How To Setup Your Facebook Ads Account: A Guide for Artists & Music Professionals
Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash
Join my FREE Online Course: Intro to Music Streaming & Touring with Nick Wyatt
Facebook advertising for artists and music professionals is becoming more and more of no brainer. With the social media platform growing and adding to its advertising empire that includes Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Giphy and WhatsApp.
Artists can no longer ignore the value that can be creating by utilizing Facebook for advertising purposes. That is why knowing the ins-and-outs of Facebook Business Manager and how to setup a Facebook ads account is an essential piece of the puzzle for any artists looking to take their career to the next level.
At the base of it all, it's about connecting with your fan base where they spend most of their time. If you're releasing new music, promoting a concert or advertising new merchandise. Facebook advertising can put you in a position to be successful, grow your fan base and gather valuable insight.
Facebook has been a powerhouse online and throughout social media for the better part of the last two decades. Creating a plethora of opportunities for brands, businesses and artists alike.
The social media giant is showing no signs of slowing down. Although other platforms like Twitter and Instagram have their uses when it comes to paid advertising. Facebook has cornered the market with Facebook Pages, Groups and its Events features.
For artists on any level, if your team can tap into the value that Facebook presents to an organization — you can take full advantage of the value that is being translated by effectively existing in the space.
Your Facebook page should be a second home after your website. Facebook advertising can put you in a position to funnel your fan base to the website of your choosing. For example, YouTube — SoundCloud — Apple Music — Tidal, etc. Via your website or direct.
Facebook Pixel can assist you in tracking the behavior of your fan base once they leave Facebook and enter your website. This will allow you to re-target those individuals depending on your advertising objectives and goals.
Your Facebook Page is an important asset because it allows you to have a centralized hub on the platform, while also participating in Facebook groups which can be utilized for networking and aligning with like-minded individuals.
Devin McKnight, a guitarist who has performed with Grass is Green, Speedy Ortiz, and produces his own music as MANEKA says,
"I don't really want to be on Facebook at all, but I feel like I have to because of my band. I don't know how much it helps, but I do know the event invites kind of have that market cornered. No other platform really offers that."
Some people may view Facebook as a place for family, friends and keeping up with co-workers. For artists and music professionals it's a different story.
The Facebook event features can give you access to every city, town or college in the World.
That is why advertising on the social platform has created this love ~ hate relationship. For anyone who has a certain focus or objective — Facebook can help you build a fan base and continuously create value.
Morgan Schaffner, the marketing manager for AdHoc says,
"People's decision to attend a show is often based on social reasons, and Facebook does truly make it very easy to see which of your friends are 'attending' a show… I think it'd be very challenging to as easily find such a large target audience."
The Facebook events feature, in my eyes, presents the most value. When couple with Facebook Insights, artists can determine the direction they want to take when promoting concerts, upcoming music releases, merchandise, etc.
Facebook as a social media platform, presents that one-to-one connection.
Related: 4 Ways To Include Facebook Messenger In Your Marketing Strategy
Ivy Gray-Klein of corey flood, a band based out of Philadelphia says,
"I might make a post on my personal account about needing a show in a certain city and make it public. Then friends of mine will tag their friends who may have resources or connections in those cities. It may sound kind of trivial, but having that more personal connection really helps, like recognizing you have a lot of mutual Facebook friends with that person… Especially within DIY, leveraging that community can be helpful. I don't have a professional booking agent who has established relationships with venues."
Facebook may have a 50–50 split on its branding with some artists and music professionals but the value it creates remains to be undeniable and unmatched.
Now let's deep dive into 10 facts that make Facebook advertising a necessity for artists and music professionals.
Facts About Facebook
The Undisputed Champion of Social Media — Facebook is the leading social platform. Reaching 60.6% of Internet users. (Facebook, 2018)
Facebook has 2.45 billion monthly active users, 1.62 billion active users visited the social network on a daily basis. (Facebook, 2019)
Facebook has more than 80 million small businesses around the World using Facebook pages. (Facebook, 2018)
Seven out of ten, 69% of adults in the U.S. claim that they use Facebook. (Pew Research Center, 2019)
65% of Facebook users are under the age of 35. (Statistica, 2019)
96% of active Facebook users accessed the platform via mobile devices. (DataReportal, 2019) That means that only 4% of Facebook active users logged in on desktop devices to use the social media platform.
