deeply and adapt it to your marketing strategy.
By Bobby J. Davidson
I am passionate about our companies and truly enjoy the work we do. To learn more about the Davidson Family of Companies, please visit www.bobbydavidson.com/about. Don’t forget to subscribe to my Newsletter located at the bottom of this page for updates and insights.