Written By: Josh Viner
One of the most difficult tasks as an artist or producer is getting new eyeballs and ears on your work. With research suggesting that internet users spend an average of 2 hours and 22 minutes per day on social media, running social media ads can be one of the most effective ways to generate that initial interest. However, with so much time spent on socials, how do you stand out from the pack? How do you create compelling ads that actually catch one’s attention? How do you develop highly targeted ads so that you’re reaching people that have a higher change of converting into fans? Let’s get into it…
There are lots of articles online on how to run Facebook and Instagram ads so this article will not be doing that (Here’s a great one from Buffer). Instead, I’d like to narrow in on how to run effective ads as an artist or producer. It can be a very different process than when trying to sell a product or service. This article is by no means exhaustive, but I hope it helps with the basics and kickstart some ideas. I’ll be mainly discussing targeting the very top of the fan funnel — obtaining that initial awareness and discovery — but will touch on engaging, converting and retaining.
[Note: this article will assume you’re using Facebook’s Ad Manager to run ads. However, to run ads that lead to your Instagram profile, you’ll need to create the ad within the Instagram app — the same principles discussed here still apply. You can also simply just “boost” posts you’ve already made.]
The Ad Campaign: Defining Goals
The very first step in an ad campaign is defining your goal. What is it you want to achieve with this ad? Do you want more likes or followers? Do you want to drive streams? Sell tickets to a show? Sell beats? Get more clients for your studio? You should not try to achieve all these things with one ad — it won’t be most effective.
Targeting: Find Your Potential Fans/Buyers
First, let’s decide who you want to target based off your goal. Ideally you want your ad to be shown to people who are interested in your genre of music and may be interested in the content you create on your page. A great way to target those people is by targeting those who like the pages of similar artists and pages. Make a list of similar artists to you (in terms of genre). Can’t think of too many? Think of at least one or two similar artists and then utilize Spotify’s “Fans Also Like” tab on artist profile’s to find more artists in that genre. This is a great way to get an extensive list of artists that are in your genre space. Use this list in the “Detailed Targeting” section when creating an audience in Facebook’s Ad Manager or “Interests” section within the Instagram App — note, you’ll need artists who have a big enough following for Facebook’s backend to recognize their page. Make sure to also use general targeting parameters, not just artists - e.g., “Pop Music,” “Logic Pro,” “Abelton”, “Music Production,” etc.
You’ll also want to adjust age, location, perhaps gender, and connections (if applicable) when creating an audience to target.
As mentioned, the goal is important to define before setting targeting parameters: for an awareness campaign, you may want to target a broader audience than a conversion campaign. Generally, you want a good middle ground — not too defined, not too broad — and there’s an indicator on the sidebar to let you know that you’re in the right area. Ask yourself what the minimum amount of personalization is for the maximum impact. As James Chadwick put it in his great article on Facebook advertising: “targeting is like salt — too much ruins the dish.
Targeting Pro Tips:
The above uses Interest-based target but try experimenting with Demographics and Behaviors. Want to target people who are in college? Use the “Demographics” drop down menu to do so. Want to target Technology Early Adopters or Engaged Shoppers? Use the “Behaviors” drop down menu.
Create Custom Audience to retarget those who have previously interacted with your business. When you’re creating an audience in Facebook Ads Manager, you can click the “Create New” dropdown menu and then create a Custom Audience based off various sources. This feature allows you to target people who have previously interacted with your content (e.g., watched a video, commented on an Instagram ad, etc.) An example of utilizing this feature is if you ran several video ads to reach as many people as possible, then ran a second sets of ads that then retargeted the people who interacted with those videos. This could be an attempt to convert those who have shown initial interest into more engaged fans.
The Creative: Personalization, MAYA, and Captivating
The creative is perhaps the most important element to your ad and one that is worth experimenting with, as different creatives will work with different audiences. In fact, research by Nielsen and others indicate that creative impact can explain close to 50% of ad results variance — i.e., can make your ad 50% more or less successful. There are three main factors to consider:
1. Personalization Once you set the targeting parameters, you want to develop creative that is specific and personalized to that audience. If you’re targeting people in New York, perhaps you have text or audio in your video that says “New York.” If you’re targeting fans of Roddy Rich, perhaps you subtly mention him or one of his tracks. If you’re targeting students in college, maybe you mention something about being in college and living that lifestyle. You get the point. Personalization is key and is why Facebook has become one of the best advertising platforms.
2. Unique, Yet Familiar One of the fundamental ideas to effectively sell something new to people is to combine the new with the familiar. People like familiarity with a hint of novelty — too much novelty and it’s hard to digest, too much familiarity and it’s not noteworthy.
Famous industrial designer Raymond Loewy coined the theory of “MAYA” — “Most Advanced Yet Acceptable.” The idea behind the theory, as described by The Atlantic, is that consumers “gravitate towards products that are bold, but instantly recognizable.”
I believe one of the best examples of utilizing this concept that you can use for an ad is a cover song — it’s familiar, yet different. For example, if you’re targeting fans of Billie Eilish (and other similar artists), your creative can be a Billie Eilish cover. It’s a song those fans know, but performed in a new manner.
3. Captivating An effective ad captures attention right away. Think about how seamlessly most people scroll through their feed — you want an ad that catches one’s attention. This can be done via text, engaging images, interesting angles, intriguing colours, cool animation, and I’m sure much more. Below are examples that use those various elements — colours, animation, text — to grab one’s attention.
