Below is a guest post from UK music marketer Chris Rockett. I asked Chris to share something with the GYRS crowd and I think this is a great post on getting started with Facebook Ads. We all know that Facebook is huge, but you have to do a lot more than just throw a whole bunch of money out there and hope for the best? Here are some ideas from Chris on how to get your ads seen by more folks. You can connect with Chris on his website where his talks about Music Promotion, Band Promotion and advice for a successful Music Career.
If you want to write something from GYRS, send me an email to marketing@genyrockstars.com and you can share your info and knowledge with over 10,000 indie musicians and industry pros.
If you really think you have what it takes to make it in the music business, but don’t know know how to reach the right fans for your music, you have a big problem…
Like many other musicians you will probably have wasted a lot of time so far trying to get fans to come to your site using stuff like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, but the fact is, while all that stuff can work if you keep at it for a couple of hours a day, it takes so much time and effort that you can sometimes be left with no time to actually create your music – which is the thing that in the end will be the key to your success.
This is where paid advertising comes in…
With paid ads you just set up an email subscription form on your website and then use ads to send hits to that page from people who are looking for information on similar bands that you think you sound most like.
This is a great way to do laser targeted marketing because you already know that they are much more likely to become fans because they got up off their butts and are actually looking for information about your music niche.
The biggest problem with most music marketing is the amount of time wasted on tasks that really don’t push your fan base forward.
Why Google Ads Suck!
I’m sure you’ve seen this stuff before, Google have a whole set of natural search results in the center of their search result and then a bunch of paid links at the top and on the right. So each time that a user clicks on one of those ads the advertiser has to pay for the click.
Perfect right?
You just buy a whole bunch of clicks from people searching for Metallica and your death metal band will have more fans than Lady Gaga….
Wrong…
The problem with Google pay per click is that you might have to pay anywhere up to $1 a click for your hits.
So let’s do some math.
- You buy 1000 clicks = $1000
- Out of those 1000 clicks you get 5% of the people to join your list = 50 (Actually a 5% conversion rate to email subscriber would be a great number, it would probably be more like 2%)
- Out of those 50 people 10% buy your $7 album = 5×7=$35
So after spending $1000 you made a grand total of $35 leaving you 975 out of pocket…
Not good at all!
This is where Facebook ads come in…
By using a Facebook ad the way I will show you in the rest of this post you will be able to get clicks for as little 1 cent a click which will massively raise your profitability.
Lets look at the math again…
- You but 1000 clicks = $10
- Out of those 1000 clicks you get 5% of the people to join your list = 50
- Out of those 50 people 10% buy your $7 album = 5×7=$35
So you have spent $10 and made $35, and that my friends is a great business which you could run all day, everyday, forever!
How to set up a 1 cent Facebook ad, step by step…
Please don’t just jump in the system and start bidding all over the place, if you do that Facebook ads will actually cost you more than Google ads. You need to follow the system below to have any chance of success.
WARNING: Please read the Facebook terms of service before you run any ads because if you mess this stuff up or break any of their rules your account will get banned! Bye Bye Facebook…
WARNING: Running a paid advertising campaign has its risk and although the steps in the guide below can give you a better chance of success there are no guarantees so neither myself or this blog take any responsibility for your financial situation.
Step 1 – Set up your lead capture page and target your perfect fan
You need to create a custom page on your website that offers your new fans something really really really cool in return for their email address.. Don’t use your band website or your Facebook page because if you buy clicks and do not try to get an email address you will be throwing your money down the toilet.
Go into Facebook and click on this link
Then this button
You will then be presented with a whole bunch of demographic options that will help you pick out your perfect fan. Think about this stuff for a while and be ultra specific.
For example, if I was in a heavy metal band I would do something like this:
Age - 23-35 (Because people any younger are less likely to spend money online and people older are not as engaged with music, as a rule.)
Country – pick the country and region that you live in at first because this will start filling up your local gigs.
