With over 2.74 billion active users every month on Facebook, every login is an excellent opportunity to reach out to millions in seconds. Indeed big businesses like Uber and Amazon who rely on marketing to a wide audience base leverage Facebook for marketing. But do you know who else is tapping the marketing potential of Facebook and using it as a sole platform for communication to their audience? It’s the artists- the musicians, the painters, the rappers, the poets and the like who are using the platform to reach a wide, curious audience looking for entertainment.
Much to the surprise of many, Facebook offers a rather inexpensive ad campaign and makes it affordable for up-and-coming artists who hardly earn through their art- yet. Facebook has been helping upcoming artists like Tash Sultana, Dave Grohl and more reach out to millions of viewers in days. The wide variety of controls that you get with Facebook ads manager and integrated at testing allows you to reach the people that are already consuming your genre of art and are likely to vibe to your tunes. But is it worth it? How to get started? Let’s check out.
Is Facebook Ads for Artists Good?
Upcoming and rising artists often don’t have the budget to promote on mainstream platforms like television and offline marketing on banners. Social media comes as a valuable marketing platform where you can register yourself free and start interacting with your audience and build a reach. You can expand your web presence and also boost your credibility by having a cool profile that portrays your style of art on Facebook.
Additionally, you can share your music videos, paintings, writings and whatever you’re good at directly on Facebook or share links from other platforms like YouTube, Spotify or Etsy to channelize your newfound audience. Facebook allows you to promote yourself using ads which can be very resourceful if you’re an unknown quantity. Even established artists and labels rely on ads to expand their audience and promote their content. Always try to be organic with your promotions and keep focusing on building a profile that justifies your art instead of overpromoting or making your ad look like a sales pitch.
Think about it. Do you ever want to click on an ad that makes superlative claims and sounds too salesy? That’s what you shouldn’t be being an artist. Create a natural pitch that the users want to click rather than you induce them to. That makes Facebook an excellent platform for artists. Facebook also allows you to share the ads directly on Instagram helping you cover the social media platform most popular among youth and artists within a single campaign.
Do Facebook Ads for Artists and Musicians Work?
Facebook ads can help you expand your reach, promote your new song or music album, spread the word for your upcoming tour and help boost ticket sales and even get your merchandise promoted and sold. But all that happens when you do it the right way. Instead of always creating new posts or videos to boost your subscribers and get maximum clicks, you can promote the posts that are already there on your timeline and go viral. Check out this post from Tasha Sultana where she has promoted a live song performed from her album:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=264557384231709
The video garnered over a million views of course because the song was catchy and impressive. But another factor behind this is the use of Facebook ads which targeted the followers of similar artists and those who listen to similar music. She then promoted the album-related merchandise to people who watched her video at least three seconds using the ads manager and audience similar to those. Here merchandise ad shown below resulted in over $11,000 of incremental sale:
The process can go on and on with you using each of these promotions to boost your reach and plan the next ad accordingly. Instead of expanding your audience randomly, you are picking people who are most likely to buy your tickets, merchandise and stream your music.
How do I promote my art through Facebook Ads for Artists?
Now that you know the benefits, you must be itching to start creating your Facebook ad and reach a wider audience who would consume your art. That can also make way for commissions. Here are 5 easy steps to start on the journey:
- Create an impressive artist’s page. Instead of posting on your personal profile, create a separate page for your artwork for it to look professional. You can only use a page for business and not a personal profile as per Facebook terms. Create a compelling about us section and add links to all other platforms and portfolios you want to showcase. Create a memorable name that can be a pseudonym or something related to your genre or art form.
- Start posting at least once a week and make sure you have put up all the highlights and impressive works on your page. You can post bytes of you creating art or so too when you don’t have much content.
- Develop an understanding of your community by engaging with them. You’d get to know their preferences, demands and more when you ask them to comment or ask questions and you actively reply on them.
- Start commenting on popular posts related to your art or general trending topics and people would start noticing you and visiting your profile. You can then start using Facebook’s cheap and easy to create ads to boost your reach and get more exposure.
- After bringing tons of people to your page using Facebook ads, you don’t want to let them move away. Try to be as active and as consistent as you can and keep a highlight of your most impressive works on top to convert the visitors.
How to create compelling Facebook ads for rappers?
Being a musician, you’d know it takes much more to make people listen to you than just a simple ‘buy me’ type of album cover. Here are a few tips to help you create an action-oriented compelling ad to appeal to your audience:
- Create video ads instead of just image ones. Add a listen now or play button there and try to keep the objective to be increasing video views or traffic. People naturally get attracted to a beat or a verse so put your best one out there instead of just promoting posts.
- Target audience to a specific niche. If you are a rapper who likes to rap on East Coast beats, setting the target audience to be followers of East Coast rappers can save a lot from your budget apart from making the audience instantly groove to you.