Creative Pro Tips:
Ensure your creative is in the correct dimensions and adjust for different formats. Facebook’s Ad Manager allows you to upload different creative for the same “Ad Set” (i.e., targeting and ad campaign). If you’re running in-feed ads and Stories ads, make sure to upload the creative in different specs (vertical for Stories, 16:9 for feed videos/4:5 for images).
Experiment with different ad formats: carousel, video, images, or collection (group of items that open into a fullscreen mobile experience). I also suggest you use a combination of images, video, and text if running a video ad. Don’t just think you need to have one eye-catching element — combine different formats to create a convincing piece of content.
Design for sound off, delight with sound on. Make sure your creative is compelling even with no sound (how most people scroll through their feed), but delight the user with audio in case they have it turned on.
Experiment with different ways to capture one’s attention in an ad
The Copy: Personalization, Contextualization, and Value-Adding
Having refined and calculated copy (i.e., the text underneath the ad) is another critical aspect to a successful ad.
There are three main factors to think about:
1. Personalization As with your creative discussed above, you want to personalize your copy based off your goal and targeting. If you’re targeting people in LA, write “Hey LA!” in your copy. If you’re targeting people who like Childish Gambino write “Childish Gambino” or tag him in your copy. This also may require some research: a person in Canada should not being seeing an add that says that a product is $20, when in fact it’s actually $26 when converting USD to CAD. Your copy should reflect your targeting parameters. This will most likely require several different pieces of creative — you may run 10 different ads, all with the same goal, but targeting different audiences and therefore, each should have different creative and copy. These are the type of little items that make for a much more effective ad when compared to more generic copy. Personalized copy, combined with personalized creative, truly leverages the power of Facebook and Instagram ads. Otherwise, it’s like sticking up a billboard on one’s news feed.
2. Contextualize
Contextualization is something I write about often as I believe it’s becoming more and more important. What I mean by contextualization is having copy, and creative, that fits into one’s day. For example, some of Spotify’s most popular playlists are mood-based playlists: “Mood Booster,” “Songs to Sing in the Shower,” etc. rather than genre-based playlists. Why? Because they have a very clear purpose and are explicit about the value they provide for the consumer. Mood Booster is music that is meant to boost your mood, whereas a generic Pop playlist can be a pandora’s box of music. So how do you implement this idea in your ad?
Think about where and when people may listen to your song.
Is it for rainy days? Summer days? Pool party’s? Sitting in a coffeeshop? Here’s an article I wrote on how I doubled my click-through rate by adjusting the copy of an ad.
3. Value-Adding Playing off of contextualizing your copy, it’s also important to really think about how your ad provides value. Is it an energizing track? A song to listen to when winding down?Does it boost one’s mood? Console them when they’re depressed? Make the value you’re providing explicit in your copy. For example, you can write “Get your day started on the right foot with my new single…”. Here’s an article I wrote on how to implement lessons from value-based marketing into your own marketing efforts.
Copy Pro Tips:
If driving to a link (stream, video, tickets, beat store, website, etc.) use a shortened link (smarturl.it, bit.ly, Linkfire, etc.) that can track the numbers of clicks where they’re coming from, retarget those who clicked on it, etc.
Putting It All Together
These steps: The Goal, The Targeting, and The Creative & Copy all need to work together, like a beautiful harmony. The goal of the ad campaign needs to be properly defined in order to determine your target audience. Once your target audience is established, you can then create personalized, compelling, unique creative with well-thought out copy. These components need to all be in sync with each other.
As with many things in the digital world, experimentation is key. You may think you know your ideal audience, but perhaps it’s a totally different set of people. You may think your creative is captivating but perhaps it’s not. You can test these things with a Split Test or simply some trial and error. Experiment with targeting different audiences, changing up your creative, re-writing copy. Once a campaign has run its course, analyze the results to see what worked and what did not. What worked in the past, may not work in the future and vice versa. It’s all about experimentation, being creative, and having fun with it!
General Pro-Tips
Let your ads run for a minimum of five days in order to let the algorithm find the most inexpensive customers. The first few days of running an ad is called the “Learning Phase.” Facebook defines this period as “the period when the delivery system still has a lot to learn about an ad set. […] the delivery system is exploring the best way to deliver your ad set — so performance is less stable and cost-per-action (CPA) is usually worse. […] The learning phase is necessary to help the delivery system best optimize ads.” Try to avoid any edits during this time and let the delivery system do its thing. I would suggest you let your ad run for at least 10 days to be able to somewhat accurately analyze its effectiveness.
If running an ad through Facebook’s Ad Manager, rather than boosting a post or through Instagram, experiment with editing your placements. This allows you to edit where within Facebook or Instagram your ad is shown. Think about the most effective ads you have seen — they probably were not on the righthand column of Facebook, Instagram Explore, or Facebook Marketplace. I usually edit my placements so that my ads are only shown in Facebook and Instagram Feeds, Facebook Video Feeds, and Facebook and Instagram Stories. I turn everything else off, generally.
3. Install a Facebook Pixel on your website. If you have enough traffic, you can target those who have visited your website.
Josh Viner
Medium profile: http://bit.ly/JoshVinerMedium Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justjoshying/