Musicadium Blog

Using Facebook Advertising to Boost Digital Sales

Getting your music on iTunes, Amazon, eMusic or another online superstore is a big deal. When you first saw your tunes up in the Apple store you probably called your friends, your girlfriend, maybe even your mom. I swear, I hear musicians call their moms all the time. Anyway, the point is that once you get your music distributed and playing with the big boys, you need to market the shit (crap if you don’t want the cursing) out of your pages, your store and links in order to make any sales.

As with most products these days, building it will not cause people to buy it, so forget what Kevin Costner was saying in Field of Dreams. So how do you promote your digital tunes?

Obvious answers:
•    Myspace bulletins
•    Links on your profile pages
•    Blog posts
•    Get reviewed by music critics
•    Send an e-mail to your mailing list
•    Text everyone in your phone and begging and pleading with them to buy something
•    So on and so on.

There are other options to turn on new fans and create sales without being pushy and intrusive (spam messages, comments, unwanted texts, etc). You can do this by advertising!

I know, I know – advertising is like a blacklisted word for indie musicians. The reality is that with targeted messages, in places that people who like your style of music hang out, with a set budget and timeframe can increase your fan base, drive brand awareness and convert passersby into customers.

Today I am going to chat about the Facebook Advertising Platform and how you can target your ads to boost awareness and desire.

Facebook Advertising
The Facebook Advertising Platform is very simple and allows you to quickly target potential fans by a multitude of categories. The thing to note is that with online advertising, we are NOT trying to get in front of millions of people and get a tiny fraction to convert. We ARE trying to get in front of a small, but highly target audience and get a higher percentage to convert.

The first step to creating an ad is to design the ad. Facebook walks you through this process and shows you your ad as you build it.

Tips For Designing Your Ad

• The title needs to stand out and tell your audience who you are and what you are doing interrupting their Facebook time with friends. You are limited to 25 characters, so be creative and use strong keywords like your band’s name, location and something about your album being available. It’s tough to fit a whole sentence, so the key is to grab attention and state your purpose.
• The body has more room to play with. Be sure to include a call to action such as, “Click here to Buy our album now” or the more subtle “Click here to preview tracks.”
• The image needs to pop off the page. Be sure to use a strong graphic with colors that work well with Facebook’s plain Blue and White template. The image will be resized to 110×80 and it is a good idea to design something that is that size so you do not lose any resolution.
• The destination URL is where you will be sending the person when they click. My suggestion is to create a landing page on your own site where people can listen to and preview your tracks, learn more about your band, subscribe to your e-mail list and obviously have links to iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody and other online stores.

The 2nd step is to target your ad.
Facebook gives you plenty of parameters I which to take a really large number of users (175 million +) to a small manageable number. Check out my quick example below:

Here is what I did broken down for you:

• In my example I broke down my ad to Orlando, FL – so I only show my ads to people in my hometown.
• Next I wanted to get into the lucrative Gen-Y and youth crowd so I am only showing my ad to people who are 16-24 years old.
• In the keyword box I suggest that you pick a band that you sound similar to. What happens next is everyone who listed this band a one of their favs will be included in your marketing efforts. The great thing is that you are NOT putting ads onto pages where people who dislike your genre of music hang out. It’s a great feature that can be explored well beyond just a band name. You can go as far as red trucks who read Tim Ferriss who listen to Metallica whose favor color is teal. Powerful stuff.
• I know that most of my customers are male hip-hop fans so I axe the ladies (so, so hard to do).
• I left education blank, not a big deal with this demo.
• Next I went for single guys as they have more expendable income than guys in a relationship.

The end result is that there are 320 guys between the ages of 16 and 24 who are single in Orlando who like Fall Out Boy. How’s that for breaking down 175 million to 300+.

The Last Phase is Campaigns and Pricing.
You will want to title your ad so you can find and identify it later on. Next you set your budget. The budget is broken down per day. So if you have $60 to spend for the month, your daily budget would be $2.00. You can always change this as money comes in (or goes out). For scheduling you can runs your ads at all times or you can set specific dates (works great for release promotions or days leading up to live shows, festivals, etc).

The last number is one that tricks many bands. You can choose whether you want to pay per impression (CPM), which means that you pay a set amount every time your ad is shown 1,000 times regardless if someone clicked on it or not.

I am a big fan of pay-per-click (PPC) where you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. This number is usually a little higher but I am believer that your return will be greater. One suggestion is to note what your cost per click is and how that relates to how much a fan is worth to you vs. how many visitors convert on your site. This is a long topic in itself but breaks down to:

If 1 in 4 people subscribe to your email list and 1 in 4 of them buys your digital album that you profit 6 bucks on, it takes 8 fans to make that $6. Thus each fan can cost up to $1.33 and you won’t lose money (8 fans divided by $6). Hope that makes sense.

Lastly you will confirm, give your payment info and boom your account is online and new fans will be clicking away learning about your band, listening to tunes and making you some money from your digital distribution.

See, advertising isn’t that hard, and its not that expensive if you can break down your niche, your sound and your fans. I’d love to know how your experiments with Facebook Ads go and how you tweaked them to get your band more fans, plays and sales.

(This post was written by Greg Rollett from Gen-Y Rock Stars, a resource community for indie musicians. Check out their free Gen-Y Rock Star Tool Kit or email Greg for more information.)

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 26th, 2009 at 1:06 pm and is filed under Guest Post, Marketing & Promotions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.