Facebook Ads! Are they really that effective?

Facebook is the new black, as some would call it. As one of the biggest social networks around, getting your music out there using this network is vital. But are Facebook ads an effective way to increase your ‘fan base?’

Recent blog post by Hypebot suggested that Facebook’s ad revenue is decreasing. Karsten Weide, Vice President of Media and Entertainment at IDC stated that:

“The effectiveness of advertising on Facebook is just really terrible,” 

“Advertisers are realising that Facebook isn’t as effective as they first thought. They’re pulling their money and taking it elsewhere.”

Creating A successful Facebook Ad campaign

However, for those of you that are still wanting to use (waste) your money on a Facebook ad campaign, here are four tips to getting the most out of your money.

1. Keep the message short, sharp and sweet – and also relevant to your target audience. Ask yourself, what would entice you to click ‘like’ if you saw that add on Facebook.
2. Targeting the right people. If your music is similar to another artist, for example Katy Perry or Madonna, try targeting this audience base.
3. Narrow down the demographic. If your music appeals to a certain age group, or more to boys than girls (or vice versa) use this to narrow it down.
4. Location.  If you think your music would appeal to a certain region or country use this to narrow down your targeted audience.

TIP 1: If you have uploaded your music onto Youtube, you can use the analytics from your videos to guide the set up of your ad campaign. Youtube will tell you who’s watching your videos, how they are finding them, their age, if they’re male or female, etc. This is the exact information that you need to generate a successful ad campaign.

TIP 2: The more specific you narrow down your target audience, the better.

How Effective Is Advertising On Facebook?

I will now share with you by personal experience of advertising on Facebook.  I stress that this is only my perspective, and I open up the floor in the comment section below so you can share your perspective on the topic.

In the past I’ve done a few different ad companies via Facebook. The first time it didn’t work out so well, I only received a small amount of ‘click throughs’ and not so many ‘likes.’ However, I blame this on a limited knowledge of what my target audience was. I was only starting out. As I learnt and grew as an artist, I also began to understand what type of people were listening to my music, watching my Youtube videos, and I began targeting this specific demographic. With this knowledge I then launched a number of successful Facebook ad campaigns, getting quite a large number of new followers using a limited amount of funding.

But was this successful? In terms of increasing my ‘likes’, definitely! You can see a huge increase really quickly. But, in terms of developing connections with new followers, not so much. 

The majority of people that like your page, would maybe check out some of your posts, maybe like one or two if you’re lucky, then bugger off.  You are then forgotten about, and become part of the ‘noise’ - trying to compete to get your content onto the top of their news feeds.

Is It really A Numbers Game? What You Should Be focusing On

I want to put forward a new notion. NUMBERS DON’T MEAN ANYTHING!! (Sorry for yelling that).

Facebook ads are good at bumping up your likes, but is that really what you should be doing? Interaction with your ‘followers,’ ‘fans,’ ‘friends,’ (whatever you want to call them), is what you should be focusing on. What I suggest is to connect with people one at a time. Introduce yourself. DON’T SPAM! Get to know them, be friendly (DON’T SPAM)! In time, if the conversation calls for it, maybe introduce them to a song or two that you’ve done. Maybe a cover? Who knows! 

Yes, this may take a lot more time but it is worth it. Long gone are the myspace days (thank God), where I would receive 1000s and 1000s of messages from artists and 98% of it was spam. Don’t be that guy/girl!

This isn’t a numbers game, It’s a game of connections. And people want to know you and your music and the story behind it all. I’d much rather have 100 fans (that are more like my best friends that love what I do and are really connected with me) then to have 1000 ‘fans’ that I made in a couple of weeks via a Facebook ad campaign.

These are just my thoughts.

Thanks for reading, I hope you’re well and I’d love to have your thoughts or experiences with Facebook advertising below in the comment section! Maybe you’ve had some success stories that you want to share? Any thoughts are welcomed!

Stephen Carmichael

Stephen Carmichael is an Australia artist, songwriter and budding architect. His music has been featured on websites such as britneyspears.com as well as mashable.com. Carmichael uploads weekly videos on youtube, you can check out his youtube channel at youtube.com/musicarmichael, Like him on facebook :P facebook.com/musicarmichael, checkout his website at musicarmichael.com, or you can find him on twitter @musicarmichael