Hey everyone. Big fan of your channel Andrew, and wanted to offer a massive thank you for the content you put up to help other indies!
My band launched our first single on Friday. I am a complete novice at marketing/branding, but I've spent the whole pre release doing as much research as I can. We're a rock group, and our music is kinda inspired by 90's/2000's festival pop/punk bands, with a bit more of an edge. (Green day would be a closeish parallel) For our first campaign, I set a budget of $100 a day for the first 3 days, and to taper down over the next 2 weeks. I made ad sets with 5 different types of ads
14 secconds of the songs chorus, high quality multicam footage of us playing live
14 secconds of the guitar solo, high quality footage of us playing live
14 secconds of the guitar solo with TXT announcing the band name/song name
7 secconds song intro, video clip
7 secconds of the intro, album artwork
(Currency has been adjusted to read USD)
For my initial campaign, I targeted EUR, AUS, USA and South America, broad age range, with an interest in rock music/spotify. This ran for 36 hours and was performing to my satisfaction, our cost was 0.20 per conversion, we had 879 conversions, gained approx 20 facebook followers, and as a bonus charted number 19 on the Australian independent music charts (called Triple J Unearthed) However 56% of our reach were people over the age of 55, and like 40% people 35-54. Many who liked our posts were not native english speakers, and made me worry that we we're reaching mostly elders who didn't properly know how to operate their facebook and were just clicking on every single post.
So on day 3, I decided to add an additional campaign. I put a further $100 to target 18-40yo's in Australia, and ran 5 different ad sets targeting interests of Green Day, Foo Fighters, The Living End (a very popular Australian band) and Fall Out Boy, hoping to gain some younger/local fans. After only 6 hours, I had to shut the campaign off. I'd spent $63 and received 2 conversions!!! out of a reach of 4456 people.
So back to the drawing board, My current assumptions are this
1) Simple having music/band playing in the ad doesn't excite younger audiences
2) If the audience I'm targeting are anything like me, then they have become completely numb to advertising. Skipping everything that is an ad instinctually
3) If the audience I'm targeting are anything like me, seeing a band advertising for you to listen to their song feels a little desperate. Especially as our music isn't quite "pop" enough for top 40 plays, we'd likely make it to the alt rock stations instead. And there may be a bit of stigma about trying to advertise a genre thats trying to "stick it to the industry"
I figured I'd post these stats to see if anyone here has had similar experiences, and if anyone can help point me in a positive direction from here. As a band, I do feel fearful of "over marketing" your music just for the sake of popularity. I (and i think several rock bands) want to believe that the music ALONE should be strong enough to entice people. So the challenge for me is finding the middle ground between keeping it real, and selling out (challenge of all of us i suppose)
Big love if you've made it this far, any tips or shared experiences would be so much appreciated!
My band launched our first single on Friday. I am a complete novice at marketing/branding, but I've spent the whole pre release doing as much research as I can. We're a rock group, and our music is kinda inspired by 90's/2000's festival pop/punk bands, with a bit more of an edge. (Green day would be a closeish parallel) For our first campaign, I set a budget of $100 a day for the first 3 days, and to taper down over the next 2 weeks. I made ad sets with 5 different types of ads
14 secconds of the songs chorus, high quality multicam footage of us playing live
14 secconds of the guitar solo, high quality footage of us playing live
14 secconds of the guitar solo with TXT announcing the band name/song name
7 secconds song intro, video clip
7 secconds of the intro, album artwork
(Currency has been adjusted to read USD)
For my initial campaign, I targeted EUR, AUS, USA and South America, broad age range, with an interest in rock music/spotify. This ran for 36 hours and was performing to my satisfaction, our cost was 0.20 per conversion, we had 879 conversions, gained approx 20 facebook followers, and as a bonus charted number 19 on the Australian independent music charts (called Triple J Unearthed) However 56% of our reach were people over the age of 55, and like 40% people 35-54. Many who liked our posts were not native english speakers, and made me worry that we we're reaching mostly elders who didn't properly know how to operate their facebook and were just clicking on every single post.
So on day 3, I decided to add an additional campaign. I put a further $100 to target 18-40yo's in Australia, and ran 5 different ad sets targeting interests of Green Day, Foo Fighters, The Living End (a very popular Australian band) and Fall Out Boy, hoping to gain some younger/local fans. After only 6 hours, I had to shut the campaign off. I'd spent $63 and received 2 conversions!!! out of a reach of 4456 people.
So back to the drawing board, My current assumptions are this
1) Simple having music/band playing in the ad doesn't excite younger audiences
2) If the audience I'm targeting are anything like me, then they have become completely numb to advertising. Skipping everything that is an ad instinctually
3) If the audience I'm targeting are anything like me, seeing a band advertising for you to listen to their song feels a little desperate. Especially as our music isn't quite "pop" enough for top 40 plays, we'd likely make it to the alt rock stations instead. And there may be a bit of stigma about trying to advertise a genre thats trying to "stick it to the industry"
I figured I'd post these stats to see if anyone here has had similar experiences, and if anyone can help point me in a positive direction from here. As a band, I do feel fearful of "over marketing" your music just for the sake of popularity. I (and i think several rock bands) want to believe that the music ALONE should be strong enough to entice people. So the challenge for me is finding the middle ground between keeping it real, and selling out (challenge of all of us i suppose)
Big love if you've made it this far, any tips or shared experiences would be so much appreciated!
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