Users spent an average of 58.5 minutes on Facebook each day. (Recode, 2018)
86% of U.S. marketers use Facebook for advertising. (Emarketer, 2018)
78% of American consumers have discovered retail products to buy via Facebook (Kleiner Perkins, 2018)
Facebook is the most popular channel for businesses to share video content at 81%.
How To Setup Your Facebook Ads Account
To begin advertising on Facebook, you need to setup a Facebook Ads account. To get started, log into your Facebook account. Click on the drop-down menu in the upper right corner and select 'Create Ads'.
To begin using Ads Manager, select Create Ads from the drop-down menu. — Social Media Examiner
Facebook Ads Manager will create an Ad account for you. Feel free to take a look around as it will prompt you to setup your first ad campaign.
Another choice, is to exit out of that screen by choosing the 'Close' button in the lower left corner. To reveal and navigate the various tools and options available in Ads Manager, click the main menu in the upper left corner.
Open the Facebook Ads Manager menu after you create your account. — Social Media Examiner
1. Checkout The Facebook Ads Main Menu
Once you click on the main menu, the Facebook Ads Manager will be grouped into five segments:
Create & Manage
Measure & Report
A 'Frequently Used' segment will appear after you have used Facebook Ads Manager for a while. This segment will display the tools that you work with regularly to allow you to access them quickly and with ease.
Below we will begin to introduce the options in each respective segment of the Ads menu. Be sure to take notes because it will be beneficial to know which tools are accessible, where to find them and how everything works.
The 'Frequently Used' segment displays the four tools that you use repeatedly for easy access.
There's an ' All Tools' segment as well, if you don't see a tool that you want to use. This should be located at the bottom of the entire overview.
The 'Plan' segment of Facebook Ads consist of tools that can aid you in getting a grasp around who your target audience may be and hopefully present you with some visionary ideas for executing your advertisements.
Audience Insights: The Audience Insights creates a plethora of value for artists and music professionals. Giving the variety of content that you may produce, this tools allows you to gather information about a number of diverse audiences on Facebook.
With Audience Insights, you can learn about an audience based on your selected parameters. — Social Media Examiner
For example, you can ask Facebook to produce data on the fans and followers that currently 'Like' your page. This allows you to create a number of different advertising ideas that can benefit your Facebook page and speak to your audience.
Tell Audience Insights you want to learn about people who like your business page. — Social Media Examiner
When you make this selection, Audience Insights presents a number of tabs that provide information about the fans and followers who like your Facebook page.
Demographics is the first tab. This will display a graph that shows the age and gender of the fans that like your Facebook page.
In the graph below, you see that the audience for this page is mostly female. The page moderators will be able to take that information and run advertisements tailored more towards the female demographic.
Audience Insights can show you the demographics of your selected audience, including their age and gender. — Social Media Examiner
Demographic data allows you to see where your fans work, if they are single, married or it's complicated and their level of education. This is beneficial to artist and music professionals if your target audience is in college.
You can now specialize your advertisements with copy and images according to the specified demographics.
Audience Insights also gives you demographic data about relationship status, education, and job title. — Social Media Examiner
When you click on the Page Likes tab in Audience Insights, like the graph above, you will see information displayed that will aid you in creating ads that target people's interests.
For example, you can start a Facebook ad campaign and build individual advertisements that target an audience based on other Facebook pages that your fans like.
If you are aware that your fans like a number of other Facebook pages, you can build individuals advertisement that target the audiences of these specific pages.
Below, they use '12 Tomatoes' as an example.
The goal is to get the fans of those pages to engage with your advertisement in hopes of liking your Facebook page.
In an Audience Insights report, the Page Likes tab can tell you the other pages liked by people who like your business page. — Social Media Examiner
To find out even more information about your fans, you can check out the tabs in Facebook Audience Insights, each tab will have information pertaining to (purchases, household info, online activity, location, page likes and overall demographics).
For example, you can easily access online purchase history, household income, how much do they engage on Facebook and their location.
This process also aids in evaluating specific interests and creating custom audiences.
For example, if fans who like your Facebook page also like or engage with '12 Tomatoes' and you want to gather information on that Facebook page. Audience Insights can provide you with the data for that page by adding it to your Interests area.
Facebook's Audience Insights tool can tell you about the audience for other pages. — Social Media Examiner
What you can takeaway from the '12 Tomatoes' page shown earlier, is that they serve an older demographic.
