Paid advertising for music artists and producers
What’s paid advertising?
Effectively, an ad is paid-for targeted distribution of a piece of content.
You are paying to have your content delivered to an audience based on your targeting.
Is it worth it?
That depends.
It’s my opinion that you should invest with proper intention, not just to gain views/streams.
Paying just to increase vanity metrics won’t do anything for you or your business.
But if you attach it to more objective business value, then it starts to make sense and the return on investment becomes clearer.
For example, if for every $10 you get 2 email subscribers, and the lifetime value of an email is $20, then you’re doing well.
But if you are just paying for streams or views, there is no business value attached to it, so ROI is difficult to measure.
How to target
The better you know your audience, the better your targeting will be.
No platform is going to know your audience for you, that’s your job.
Their job is to distribute your content to the audience you choose, whether that’s based on interest, demographic, or whatever.
Call-to-action
You must have a CTA. And it should be inline with your objective.
Examples of call-to-actions are:
- Subscribe to mailing list
- Follow on Spotify
- View profile (Instagram)
- Buy now
Platforms
There are many platforms that offer paid ads, including the obvious such as Youtube, Facebook, and Instagram, but the principles are universal.
There are usually 3 levels to understand.
- Objective (Campaign)
- Ad set (Targeting)
- Creative / the ad content itself (Video, image, text)
Resources
Below I have linked some useful resource to help you understand how paid advertsing works.
Free Facebook Ads Training from Facebook
Music ad templates from Toneden
Some lingo
Impression = Every time your ad is seen
CPM = Cost per thousand impressions
CPC = Cost per click