“Marketing” is a term that gets thrown around a lot in the music industry.
But it’s important to understand exactly what marketing is (and isn’t) if you want to drive results for your music. And one of the more important things to clarify is the difference between music marketing and music advertising.
Here’s a quick explainer for musicians.
What is music marketing?
Marketing is any series of deliberate actions you take to create awareness for your music, build a fanbase, and generate revenue.
It’s also the ongoing effort of sharing your music, or a part of your music’s story, in a compelling way, to the right audience, through the right channels, at the right time, so that someone will notice, care, and take action.
Because “marketing” covers so many possible channels, goals, and tactics, it’s really an umbrella term that can encompass many specific endeavors, including:
Many artists make the mistake of seeing these individual marketing endeavors as separate or even interchangeable. But marketing is the whole strategy, the game-plan that ties each of these efforts together into a larger journey.
It’s a more complete vision for how you’ll get your music noticed and move listeners from strangers, to fans, to customers, to lifelong advocates of your art.
What is music advertising?
Let’s face it. Your following on social probably doesn’t see everything you post.
So if you lean on organic social posts to do all your communication work, you’re leaving a lot of opportunities on the table:
Enter advertising, sometimes called “paid media.”
(Because you’re paying… for media… to get attention.)
The focus of advertising is to give you a fast and targeted way to reach the right audience at the right time:
Different forms of music advertising
Advertising — even within a single industry, such as recorded music — can take many shapes.
Want to run ads for your music? That could mean a full-page ad in a glossy magazine. A billboard in Times Square. Or a radio commercial.
But more often for musicians today we’re talking about digital ads.
The kind of sponsored content you see when scrolling Instagram or TikTok. The pre-roll ads that play before YouTube videos. The audio ads that free users of Spotify periodically hear.
Or the playable banner ads that appear when you’re reading an article on Pitchfork or NME:
Advertising cuts through the noise
When a message or objective is important enough that you’ll pay for people to see it, advertising helps your audience take notice.
Not only because it boosts the likelihood that your content will be served up in the first place, but because ads can be delivered multiple times to the same person.
And in a world of distraction where (by many marketers’ calculations) people need to see something between 7-13 times before they act on the information, advertising does a better job than most other forms of marketing at simply reaching people.
So advertising is a great option for reaching new listeners and growing your audience. But it’s also a good solution when you need to get important messages in front of your existing audience.
And when you factor in “retargeting,” which is the ability to send ads to people you know have already interacted with previous ads, tracks, or videos, then advertising becomes a powerful tool to move listeners from point A to Z.
The easiest way to advertise on major music websites
As you can tell from this article, advertising is just ONE component of the music marketing toolkit. So just like with organic social, you can’t expect it to do ALL the work.
Are you looking for the easiest and most budget-friendly way to get your music onto popular sites like Pitchfork, Billboard, RollingStone, MTV, and NME? Check out ReverbNation’s Promote It! You can launch your first campaign in minutes.
Special offer: From now through August 31st, you can even save $10 on a Promote It campaign when you set a campaign budget of at least $21. Use the code PROMOTEIT10 at checkout.
Especially if you want to find new fans, grow your streaming activity, drive merch and ticket sales, and build a sustainable music career.
In this article I’m going to show you how I got 1800+ new plays in just a few days.
Here’s a giveaway: It involves advertising. And I set a budget of less than $50.
Yep. Spending money. But as the saying goes, “you have to spend money to make money.” Or put in music terms, you often have to spend money to reach new audiences and build a lasting fanbase.
Here’s the good news: If you don’t know much about advertising or marketing, getting 1800+ people to interact with my music out of a total of 10k “impressions” (people who were served the ad) in less than a week is an impressive result. And now that I know my first week’s results, I can confidently let the ad run longer as budget allows.
I’ll outline my approach below.
But first, if you’re one of the people who groaned when you thought about spending money on ads, let’s look at some of the shortcomings of other promo options.
The limitations of other music promo
College radio promotion can be worth the effort, especially if you’re doing it the DIY route and establishing your own direct relationships with DJs. But you’re mostly reaching small localized audiences who can’t easily connect the dots between airplay and online engagement.
Posting video content on social is one of the best ways to nurture your relationship with an audience, but it won’t guarantee that anyone new discovers you beyond existing fans.
Enter advertising, a key component of an overall marketing strategy.
Music advertising can be a powerful way to:
Target the right audiences
Generate awareness and brand recognition
Drive specific results
Follow-up with new fans
But when you start advertising your music, platforms like Meta Ads Manager can be extremely complicated to use, and very intimidating for new marketers. It’s a labyrinth in there and they keep moving the walls!
No joke, I’ve heard from many musicians who needed to spend a dozen hours or more just to get properly set up to run ads on Facebook and Instagram.
So where does that leave you?
The simplest way to build your music fanbase with ads
Well, we’ve created a tool to help you find fans in places where music listeners are already discovering new artists — on sites and platforms like Spotify, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Billboard, The FADER, NME, and Facebook.
And in this article I’ll show you how easy and effective it is.
The tool is called Promote It, and we made it user-friendly and budget-friendly for independent musicians. You can launch your first campaign in minutes.
Special offer: From now through August 31st, you can save $10 on a Promote It campaign when you set a campaign budget of at least $21. Use the code PROMOTEIT10 at checkout.
