$30 Budget

[Murderbass]

Hey guys.
I play bass in a metal band in Iran and because of the economic crisis here we can only afford to spend $30 for our Ad campaign on our upcoming single.
Ideally we want to spend the $30 in the course of the first week or two, minimize cost per click as much as possible and trigger release radar.
Is $30 worth spending in this situation?
Do you guys have any suggestions?

[georgik]

Honestly, $30 will barely get you out of the Learning stage. I don't think you can really do much of anything with $30 no matter whether you use Facebook ads or anything else

[triziomusic]

Based on what I've read, if you were to get the cost down to 10 cents per conversion, that would be considered to be a very good cost result. If your campaign started at that cost right from the beginning, $30 would translate into 300 conversions. Assuming everyone who converted decided to stream your song at least once, and if everyone saved your song, the question becomes: "Can release radar be triggered from 300 listeners with an average of a couple streams each?"

I don't know the answer to that question but I'm betting that the chances are low. Also, at the start of your campaign, the Facebook algorithm will be in a learning mode. It will be trying to see what kinds of people should see your ads in order to maximize the conversion goal. So your cost would be higher at the start. I don't know how long it takes to learn but I think Andrew has said that his campaigns do better after the first few days. So you would not get 10 cents per conversion right away. And there are people here including myself who have seen our campaigns eat up $1 per conversion. On my last campaign, I got 50 conversions from spending $45. My ads were getting a low to medium rating quality. So you won't really know until you are already into the campaign.

Andrew does have this one video talking about a $100 campaign where the cost per conversion ended up being 15 cents overall. That one did trigger Spotify's algorithm after about one week:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssBJ6_xIcqo

At 15 cents per conversion, $100 gets you 666 conversions. That's a little more than double what you could see with a $30 budget if costs were 10 cents per conversion.

Perhaps the best way forward for you would be to save for a while longer until you can run a $100 campaign. But if it's your first campaign, there's a chance you will make some mistake or that maybe your ads won't end up being great. A different path forward would be to just go ahead and do a $30 campaign in order to get some experience. Then take the necessary time to save up $100 for your second campaign.

[AndrewSouthworth]

Its hard to say if its worth it or not. I don't think it will end up triggering a big release radar push though since the budget is so low. $30 will struggle getting you out of the learning phase and to a good costing campaign.

You'll still get real people to your page listening to your music, so i'd say go with the campaign for the learning experience. Then for a future song wait and save up $100 for promotion and use that experience to have that campaign go well.

There are other ways you can market if you don't have a budget too though, and even if you're using ads i'd advise having lots of social media content around your release and having a solid organic marketing strategy. The organic marketing helps a lot in making your ads more effective, and also they equate to free engagement and followers so its worth it either way whether you are advertising or not. Plus you could also venture into hitting up playlist curators via email and social media, and using SubmitHub's free submissions or putting $10 into premium credits.

$30 in ads is tricky though.

[mpekim]

Agreeing with everyone else on this forum, take the $30 budget and turn it into as many conversions as you can. Combine with organic marketing for maximum effect.