Google Adwords for Musicians

Dave Cool is Director of Artist Relations for musician website & marketing platform Bandzoogle. Twitter: @Bandzoogle | @dave_cool

Google Adwords might not be the first method you think of using to promote your band. But, if you’re looking to book weddings or other private gigs, Google Adwords can be an effective method of driving visitors to your website and reaching potential clients.

Getting Started

First thing’s first: anyone can use Google Adwords. You don’t need to be a huge corporation and you don’t need to hire expensive consultants to start running ads.

Signing up for a Google Adwords account is free. If you already have a Google account, it’s simply a matter of entering your password to create an Adwords account.

Once you log-in to your account, you’ll notice that there are lots of resources to help you get started. You can even call Google free of charge to get your first campaign up and running.

How much does it cost?

Google Adwords uses a Cost-Per-Click (CPC) system. So even if your ad is displayed, you are only charged if someone clicks through to your website.

The cost-per-click depends on how much competition there is for the keywords you’ve chosen. It’s an auction process, so you set the maximum you’re willing to pay for a clickthrough. Depending on how many other people are bidding on the same keywords, and what they’re bidding, will affect how much it ends up costing you.

You set a daily budget, which can be adjusted at anytime. Here’s a quick example from the Google Adwords website:

• Your daily budget: $10
• Your maximum cost-per-click bid: $0.50
• Your average actual cost-per-click: $0.40
• Approximate number of clicks per day: 25

Choosing keywords

A keyword is a word or a string of words that someone types into a search engine to find content. The more specific you are with your keywords, the better. You can use Google’s Keyword Planner to see the search volume and get traffic estimates on certain keywords to help you choose which ones to use.

Bandzoogle member Jon Hart created a site specifically for weddings, then used Google Adwords to find gigs. He started off with roughly 20 keywords, including ‘Wedding Guitarist’ and ‘Wedding Singer’, then eliminated any that weren’t getting results. He recommends trying out the keyword generator, then experimenting to see what works.

Targeting your campaign

You can use geo-targeting to really get local with your ads. So you could target your ads to people searching within a 20-mile radius of your hometown, or a larger geographic region that you’re willing to travel to.

Targeting locally will mean less competition, so it will cost less, and will likely be more effective than trying to advertise your services to the entire country you live in. It might sound nice to get hired to play a wedding in California when you live on the east coast, but it’s likely not feasible financially.

You can even go further and target specific times and days, or types of devices. For the purposes of a band, that’s probably not necessary, but it just shows you how powerful the targeting can be.

Creating your ad

Here are the types of ads you can create Google Adwords for:

• Google Search results
• Mobile ads
• Advertise on other websites
• Image & video ads
• YouTube

For a band looking to get booked at weddings in their local market, text ads in Google Search Results would be a good place to start. It’s simple, effective, and relatively inexpensive.

For text ads, there are strict character limits and rules. You can create several ads, change your ad copy anytime, and drop ads that aren’t working. When starting out, speak to a representative at Google Adwords who can analyze your ads and give you advice on how to improve them.

Creating specific and relevant ads will help you get higher positioning. This is an estimate of how relevant your ads, keywords, and landing page are to a person seeing your ad for a particular search.

Speaking of your landing page, you can either create a specific landing page for that campaign, or simply use your Homepage. Either way, make sure to have a strong call-to-action and a great testimonial on your landing page.

Here’s an example of one of Jon Hart’s ads:

He set the landing page as the homepage of his website, which has a great testimonial from a past client, a featured video, as well as a strong call-to-action to book him:

Jon has booked 49 gigs so far using Google Adwords combined with his great website! Create a great website for your cover band by reading our post: How to Build a Website for Your Cover Band

Measuring results

Google Adwords provides you with detailed reports to measure the effectiveness of your ads. You can see how often your ads are being displayed, and which keywords triggered those impressions. They also allow you to compare Impressions vs. Clicks, so if you see that certain ads or keywords are performing better than others, adjust your ad spend accordingly.

If you’re not getting the results you want, remember, you can chat with a Google Adwords representative who can offer advice on how to improve your campaign. But as with any ad campaign, always stay within your budget and make sure you’re getting a return on your investment.

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Dave Cool is Director of Artist Relations for musician website & marketing platform Bandzoogle. Twitter: @Bandzoogle | @dave_cool

Google Adwords for Musicians