Get back in front of fans who’ve shown interest in your music
What artists are saying about Promote It:
“I’ve enjoyed using ReverbNation’s Promote It feature because, as an emerging artist that is still building a following, the tool is a way of showcasing my music to listeners of different backgrounds beyond my family and friends.”
– Sarah Dell
“Promoting a new song is crucial to its success. Reverbnation’s Promote It campaign has been a reliable way for me to promote my songs to a real audience and boost my chart position.”
– Mike Williams
How to launch an ad campaign in minutes:
1. Log into ReverbNation (or quickly create a free artist account).
2. Go to the “Promote” tab.
3. Decide on your objective: Do you want to get video views, Spotify plays, feedback on your latest song, traffic to a specific landing page?
Knowing your objective helps us format and place the ad correctly. It also helps us automatically imports the most relevant content, such as a song player or video player, which — depending on your ad objective — can be played right there within the banner ad, without the visitor having to leave the website they’re on.
What’s a good objective to start with?
If you want listeners to check out your track right there and then, without having to leave the website they’re already on, choose the “Promote a Song” option.
Campaign results, of course, will vary depending on your music, the visuals, the text, and the audience. But in general, “Promote a Song” ads get the highest level of engagement because there is the least amount of “friction” (extra clicks, extra pages, extra steps, etc.) for the viewer.
All they have to do is hit the play button right there within the playable banner ad!
4. Choose or add the song you want to promote.
5. Select the “Advertise on Music Websites” option.
6. Choose a layout for the ad.
7. Select (or upload) a background image and customize how it appears in your ad.
You can Drag or crop the image to adjust its appearance behind the text. Also, select if the image should be full-color or B&W.
The style of the image should work with your musical brand, and it’s difficult to give too specific advice here, since that “vibe” will differ for every artist. However, be mindful to create enough contrast between the image and the overlaid text that your messaging is clear and bold. In the example below, I chose a simple and dark photo so the text would pop.
8. Add two rows of text; a headline and supporting tagline.
Space is limited, so be bold! Use some of the proven tricks of marketing copywriting; make a promise, share an impressive quote or testimonial, or create a sense of daring. For instance, one of the ads I’m running shared a press quote from LA on Lock that said my music was “Songwriting at its best.”
That’s a brag, for sure. But also… I’m challenging the person on the other end of the ad to confirm or deny that claim. “Oh, songwriting at its best, huh? I’ll be the judge of that. Lemme listen and see.”
The tagline, in most cases, should use your artist name and clearly tell people what to do.
For my ad, it says “Listen to Chris Robley now.”
9. View the ad previews.
You’ll have a chance to see your ad in various display dimensions before you finalize the campaign. If it looks good, proceed. If not, you can still make edits!
10. Select a budget for your campaign.
Choose your daily or lifetime budget. How long you run the campaign will depend on your objective. But keep in mind that many successful music ad campaigns leave ads running for at least a week or longer, as opposed to burning through the budget in just one or two days.
Run your music ads and monitor results
And that’s it!
ReverbNation will handle all the audience-targeting based on your genre and location, and we’ll take care of all the placements, ensuring your ads appear on relevant platforms and websites.
And if you run more ads in the future, we’ll automatically target people who previously interacted with your music, videos, and ads.
Once your ads are running, you’ll see real-time stats for engagement and where people are discovering your music!
To help you get started, we’re giving you $10 off your next Promote It campaign*
* From now through August 31st, you can save $10 on a Promote It campaign when you set a campaign budget of at least $21. Use the code PROMOTEIT10 at checkout.
FAQ:
What kinds of things can I achieve with Promote It ads?
There are a number of ad goals to choose from, including:
Driving Spotify streams
Discovery, brand awareness, and building buzz
Getting feedback on a track to test a track’s “market-viability”
Boosting web traffic for a ticket page, smartlink, merch item, etc.
And more
Do I need a ReverbNation account to run Promote It ads?
The answer will vary depending on the artist, genre, audience, and content. But as a general rule, you’ll often see better results with ads that require fewer clicks to get to the end goal.
Because of that, you’ll probably see the best results with a “Share a Song” or “Share a Video” ad type where the content plays right there within the banner ad itself. Visitors don’t have to leave the website they’re on or take any other action besides simply hitting play.
Will advertising be enough?
Advertising is one component of an overall marketing strategy. You still need to create great music and social content, grow your customer list, make merch offers, play live, try to get press, etc.
Major label superstars use advertising in conjunction with a host of other marketing efforts. Their social content generally engages existing fans. Radio and playlist promo helps drive passive listening. And so forth. So don’t expect advertising to do all the work. Ads can be helpful in making introductions and creating a “halo effect.”
If you’ve dialed in an engaging social presence and live concert experience, it’s time to turn the ad budget on in order to bring NEW fans to those aspects of your career you’re already doing well.
Can I do “retargeting” with Promote It?
In a way, yes. Retargeting is built into the functionality of our tool. So your new ads will automatically be served to anyone who previously engaged with your music, video, and ads.
Can I run multiple ads at once?
Yes. And in fact, that’s often a good thing to do. Simultaneous campaigns can give you a better sense for which ad-types, copy variations, images, and objectives perform best for your music.
