In an effort to promote my latest single “Winedrunk”, I began to research all the ways I could promote it on a budget.
SPOILER ALERT: It’s really hard for any paid advertising to work well ON A BUDGET. Also, this is not a paid promotion. I’m not affiliated with Zebr in any way.
During my search, I found a lot of little gems that I hadn’t found before. One of these said gems was an app called ZEBR.
What is ZEBR? Great Question. Based upon their Google SEO, Zebr is the easiest way to submit music to influencers on TikTok & Instagram. Very bold statement, but rightly so. From my experience, this was definitely the easiest way to do that.
When you open the app and sign up, the first thing you see is an influencer, their country, their main topic/thing they do, their followers on TikTok / IG, and how many “coins” it costs for them to post your song on each platform. Some influencers have options for IG posts, stories, reels, and TikTok. Some just have TikTok etc.
You can save an influencer as you swipe or you can submit your song to them. If you keep swiping, you’ll see hundreds or thousands of influencers from around the world ready to “create” around your record. Which is awesome! You can even click “info” to see their response rate and click their icons to go to their IG/TikTok profile. This is helpful to see so you know what kind of content they are creating around other people’s songs.
After finding the influencers you want to submit to, you just purchase the number of coins you need, and you are charged conveniently through Apple ID.
I spent $100 on coins, and here’s what I learned..
Not Everyone You Submit To Will Accept Your Submission
I submitted my song Winedrunk to 8 people. Zebr let me know that only 3 people accepted the song and out of the 3, only 1 person listened on the app. Which is kind of unfortunate.
The coins I submitted for influencers that didn’t respond were returned to my account so no problems there.
The main issue is just wasting time if you’re trying to promote a record timely. This is why it’s important to pay attention to RESPONSE RATE.
The More You Pay, The More Quality Content
I originally broke up my $100 into 7 influencers, paying less than 20 bucks per influencer. Obviously, this isn’t very much money for someone to share your music to their thousands of followers.
One lady posted me on her story, but she didn’t tag me or say anything about the song. Which could be fine for what I paid her, but it’s just not worth it in the long run.
When I was refunded my coins for the influencers who expired, I decided to spend all of the rest of the coins on one influencer. This turned out to be a great move!
She had over 36,000 followers on Instagram AND made a unique REEL dancing to the song. Do I know for sure if anyone followed me or listened to the song because of her reel? No, I do not.
BUT, I can see through Zebr’s analytics platform that it has 8,000 views, 260 likes, and 14 comments.
She actually TAGGED me and the song name with a unique caption. The thing I wasn’t sure if I liked or not was that she tagged Zebr as well. Ya know, because it’s not as cool when you paid someone to sing to your song.
Be Very Particular With Who You Submit To
The most viewed video I paid for was from an Instagram account called ThatBabyLuv. The reel got over 300,000 views. If I would have done more research, I would have seen that most of the comments on their videos were non-English speaking (my song is in English), and the reels they do are literally just clips of cute babies. It didn’t really connect to the song at all.
Zebr allows you to give creative direction if you want to, but I really wanted to see what people would do. Maybe I should have given some direction on this one. It taught me to be a little more particular with my submissions.
So overall, here’s my advice with Zebr.
Yes, you may get lucky and find someone willing to make this amazingly awesome video under 20 bucks that gets you lots of followers or reach.
But most likely, you won’t. Even if you’re song is awesome. I would save up your Zebr budget as much as you can (NOT ALL OF YOUR BUDGET, JUST A PORTION), and focus on 3–5 influencers that will work with you to create something cool. Don’t be afraid to give them direction. Do your research on who these influencers should be. That means looking at their followers, their comments, their content and making sure it fits the “vibe” of the song. This matters!
Lastly, I just want to reiterate this should just be a part of your marketing budget, and if you only have a $100 budget, I honestly would not use Zebr. Wait until you have some more funds to property execute a full strategy.
A lot of times when it comes to music marketing, there are a lot of fake tools that send a lot of fo artists’ savings down the drain. An encouraging note to add is that from what I can tell Zebr seems like a legitimate company that is really trying to help artists. Their social media is a prime example of this. They are genuinely helping artists with tips and tricks to be seen! Got to love it.
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