Keywords – Metalica, Iron Maiden, Megadeath, Anthrax
As I said before you want to target your perfect fan by using keywords that they might have in their profile. So for the heavy metal example I choose stuff like Metallica, Megadeath and Anthrax because those bands are all closely related and would give me a great chance of talking to my perfect fan.
Step 2 – Create your ads
This is the real meat of the facebook system and you will have to get a few different parts right to make a sucessful ad.
Headlines
You want to speak right to your perfect fan upfront. So go with something like this…
- Do You Like Heavy Metal?
- Have you been to a Metallica show?
- Who’s Your Favorite metal band?
Using this kind of headline makes you seem a little psychic to the person on Facebook and you might spike their interest.
The problem that sometimes happens on Facebook is that people see so many ads that they start to become blind to them and never click.
One thing that you will want to do when you get more advanced at this stuff is to rotate your ads so that the people you target will be offered something new each time they log in and be more likely to click.
Ad copy
In the text of the ad you should talk about how clicking will make their life better and as any good marketer will tell you it’s always best to focus on the benefits rather than the feature.
Example: A man want to cut his lawn…
Bad ad: The Lawn 2000 has four blades and a 40 metre chord
Good ad: Our top of the range lawnmower cut grass faster and more precisely than any other on the market, you will have the best looking grass in the neighborhood in the fastest time so you can spend time relaxing with a cold beer.
See?
The second ad focuses on what the customer is really trying to achieve, and this is much more powerful than telling him all the great features of your mower. He does not care about that stuff, deep down he just wants to have the best darn grass in the neighbourhood.
So that’s enough about grass…
How would this work for our Micheal Jackson fan example?
Bad ad: We sound like Micheal Jackson and when you click here we will give you a free track.
Good ad: If you’re a fan of Micheal Jackson you’re going to like band xxxx, everyone who clicks here in the next few minutes will be able to enjoy a free track from the exclusive new album. (It’s cool to ad a little bit of urgency in there for good measure.)
Images
When you’re picking the image to use in your ads make sure you find something that resonates well with your market and also sticks out and looks a little bit strange. Once again you are battling against banner blindness and you need to take every opportunity to counter it.
So for instance if I was going after Micheal Jackson fans I might get a picture of Micheal and give him red devil eyes and rotate the picture on it’s side.
That way there is no way an MJ fan could scroll down the page and miss your offer.
Step 3 -Your Budget and Ad Spend
The last part of setting up your ad is choosing your budget for the advertising campaign and you have to get this right or you will loose your shirt.
Paid advertising always has its risks and you should never spend more than you can afford to loose, you’re just testing for the moment and you can expect your first few tests to go down the toilet.
So when it comes to bidding on Facebook you want to follow a few rules.
- Start with a budget of no more than $10 a day. (If you are getting 1 cent clicks this will still give you some good traffic.)
- You must use pay per impression and not pay per click. If you choose pay per click you will have to pay up to $1 for each visitor to your website.. But pay per impression is great because you can bid $0.50 per 1000 impressions and if you only get 25 clicks out of those 1000 people you will be getting clicks for around $0.02.
Note: Impressions means the number of times your ads is shown to the Facebook user.
The more clicks you get the better value your ad spend will be, but the real magic here is targeting your fans perfectly and with great detail.
That way they will be so impressed by your ad that they won’t be able to help themselves!
Final Thoughts.
So now you have all the skills to start getting some really cheap hits to your website from Facebook but once again I feel I need to warn you that any paid traffic strategy has its risks and if you go in with all guns blazing you could loose a lot of money.
There is obviously no way I could tell you every detail of Facebook ads in this post so just stick to the golden rules below and you should be fine:
- Never spend more than you can afford to loose
- Stick to a $10 a day budget.
- Target your ads with great details
- Use pay per impression
- Rotate your ads frequently and test new versions.
I wish you all the best of luck in your Facebook testing…