Another takeaway is that you can view that Facebook organizes a page's followers by lifestyle. (Compared with Facebook's general user base, a higher occurrence of people fit into the 'Country Ways' lifestyle. Country Ways is one of many Facebook-defined categories.)
Creative Hub: The Plan segment, along with the other metrics, has a tool called Creative Hub. This is where you can create ad mockups, collaborate on new ideas for content and share them with your team.
With the Creative Hub tool, you can mock up a Facebook ad and share it with your team. — Social Media Examiner
In this segment, you will discover tools for managing your overall ad campaigns. This includes business manager, content editing and viewing analytics that are associated with your ads.
Business Manager: This is a great asset for teams that assist each other in running ads. It also creates structure and organization for your Facebook Ad accounts if you are managing multiple Facebook pages.
You will get access to this tool after you sign up for Business Manager.
Ads Manager: This is where you can get access to Facebook Pixel, evaluate data and execute your ad campaigns. You will also be able to tailor-make reports to your liking and share them with your team members.
Power Editor: This tool is a powerful advertising platform for initiating ad campaigns. The Power Editor is loaded with a number of progressive features and options for creating ads. For example, like permitting you to add more characters in your headings.
Page Posts: This tool allows you to access Scheduled Posts, Published Posts and Ads Posts. The dashboard will also display all your page posts and how many people are interacting with your content.
This includes when your post was published, how much engagement (clicks and total actions) on each post and overall reach (how many people saw your post).
In Facebook Ads Manager, click the Page Posts tool to see how your posts and ads are performing. — Social Media Manager
This tool is great for seeing what's popular, you'll be able to access your published posts and boost the more crowd-pleasing posts to receive more engagement.
App Ads Helper: This is a great mechanism for app developers. The Facebook App Ads Helper aids in driving more traffic, resulting in more overall downloads.
Automated Rules: This tool is a very valuable asset, it allows advertisers to set up automated alerts when certain criteria are met within an ad campaign. This keeps you in the loop and alerts all parties who may need to take action.
For example, Automated Rules can assist your ad campaign with budgeting. If an ad set's cost per conversion reaches higher than $10, you can automatically shut it down and reserve capital at a more reasonable price. This feature in effect, takes away the need to check your budgets.
Use the Automated Rules feature to set up actions or notifications when certain conditions are met. — Social Media Examiner
When you are you ready to evaluate how your ads are performing, take a look around the Measure & Report segment in your Facebook Ads account.
For example, the Measure & Report segment allows you to create custom conversions to track if your ads are meeting your objectives or goals.
Ads Reporting: this mechanism allows you to create a report for any advertisement you are running. If you want to evaluate an ad that you ran earlier, you can select a range of dates to identify the specific ads you want to analyze.
Ads Reporting helps you identify, evaluate and create more effective ads throughout your Facebook ad campaigns.
The mechanism also aids you in comparing campaigns to evaluate the crucial metrics that were most effective in helping you achieve your goals and objectives.
For example, if you want to identify which campaign cost the least per conversion or had the best click-through rate, this tool would help you identify that campaign.
Custom Conversions: A great tool to utilize as an artist or music professional is Facebook pixel, this mechanism will track your fans actions on your website accordingly. This could be purchasing tickets or viewing your content, you can also customize Facebook pixel to measure a specific action that you designate.
This tool will help you to establish custom conversions, as well as view all of the custom conversions that you have generated previously.
You will also be able to see the status of all your Facebook pixel data and which custom conversions are presently active.
With the Custom Conversions tool, you can see the status of all of your custom conversions for your ads. — Social Media Examiner
You can create up to 40 custom conversions for each ad account. (If you have more than one ad account, you'll be able to create more. If not, simply delete the unnecessary custom conversions and create a new set.)
Below is an example of how you create a custom conversion, start off by selecting Create Custom Conversion button and fill out the information. Now you will be able to start tracking activity on your website.
When a standard event can't track conversions the way you want, create a custom conversion. — Social Media Examiner
To adequately to track your conversion, you'll need to choose a distinct URL. Once you generate the custom conversion, you can build a conversion ad and choose the custom conversion to follow the progress of your ad.
For example, if people who have purchased tickets are guided to a thank-you page, you can place the thank-you page URL in the Rule segment.
Every time a fan or follower purchases a ticket to your concert and views the thank-you page, the Facebook pixel will receive data and notify Facebook that a legitimate conversion happened.
