How to promote music with Facebook Ads
If you’re serious about promoting your music online, you probably already understand the power of using paid social media advertising, specifically Facebook ads, to market your music. Many people believe that Facebook ads are a silver bullet solution to exposure and growing your music audience but, it’s not always that simple. Yes, using Facebook ads for music promotion is extremely effective, but if you’re not careful and approach facebook ads without really knowing what you’re doing, you could potentially throw thousands of dollars down the drain.
It’s always worth hiring a professional digital marketer to help you before you go throwing money at an advertising platform that you don’t truly understand. That being said however, if you don’t have the budget to hire a professional, then here are a few tips and strategies to help you avoid falling into common traps with facebook ads that can lead to failure...
1. UNDERSTAND AUDIENCE BEHAVIOUR
It’s been said that on average, a consumer needs to be exposed to your brand seven times before they will be ready to buy. So, if you put an ad of your new album in front of somebody who’s never even heard of you before in their life, it’s not likely they will become an instant super-fan. This is the equivalent to proposing marriage to your tinder match on the first date... pretty unlikely to end well ( aside from being totally weird ). Instead, you need to take a highly targeted approach to advertising to your music audience to ensure that you don’t waste your ad dollars. Show ads that provide huge value and don’t make a specific purchase request to audiences that don’t know you well. These ads are to create brand awareness and build engagement rather than generate sales. Create a separate ad audience from the people who engaged well with your brand ads and then only show your sales focussed ads to this audience.
2. PERSONALISE YOUR CREATIVE
Another mistake people make with facebook ads is, they send the exact same ad to absolutely everybody. Facebook allows you to create hyper-targeted and personalised ad creative, so use it to it’s full potential! A middle-aged mother of two from Kansas will likely engage best with different ad creative compared to a young single man from New York City... So think about the context of your content and how you can tweak the creative to speak to the different types of people in your audience.
3. BE DISCOVERABLE
It’s amazing how many artists spend dollars on promoting their music... only to completely fail to tell their ad audience who they even are or the track title. Remember, most people will engage with your ad for a few seconds at most, before continuing to scroll through their feed. Not only do you need to capture their attention in those first few seconds, but make it easy for them to discover you again if they enjoyed your content. That means, clearly state your artist name and the name of the song in your Ad!
4. FOLLOW UP
Remember, you’re very unlikely to convert someone who sees your Ad on that one single Ad alone... rather, view your ads as ways to build a relationship with your audience over time until they become engaged enough to convert. The best way to continue building this relationship is by setting up systems and processes that allow you to follow up with people who engage with your ads and content. One great way to do this is by using an email list to continue to build your audience relationship via email.
5. ALLOCATE YOUR BUDGET WISELY
You don’t want to setup your ad campaigns and allocate your entire budget from the get go. Much of the success of paid digital ads relies on testing, analysing the feedback data and then improving your ad performance gradually over time. Which is why it’s essential to not only have a sizeable enough budget to be able to see real tangible results, but also to not spend your entire budget in the first week of your campaign. Allocate your budget gradually and intelligently and always test and analyse.