Today, everything has gone digital. What worked 50 years ago doesn’t necessarily work today when it comes to promoting yourself. The rise of technology and smart devices makes marketing yourself as a musician easier than ever before. Here’s how to grow your music career today using Facebook advertising.
Before you get into any advertising, you have to know what your end goal is. Otherwise, you’ll have no vision and you’ll be wasting money.
Step 1: Figure out your goals – are you a teacher trying to get more guitar students? Are you a quartet trying to get more listeners? Maybe you’re a studio musician looking for more work? These are critical to ask so you can build your campaign around your goals.
Step 2: Create a “marketing funnel.” Businesses do this all the time, and musicians should get on board if they want to succeed. You have to think of your advertising funnel as having a large opening that trickles down to a small hole. From top to bottom, your customers will go from Awareness to Consideration to Conversion and finally Loyalty/Advocacy.
One thing to keep in mind with this funnel is the concept of cold, warm, and hot audiences. Your cold audience will be people whom you have never met. You must think of how you want to reach them and how you want them to perceive you as they get their first impression of you from a Facebook video or post. From here, you can track those people who fall lower into the funnel and begin to “warm” to your product, who you are, or what services you offer. Finally, your “hot” audience are those who have converted and taken the desired action you were looking for in your campaign.
1. Create a Facebook business page and an Ads Manager account
This means if you’re a music business that gives lessons in people’s homes or if you’re an aspiring chamber ensemble, you should already have these things set up. If you don’t, follow the business page documentation in Facebook and the advertising ads account documentation.
2. Figure out "who" you want to reach
Define and set up the audience in Facebook Ads. Again, if you’re trying to reach students, try targeting things that they’re interested in. This could be famous violinists they follow, magazines that these students like to read, or even informative music pages that they follow (such as StringOvation). You can also carve out what actions or behaviors you think your audience has. Where do they shop? What other bands do they like? What do they buy? All of these questions will help you narrow your audience down and set your ad up for success.
3. Create a compelling ad to promote your services or music
Often times videos are the most engaging and bring the best results. Another simple technique is connecting your ad to your website. This way people click on the ad and can check out your website, what you offer, and learn more about you. Remember, people seeing your ad most likely weren’t planning on coming across your post, so make it worth their time to check you out.
4. Optimization and Tracking Results
This entire process will be in vain if you don’t track your results! Obviously, ads cost money and if you spend more on the ad than in what you’re making back you could be in trouble. The end goal is to create a sustainable business model, after all. So you should learn what terms like “click-through-rate" mean and see how much your cost per click is. This is all part of a process called optimization. You want to get your clicks and conversions to be as cheap as possible.
These numbers will give you a sense of how people are responding to your ad. Tracking your leads and seeing conversions is critical to a successful business, and you’ll be able to see the breakeven point in your ad spend.
Once you get a handle on optimizing your ad, your budget, and the overall campaign, it’s time to scale your services. Pour back some of your profit to increase your ad budget. This way Facebook will help you reach even more people, meaning more leads, students, listeners, and subscribers!
Now it’s time to open up Facebook, create an ad, and start seeing results! Anyone can do it, but few people actually do so. This is a powerful tool that can take your music career to the next level. If you’re a teacher, this means reaching new potential students. If you’re in a music ensemble, or a composer, this is an opportunity to get your music heard.
Don’t be afraid of advertising and grow yourself as a musician today!
Guest contributor, Isaiah Ramkhelawan is a full time musician, songwriter, teacher, and digital marketer from Atlanta, Georgia. He loves unleashing potential in people and businesses by teaching them the values of marketing. In his free time, he writes worship music with his wife in their band, Wind & Color.