Pro Tip: Once you establish a custom conversion, make sure to reload the actual page where you want the conversion to happen.
This notifies Facebook that the custom conversion is active and that the pixel is receiving data.
Analytics: The analytics mechanism aids you in evaluating data from you Facebook page and pixel.
Analytics is an essential tool that is priceless when it comes to executing your Facebook marketing strategy. Once you have created ads and gathered more data from your pixel, you will be able to create more effective content and develop better strategies.
The Analytics tool in Facebook Ads Manager can provide automated insights about your pages and other Facebook marketing efforts. — Social Media Examiner
In the Assets segment of the Ads Manager main menu, you will be able to view and access a number of crucial assets that you have utilize to create your ads. This includes Facebook pixel, content that you've used, as well key audiences that you have preserved for ad targeting and many more depending on your preferences.
Audiences: This tool is great because it allows you to plan in advance. You will be able to create a number of audiences for your ad during the ad development stage, as well as creating audiences for future situations that may fit certain criteria.
This is where you will be able to locate and find saved audiences that may be able to be used in future advertisements.
The three types of audiences that you can create on Facebook are: a saved audience, a lookalike audience and a custom audience.
The Assets segment will aid you choosing an ad type based on your goals or objectives for your ad campaign and help in identifying your top performance indicators when it comes to your content.
For example, you can establish an audience based on Facebook content, app, activity on your website, or a formed on the basis of a customer profile.
With Facebook Ads Manager, you can create a custom audience based on a customer file or engagement with your website, app, or Facebook content. — Social Media Examiner
Once you have picked the type of custom audience you want to establish, Facebook will navigate you through the steps.
For example, you'll see a bunch of engagement options to choose from if Facebook engagement is the basis of your custom audience.
This will allow you to target people who have engaged with your Facebook page, clicked on a canvas ad, shown activity on a lead ad or fans who have watched your videos.
After you click to create an audience based on an engagement, you can define the audience based on an interaction with a video, lead ad, canvas ad, or page. — Social Media Examiner
Once you choose from the engagement options, you'll be able to target a definitive set of interactions.
Displayed below you can view the precise page options that will become accessible after you select the Page option.
As you narrow down the options for your Facebook custom audience, you'll find specific ways to define the audience you want to target, such as these page-specific interactions. — Social Media Examiner
The power of custom audiences is that it allows you to target fans and followers that you have already established a relationship with, the value that lies within a lookalike audience is that it aids you in finding fans that have similar interests to the followers that are currently showing interest in your content.
Once you choose the select option to establish a lookalike audience, fill in the 'Source' field to inform Facebook which audience interests you want to duplicate. Then determine the Audience Size and Location.
Facebook Ads Manager allows you to create a lookalike audience similar to an audience that has already interacted with your business. — Social Media Examiner
Images: After you select the images option, you'll see a list of images, this is organized by the most recent images you've used in boosted posts and recent ad campaigns.
Pixels: Again, Facebook pixel is an essential asset when it comes to your content as an artist or music professional.
Selecting the Facebook pixel option allows you to see the data points and pages where it is installed. As well providing an option to install the pixel if necessary.
Click the Pixel option to install the Facebook pixel or see data about pixels you've already installed. — Social Media Examiner
You can create targeted Facebook ads from your evaluated pixel data that you are receiving.
For example, say you are getting a lot a views from your latest video.
You can create an ad to target anyone who has viewed your video with free merch or free tickets to your next show if they sign up for your email list.
This will aid you in building your brand through merch and provide free promotion for your show. As well as growing your email subscriber list and potential fan base.
Offline Events: This mechanism will focus on the impressions and movements that take place outside of Facebook. For example, say someone saw you ad on Facebook for a show or event and deciding to come check it out.
The easiest way to create offline events, is to transmit fan data and test it against fans or followers who likely saw the ad.
Taking this actions will build confidence when it comes to ad placement.
Building a plausible funnel for each of your Facebook ad campaigns can aid you in measuring the campaign's progress. This is necessary because tracking every single conversion is basically impossible.
Product Catalogs: This is a viable option for artists and music professionals with an e-commerce website for merch, products or retail via brand partnerships.
Essentially, fans and followers will see dynamic ads based on their past engagement with your content.
You can utilize the 'Product Catalogs' feature to establish a merch catalog, following Facebook's help. You'll be able to access essential diagnostics you can benefit from once your catalog has been optimized.
