If you’re a musician, you probably already know that one of the biggest challenges for those who are starting out is to get an engaged audience.
You may have already realized that the music industry is very competitive and demanding. Success and financial returns are never guaranteed.
If you still don’t understand the importance of social media in this process, it’s time understand how it all works.
Nowadays, practically all of us are connected digitally. Clever marketing on Facebook can help you attract new people to listen to your music, buy your music, and go to your shows.
But… is paying to boost your music on Facebook the right way to do it?
To better answer that question, here are the pros and cons of paying to boost your music on Facebook!
Pros of Boosting Music on Facebook
Low Investment Cost
Compared to traditional media, Facebook (the largest social network in the world) has high returns on investment (ROI). Especially when we look at Cost Per Thousand, the cost needed for the ad to reach 1,000 people.
You can pay just a few dollars to reach thousands of people. Yes, that’s right, reaching a single person can cost just a few cents!
Helps With Organic Reach & SEO
Good planning of campaigns on social networks increases the ranking of your music and your personal brand in search engines.
In other words, the links are better placed in organic searches on search sites (such as Google), making it much easier not only for fans to find your songs but also for people who don’t know you yet.
Gateway to Potential Investors/Record Labels
By increasing your reach and popularity through boosting your music on Facebook, your work can reach potential investors who might be interested in investing in you and your growth.
Potential record labels, angel investors, and more might take an interest and further boost your career.
Audience Targeting
One of Facebook Ads’ greatest strengths is targeting. Facebook offers advertisers a deep choice of different demographics for you to target your music to.
You can target people by income, by geographical location, by hobbies, by what types of pages they like, and much, much more.
Want to show your music in front of 14-16 teens who wear The Rolling Stones t-shirts and listen to Nirvana near your area? You can do it.
More Views, More Fans
In addition to working with your pre-existing fans, it is possible to identify audiences and groups with a similar profile who may be just as likely to enjoy your work as your main demographic, based on the behavior of your pre-existing audience.
These are called “Lookalike audiences” and they can be of great help to expand and reach new demographics who’re likely to enjoy your music.
Wide Variety of Campaign Formats
Different sponsored campaign goals serve different purposes and can be organized into more complex ones within the platform itself.
Your campaign might be targeted at getting as many video views for as low as price as possible.
Or it could be used to increase the number of likes on the song or post.
If necessary, it could even be helpful in sending people to another link outside of Facebook, such as your personal website or YouTube/Spotify/etc page.
As such, you’re never without options on how to increase your reach and you’ve always got something new you can experiment with!
Easy-to-Understand Campaign Reports
The campaign reports made available are easy to interpret and analyze.
In addition to providing specific information for each action, they can also offer comparative reports between different campaigns to better highlight the best way to reach your audience.
Even for people without a heavy marketing or advertisement background, Facebook makes it easy for anyone to run and optimize their own campaigns.
Facebook Itself Helps Your Advertising
Facebook’s algorithms are increasingly efficient in the search for spam. In order not to bombard users’ timelines with advertisements, they give preference to personal or unpaid posts.
This might seem like a negative at first, but after thinking about it, marketing on this network is much more effective because of Facebook trying to make user’s feeds as relevant as possible.
The reason for that is that users end up paying more attention when they come across an ad since there is no rejection due to numerous random advertisements about things that they don’t care about.
Not only that, but Facebook will also do its best to show your music to the people most likely to enjoy it.
But beware: it’s not all sunshine and roses!
Facebook ads also have their fair share of cons, which you need to be aware of before choosing to invest your own money on it.
Cons of Boosting Music on Facebook
Constant Algorithm Changes
With constant updates and the creation of new algorithms, the rules of the platform are not so clear and easy to be circumvented by paid campaigns, which seek to increase the reach or impact of actions. Therefore, musicians need to be well-informed and attentive to the practices adopted and discover the best way to exploit them.
Sometimes, a campaign or audience targeting that was working perfectly well yesterday, may not be generating any results today, draining your money. As such, you need to be constantly attentive not only to the changes to specific campaigns every day, but also need to be aware of Facebook’s ever-changing rules and algorithm.
Requires Tons of Testing
Finding out all the little ins and outs of your campaigns boosting your music can take some time.
What is the best time of the day to advertise?
What kinds of people and demographics have the highest engagement rates with your music?
What geographical region has the best costs?
… And much more.
Figuring out the details on the best settings for your campaign can take time. Luckily though, you can do it with fairly low-cost investments to better understand your audience before investing a lot of money!
Ad Costs are Increasing
12 years ago, the digital paid advertisement was still fairly novel.
Companies and individuals were hesitant to try it out and there was a lot of experimentation with it.
However, over this past decade, it has grown tremendously fast.
What this massive increase in digital advertisers means for your music is that it is more expensive to boost your music on Facebook today than it was yesterday. And that tomorrow will be more expensive than today.
After all, the more people that are advertising on the platform or for a specific audience, the more competition there will be to get that audience’s attention, meaning you’ll have to pay more for your ads.
And as Facebook’s advertisement scene continues to get more and more competitive, so do ad costs.
Despite the increasing costs of boosting posts on Facebook, it is important to note that as of right now, their costs are still premium and are a very cheap investment to make.
Content is Important, Content is King
But let’s take a break from the words “ad” and “boosting” and talk about “content”.
As you might well know, social media is a paradise for content creation.
Good content generates engagement (likes, comments, sharing), which is part of the process of generating credibility and authority for artists.
Content must be relevant and valuable to the public. Remember that in a world so full of information, the competition for people’s attention is very high.
Common examples of content are blog articles, ebooks, infographics, videos, and much more.
For musicians, Facebook can be a great place to share behind-the-scenes content, to show sneak peeks of upcoming songs, and much more.
Natural, organic content can increase the effectiveness of your paid advertisements too since the more people know you, the easier it is to get them to engage in your page or with your music.
Look for content that entertains, instigates, excites, and makes the audience participate, exchange ideas, get hyped up for future releases, and much more.
If you don’t have any content at all, maybe you should wait a little longer and get structured on it before starting to invest in Ads.
Another tool that Facebook offers for content creation and engagement is live streaming. If you’re comfortable with it, streams can be a great way to attract people’s attention and get new fans.
Ads and Facebook Business Manager
For you to start boosting your music on the platform, Facebook Business Manager is the place.
It is a Facebook tool that helps you organize and prepare your campaigns.
Despite its unfriendly interface, the Facebook Business Manager is a life-safer and will make your paid advertising efforts much easier.
Through it, you can choose from a large number of different settings and options for your campaign that will help you better segment your audience and optimize your money.
You also get access to the Facebook Pixel, which will help you track data of anyone who visits links to your website (if you have it) and allows you to create ads aimed at those people.
The formats for the ads are also quite complete, giving musicians several options to choose from.
The placement of the ads can also be chosen based on the strategy adopted by the advertiser.
The choices you have with Facebook Business are endless, and if you want to properly edit your campaigns to be just the way you need them to be, use the Facebook Business Manager.
The Bottom Line… Is it Worth it to Boost Music on Facebook?
Facebook is a social media that gives great opportunities for musicians, both new and old.
Despite the negative points in relation to advertising on the platform, it is essential that artists are mindful of the power that boosting music on Facebook can be, and if possible, that they fully explore the options offered.
Good management of social media, with effective creation of campaigns directed to your work, can create a day and night for your career.
If you’re an experienced musician with a pre-established public, it can help you gain even greater reach and engagement by entering the Facebook Market.
And if you’re an upcoming musician, it can be the difference that makes your art reach the next level.
So, yes, it is definitely worth it to boost music on Facebook!