The music industry in 2024 is a competitive place - as you may know all too well if you’ve tried to release a song to no avail. Luckily, the flip side to this is that we live in the era of digital ads and marketing that can unlock a real “leg up” to help you get your music to new, real people, who are genuinely interested in your music.

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In this blog post, we will outline the easiest ways you can get up and running with ads towards your song - and how you can start tapping into this powerful vehicle for growth. 

Why advertise in the first place? 

When asked what they do to market their new releases, many SongTools artists will answer with some combination of “organic social posts, and playlists” - and while both of these are essential building blocks to growing your fanbase (as outlined in our previous funnel building blog), they are missing one key central strategy: engaged new listeners.

Our simplified marketing framework for releases consists of:

• Top of the Funnel / Awareness → Playlists 
• Middle of Funnel / Engaged New listeners → Ads
• Bottom of Funnel/Monetization/Retention → Organic Content, Merch, and Ticket Sales 

By skipping on ads, you skip on an essential building block of getting your music to new, engaged listeners. These types of listeners help you transition your listener base from casual “awareness” streams, into 'sticky streams' i.e. people who will stick on to your profile and listen for the long term. In short: Ads are the #1 way to gain a constant stream of verified, real people that will engage with your content. 

Great, so how do I run ads easily? 

So now that you are convinced that you need to start running ads for your music, you’ll run into the next issue: how to do it? You’ll quickly find that it's not as simple as it may seem. Becoming proficient in digital ads takes a lot of upfront time learning, researching, A/B testing, optimizing, and getting set up. Luckily for you, we are here to help with this guide to make life easier!
In general, there are two schools of thought when it comes to ads: 

1. DIY “Do it yourself” 
2. Leveraging 3rd party platforms/agencies to do it for you

DIY “Do It Yourself”

Here’s a quick step by step guide on (in general) how you can get up and running with your music ads if you plan on doing it yourself:

1.  Start by choosing your channel: The most popular channels to run music ads on are Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, or Youtube. In general, we’ve seen Instagram ads perform best across the board in driving conversions, and new streams - with TikTok not far behind.

2. Ideate your content: Make sure you have engaging content that wil engage new listeners. For a full guide on how to create engaging content, you can visit here.

3. Create an ads account on your channel: To run ads on any channel, you’ll need to go through a multi-step process to set up a business account, get verified to run ads, set up a payment method, and more. Make sure you’ve done this at least week ahead of your ad launch date, so you can ensure the account is set up correctly and ready to go.

4. Decide how much you’re willing to spend on your ad campaign: Most platforms allow you to set a daily or campaign budget so you can control your spending. For a deep dive on how to set your promotion budgets, you can visit here

5. Target your audience: Understand who your target listeners are. Consider demographics, music preferences, and behaviors. This knowledge will allow you to target your ads more effectively and reach the people most likely to enjoy your music. You can start by building out a list of your top influences, genres you fall under, and any other interests. Then, see if the channel you are working with offers these as interests, hashtags, or other targeting options. Pro-tip: Also play around with “placements” – or where on the platform the ad is going to show up. For example, on Instagram, launch with Reels/Stories, or on TikTok disable “Pangle” placements for best results 

6. Set up a landing page: Where are your listeners going to go when they click the ad? It’s best to send them to a landing page where they can have the opportunity to click on the streaming service they are most comfortable with. Shameless plug - use SongPage (completely free) to set this up in one click. 

7. Optimize & Track: Once you’re ready, launch your campaigns. But your job isn’t done yet. Monitor their performance closely, using platform analytics to see what’s working and what isn’t. This insight allows you to tweak and optimize your ads for better performance. As a general rule of thumb, you can use a mix of channel engagements (CTR/or cost per action if you are running conversion campaigns), mixed with your landing page click data, and final result on streaming services. You want to build out a funnel (i.e. Ads Channel Data:Landing Page Data:Streams Data:Follower Data) to start to understand at what rate your new listeners are converting into fans, and how your ads are performing. 

8. Analyze and take action: After your campaign has run for a while, analyze the results. Look at metrics like engagement rate, click-through rate, and conversion rate to understand how your ads are performing. Use this data to make informed decisions about future campaigns.

In summary, managing advertising campaigns on your own can be a challenging and time-consuming task, especially if you're new to it. We recommend opting for the second option as we believe that the opportunity cost of spending time setting up ads to make them effective would be better spent on creating exceptional music. Ultimately, there is no marketing gimmick or ad campaign that can replace the value of outstanding music. Therefore, we suggest dedicating 99% of your effort to producing great music to increase your chances of success in your marketing campaigns.

Leverage 3rd parties to get up and running quicker

We are not going to beat around the bush here… there are a lot of other ad platforms out there, but there is nothing like SongFly. You can do all of the above list, tailored & personalized to your song, in one click. It’s pretty cool AND cheap to get started ($10 a day). 

Check it out here: https://www.songtools.io/songfly/ 

…Mic drop!