Create a product catalog to use with Facebook dynamic ads. — Social Media Examiner
Videos: Once you sign up for a Business Manager account, you will be able to access a 'Videos' option through Ads Manager.
This is where you will be able manage and upload videos to your Facebook page.
The 'Settings' segment is where all your Facebook page account information is saved.
This is where you update your email or update your payment information in your ad account.
To update your settings in Facebook Ads Manager, open the main menu and select an option in the Settings section. — Social Media Examiner
2. Get Familiar with the Facebook Ads Manager Tabs
After selecting the Ads Manager option on the Ads Manager main menu, you can access the main Ads Manager tool.
The dashboard will display four segments that consist of contrasting information that aid you in figuring the different ads you run on Facebook.
The segments are:
Ad Sets
The Facebook Ads Manager tabs. — Social Media Examiner
Account Overview Segment
The Account Overview segment provides you an opportunity to see how your current ads are performing.
The Account Overview tab shows at-a-glance information about current ad campaigns. — Social Media Examiner
This segment also allows you to shift from active ads to a contrasting timeframe, as well filtering campaigns.
You can filter the ad campaigns on the Account Overview tab so you see only active campaigns or a different timeframe. — Social Media Examiner
Campaigns, Ad Sets and Ad Segments
You will have to invest your time into creating a strategy for your ads. Overall your objectives and goals will determine the progress of your ad.
What are the metrics you'll need to know as an artist or music professional? Mainly, what is your cost per conversion? What is the click-through rate for your ad?
You'll have the ability to evaluate your ads utilizing the Campaigns, Ad Set and Ads segment. Choose the segment that shows the grouping you wish to evaluate and then select the Breakdown and Performance columns to refine.
By selecting the Performance column, you will have access to options for displaying specific facets of your campaign. Select an option to expose the associated metrics.
Performance Column — Social Media Examiner
The 'Breakdown' column allows you to evaluate even more data, this can be described as identifying the type of devices your fans were using when they engaged with your ad. Or simply which day of the week the conversions took place.
This segment also allows you to personalize the columns to build particular reports to share amongst your team or evaluate the progress of crucial metric.
For example, if one of your objectives is that your ad operates above a click-through rate of 10%, you can organize the columns to display the higher metrics at the top.
For future reference, you can set aside these reports for later use as well. Select 'Save Report', when the dialog box appears, provide a name and click 'Save'.
The Ads Reporting tool lets you save a report for future reference. — Social Media Examiner
3. Setup A Facebook Ad In Ads Manager
When building a campaign on Facebook, all ads go through a three-step process:
Ad Set
The Tangible Ad People View
To begin building an ad, select the green 'Create Ad' button in the upper-right corner of Ads Manager. This will give you access to the 'Campaign' level where you select an objective for your advertisement.
When you create a campaign on the Campaigns tab, you begin by choosing an objective. — Social Media Examiner
After you have identified your objective, you will be able to select your audience in the 'Ad Set' segment.
As discussed earlier, you can also select a pre-determined audience that you have studied, created or saved using the Audiences tool.
The placement of your ad will also be selected here.
Once you reach the third and final stage of building your ad, you will have the option of selecting the Facebook page and/or the Instagram accountthat you advertisement will be distributed through.
You will have the options to choose whether your ad is presented as a slideshow, video, single image or image carousel.
You can even elect to construct a full-screen canvas advertisement.
Add the text (copy), landing-place URL and the call-to-action button.
Do a quick revision and complete your order to start your Facebook ad campaign.
In the third stage of creating an ad in Ads Manager, you select the images or video, add text, a call-to-action button, and more. — Social Media Examiner
The Facebook Ads Manager is the heart of the ecosystem when it comes to building all your ad campaigns. The underlying statistics and analytics afford you the opportunity to tailor your ads to achieve your goals and objectives as an artist or music professional.
The capacity to influence such a far-reaching, targeted audience for your ads at such a minimal investment is evolutionary.
Do you feel cozy at operating Ads Manager?
Are you feeling self-assured about building your next ad campaign?
If you're interested in learning more or joining the conversation feel free to sign up for our monthly newsletter, join our Facebook group. You can also follow me on Twitter!
This entry was posted in Blog and tagged Artists, Marketing, Music, TweetDeck, Twitter. Bookmark the permalink.
← 4 Surprising Ways To Use Facebook Graph Search
How To Setup A Twitter Account: Getting Started & Building Your Brand →