- Add a compelling image that impresses your audience and makes them want to click on your ad. Always add a CTA text along with the button.
- Create different ads for Instagram and Facebook as Instagram doesn’t show text links under the post. Just set it up for a story swipe up or listen now on the feed and remove the link in the caption.
- Avoid promoting posts less than 24 hours after posting them. That’d ensure the new audience that watches your post already sees some engagement on your post.
Best Examples of Facebook Ads for Artists Promoting Music
Justin’s recent album Justice is gaining massive popularity and he is leaving no stones unturned to promote it. Here is an ad where he tries to engage with the audience while providing special offer for merchs on the post:
Here is another merch promotion from top female rapper Cardi B after the obvious success of WAP:
Effective Tips to Create Facebook ads for Artists through Spotify streams
Run ads in countries where spotify is present
It would be such a waste if you are promoting in a location where Spotify doesn’t offer its service. You do want to reach more people than those who are on Spotify but for that you should create different ads on Youtube as well as
Keep your ad objective as generating leads
Instead of trying to derive sales from your campaign, keep the objective as generating leads who would then go on to stream or buy your music.
Create a conversion campaign
Go to Facebook ads manager and select events manager from the menu. Set up your landing page along with a CTA using the Event setup tool. When someone clicks on that button on the landing page, FB counts it as a conversion click. Now create an ad campaign using conversions.
Set interest as Spotify
You will then create short videos from your song and promote these on different days. Always add a call to action on your ads along with calling out your audience using lines like. ‘Having a Bad day? Listen to this now’ or so.
Using Facebook Ads for Artists’ Ads Manager to Track Progress
Once you have run an ad campaign, you can get on to Facebook Ads Manager to monitor your results. Here are a few quick steps to analyze your campaign’s success and the improvements you need to make using the ads manager:
Link Clicks
If your ad campaign’s objective is to click the link and watch your music video or art work, check out link clicks to see your ad’s ROI. You will also get to know the cost of the campaign per click.
Demographics
Demographics lets you know which gender preferred watching your add and engaging with it. It will also tell you the percentage of women and men the ad reached out to. The stat will let you know which gender should you focus on when promoting your art.
Placements
Here you’ll understand which place the ad was most successful upon. Facebook provides you options to place ads on Messenger, Instagram, Facebook and Audience Network. You’ll get to know how your ad performed in various locations.
Also think about what you have on your landing page and whether it’s optimized for mobile devices which comprise nearly 80% of the audience these days. If your campaign objective is lead generation, you can expect fewer clients than in a traffic objective campaign where you may want just a view on your video or subscription. Although you can learn all of these techniques as you start posting consistently, it’s better to hire a digital marketing expert to gain quick results.
Benefits of using Facebook Ads for Artists to promote art
Wide pool of interaction
An average FB user has 130 friends and is connected to around 80 pages or groups. So every time someone watches your ad and shares your content, a further 130 people along with those in the groups may also watch it expanding your pool of potential audience.
Targeted advertising
Facebook selects people who show genuine engagement in the kind of content you are promoting. Even if you reach less people in a small budget campaign, Facebook makes sure you reach the right people.
Understand your competition
Facebook lets you analyze your competitors and take cues from their successful strategies. How are other artists promoting their work? What’s helping them gain views? You can learn and implement all that and more.
SEO
Facebook is a highly popular website with remarkable user engagement. If you use the right keywords in your ad and are gaining popularity on Facebook, your FB page will also popup on search engines like Google and Bing.
How much do Facebook ads for artists cost in 2021?
If ever there was a trick question, this is it. There are so many variables that determine Facebook ad cost that it’s hard to provide a rigid number. The same ad can cost as little as 70 cents and as much as $10. Studies from Wordstream have revealed that the average cost of Facebook ads across all industries is $1.72/click. Isn’t much right? Well travel and hospitality industry’s average is just $0.63 and so the average is pretty much skewed because of high cost of finance ads.
But it isn’t that simple. Facebook can’t bombard its users with ads or they’d start looking for alternatives. That’s why there are only so many slots they can sell. Likewise, you’d have to bid for your spot and the highest bidder gets to show their ad. You’ll have competition not only from your industry but also those with similar target audiences. Now if you bid $3 and the competitor bids $2.4, you’ll pay a penny more that is $2.41.
Other factors that determine your ad’s cost include objectives, target audience, the date of your campaign and whether any festivities are around, ad placement and your ad’s relevance. Facebook dramatically cuts the cost of relevant ads. So you never know how much you can cut on your current Facebook ad campaigns and that gives you an incentive to keep trying and increasing your ROI!
So here it is. Now you know how valuable a Facebook ad can be to an artist not only during the grind but even after gaining recognition. So what are you waiting for? Start building a compelling Facebook profile, engage with your audience and explore a whole new market of opportunities with Facebook!