Modeling succesful artists Facebook ads to help grow your own Spotify followers

Maybe you've heard this before... "I tried using Facebook ads to expand my Spotify, but it wasn't working for me. How can I grow the right way?"

I personally don't like Facebook ads because I believe that Facebook is more concerned with making money for itself than with helping you. But Facebook is still where most of the 'eyes' are (including the eyes of your target audience), so that is where you need to increase visibility. So let's try to maximize every dollar we spend. 

Before I forget, don't 'boost' your posts on Facebook! 'Boosting' posts on Facebook is like flushing money down the toilet. Facebook just takes your money without any lasting results… Facebook has more than 10 campaign objectives that align with business goals, such as increasing sales, leads, brand awareness, and more. Boosted posts are only optimized for engagement which has no correlation to growing sales or brand awareness among other goals. They'll get you likes, comments, and shares. 

Your following on Spotify could very well increase if you implement Facebook ads properly (assuming that your music is pleasing to the target audience). Trying to set up the campaign adequately is the biggest challenge with Facebook ads, and this is where the majority of advertisers make the biggest mistakes. If you are on a limited budget, then you may not want to spend serious money on specialists to build your Facebook ad campaigns.  

This post is about modeling successful activities/campaigns by similar artists to boost your results...   

The key to using Facebook ads in the right way to boost the number of Spotify followers is very simple... Only three things are required:

• Look for someone who has produced successful Spotify advertisements.
• Take their strategy and adapt it to the music you are producing/promoting (NLP modeling).
• To succeed more quickly, find ways to get feedback and use that to improve your advertisement.

There you go... that is basically the entire success formula!

So where do you start?

The idea is to find an artist that you can use as an example, and copy what that artist is doing (NLP modeling). What are the basic steps in NLP Modeling?

1. Identify an artist that you wish to model.
2. Assimilate their behavioral patterns unconsciously.
3. Produce results similar to those of the top performer.
4. Clean up the pattern.
5. Code the model.
6. Pass it on.

Begin by identifying successful artists in your music genre who have a large following.

Analyze the artists. What have they done and are doing now to attract and keep followers?

Choose a few artists (just a few, or you may not be able to see possible patterns). Follow their Facebook page and analyze their posts. What are they doing to interact with their Facebook followers? While you're doing this, Facebook identifies you as 'interested' and a possible candidate for the artist's next advertising campaign.

Keep an eye out for ads on Facebook and off-page services that use Facebook to help target their ads. Off-page services??? Many websites are actually using Facebook data to help target advertisements. Even though you are not on Facebook, the content you see is still being influenced by Facebook...

Click on advertisements to see where the link takes you (a landing page), and then examine the content of that landing page. Learn from the example and consider whether or not you can reuse it. Is the landing page's content generic or tailored to the visitor (including personal information)? What kind of information is being shared? What exactly is the Call to Action? Are there any hints about the target demographic? (e.g. geographic, age, etc.).  What is the advertisement's goal? Is it to raise Awareness, Consideration (which leads to Traffic, Engagement, App Installs, Video Views, Messages, or Lead Generation), or Conversion? Examine whether and how the advertisement increases interest in music on Spotify. If the created 'increase in interest to the song' is indirect, what content comes after the ad? Can you identify a route that leads from the ad to more followers?   

Learn, reuse and tweak examples, test with limited (small) budgets to test your understanding (always use A/B testing), build skills, and analyze why things are happening... Learn from the results, and dare to fail - but don't give up. Don't continue an approach unless you see results. Tweak your approach each time you discover ways that improve the outcome. Keep an open mind. The strategy may be to create/increase your connection with a (potential) fan - making it easier for a fan to relate to you and your music, and as a result, the fan follows you and listens to more music. 

Prevent ad fatigue and optimize ad delivery. Keep each campaign’s creative assets fresh. Introduce new photos, videos, and captions regularly to keep your target audience engaged while continuing to deliver your message and get results. 
Each version doesn’t necessarily have to be a completely new concept. Instead, you can make small changes to existing assets and produce iterations on ads that already work well. For example, you might change the caption wording slightly, use a different background color for the image, or add text overlays to the video.

Use a sequence of marketing campaigns... Most of the successful strategies that I have seen have a number of things in common... one of them is to use a sequence of marketing campaigns that run 24/7 sending fans who already love your style of music to your Spotify profile. The good news doesn’t end there… A SIDE EFFECT of this method is that it also injects thousands of new interactions on social media as well.

Facebook ads are not the only way to grow followers. You may want to consider using Facebook ads to start building a larger fanbase and also look for ways to get your existing fans to talk about you with other people (potential fans) in their own network. Give fans something to talk about and little things they can share within their own network. 

In the meantime: Build Content!

In parallel, create meaningful content on your website and social media. So many artists just use social media to advertise a release, with no extra information. This is a true waste of effort and I feel it is also an outright insult to their fans. Who wants to subscribe to meaningless advertising blurbs? (If you follow an artist, you automatically start to see their posts in your timeline... Follow = Subscribing to their posts!)

Real fans genuinely want to support your music, so make sure that you give them something to share! 

Always, always, always create a music video for the music you release AND at least include lyrics in the description. Post your story behind the song on your social media AND share links to your lyrics! Why? This gives your fans something more to share. YouTube videos can be accessed by everyone and are easy to share. Your fans are key to sharing your videos and they can help you achieve bigger results than if you are just relying on the Spotify algorithm to reach more people. People who rely on algorithms to reach new fans are basically just “hoping” someone randomly finds their music and becomes a fan. And as they say: “Hope is not a strategy”.

Note that I said: "Share links to your lyrics"... Your lyrics are worth money! Place your lyrics on websites that are required to pay songwriter royalties each time the lyrics are displayed (e.g. Genius and AZLyrics). Lyrics shared on your own website and in video comments/descriptions don't generate royalties. I personally love using Genius, because I can embed lyrics on their site in my posts. By embedding lyrics from Genius, the lyric 'view' is generated by Genius and they pay for that view. Everyone can create an account on Genius and start adding lyrics. Once lyrics are added, you can get a link or the embed code for use on your own website, Facebook posts, etc..

More tips...

I have been following someone called Ryan Waczek for some time now. Ryan impresses me because his approach to music marketing is based on verifiable strategies. His tips make sense, generate true results, and can be learned and replicated. He doesn't guarantee miracles but shows you how and where to put your effort to get good results. Ryan is the founder of the Indie Music Academy.