One of the most important pieces of your promotional video is probably an afterthought. When you’re in the planning stage, it’s easy to get lost in the script, the animation or filming, or the themes. These are all vitally important, but to really get into your viewer’s mind, you’re going to need one more trick up your sleeve.
Overlooking the music you put in your video is easy to do, but selecting the perfect piece can really drive your video home. Here are some amazing facts about the relationship between music and your brain, according to a recent article on CNN:
- Music can improve your mood, causing reduced anxiety and even an increase in disease-fighting antibodies and cells.
- t’s very easy to predict the type of music a person will like based on their patterns and general interests.
- People listen to music in a unique way, and will hear a song differently than others.
What does this all mean? It means that music will be able to cause a strong emotional connection to the material you are presenting. Beyond that, it means you’ll be able to predict the response to the music you choose very accurately.
Clearly, ignoring music would be unwise. Here’s some tips to help you pick the perfect music for your promotional video:
Tone
The emotions your viewer feels are going to correlate strongly to the tone of the music being played. Generally, you should shoot for upbeat and happy music, unless you’re trying to invoke a specific emotion to play off of later in the video.
Genre
It’s important to match the musical taste of your targeted viewers to the music you choose. If you’re targeting senior citizens, for example, hip-hop is probably a poor choice.
As a starter guide, here’s some popular genres of music, and the personality traits that gravitate towards them:
- Country music fans are usually conventional and hardworking.
- Indie music fans are usually highly creative, anxious, and intellectual.
- Dance music fans tend to have assertive personalities and are generally outgoing.
Rap music probably isn’t going to resonate with this target market!
Tempo
As important as tone and genre are, the tempo is what really sets the stage of a music piece. The emotional connection to a song is connected to the tempo. A slower tempo invokes sadder responses, and a faster tempo is happier and more exciting.
Your music’s tempo needs to carefully match the video’s pacing. A methodical video needs slower music, an energetic video needs up-tempo music, and a video building towards a dramatic peak needs music that builds with it.
If the video and the music aren’t on the same page, the delivery will suffer and your message will be ruined.
Copyrights
Finding the perfect song isn’t useful if you can’t use it in your video. Using music without permission is a great way to land in court and paying fines, so it’s not worth the risk. Here are the three most common ways to find songs you can use:
1. Use a free resource. Many organizations, like Creative Commons and Free Music Archive provide a way to use original music for creative purposes without any fee.
2. Pay for permission to use commercial music. If you have a favorite song, you can probably use it. As long as you pay a fee. Unfortunately, this option is usually expensive, especially if the artist or song is popular.
3. Create original music. A less costly option than paying for a popular song, you can pay to have an original piece of music written, performed, and recorded for use in your promotional video. As a bonus, you’ll own the rights to this song in perpetuity- so you could use it over and over again.
You don’t want to find yourself here over a promotional video!
With all these factors to keep in mind, it’s can be tricky to pick the perfect music for your video while also trying to tie it with your strategies, write the script, and then film, edit, and publish it.
Blue Wave Marketing will be able to assist you with the music selection, strategic decisions, and all the other aspects of promotional video production. If you’re interested in learning how to make the perfect promotional video for your business, reach out to us by visiting our website or calling 617-576-3100.
