How Do Instagram Ads Work for Musicians?
Your potential listeners are on Instagram. How’s that possible and how it correlates with promotion? Everything is easy as pie, as Instagram has stood out as a strong bridge between musicians and music lovers for years. Whether you publish your tracks on SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple Music, or other platforms, Instagram is #1 for promotion. Advanced analytics, detailed stats, and other perks make it a top preference.
Understanding how to use Instagram for music promotion gives numerous opportunities for creators. This includes a better presence on social media, including direct fan engagement, potential for going viral, additional collaborating opportunities, and so on. High-quality social media marketing will bring good results if you know the algorithm and have an understanding of what you want to achieve. It's not just about having more followers and streams on the music platform. It's about time frames, planning, and fulfillment. In this article, we will reveal essential details on running Instagram ads, reaching your target audience, setting goals for music marketing campaigns, and managing your social media advertising.
|
Metric |
Value |
Year |
Source of Information |
|
Instagram's Projected Ad Revenue |
$71 billion |
2024 |
|
|
Instagram's Share of U.S. Digital Ad Spend |
9.8% |
2024 |
|
|
Cost-Per-Click (CPC) for Instagram Ads |
$0.00–$0.25 |
2024 |
|
|
Instagram Reels' Engagement Rate |
1.23% per post |
2023 |
|
|
Instagram Ads' Potential Monthly Reach |
Almost 2 billion users |
2024 |
|
|
Average Cost-Per-Click (CPC) on Instagram |
$1.23 |
2024 |
The stats of the last 2 years show that Instagram ads do make the difference with a low price compared to other promoting options. In our article, we’ll show how to develop and implement Instagram ads to promote music.
How Do Instagram Ads Work?
Instagram paid ads appear in users' feeds in different formats. It can be reels, product images, carousels, stories, and collections. The idea is to hook attention and make people proceed to profile, choose the product, and purchase/subscribe. Ads can be easily identified among other types of content, as they include a "Sponsored" label. Moreover, such posts include clickable buttons and tags (when users click, they can see the price).
This is an example of Instagram`s ad for a music promotion service in reels. There's a tag meaning this is an ad, offering a clickable button for users to proceed and learn more about services.
Instagram ads don't limit you, as you can promote any type of products and services, including merch, technologies, promotion services (for YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms), and of course, music. The ability to average the target audience allows you to control the way your ads are shared and who sees them. With that, you enhance your ad campaign to target categories based on gender, age, geographical location, behaviors, and preferences. By using Instagram's advanced capabilities, you can share your tracks among music lovers with the same preferences. The idea is to bring more traffic to the music platforms you are present at, get more engagement, and increase your total revenue. Still, achieving a proper result is possible when following a clear path. Before launching the ad campaign, you need to do the following:
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Set realistic goals.
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Develop an ad campaign, choose objectives, set a budget, and outline key steps.
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Set ads in multiple formats to see how they appear for clients.
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Start of the campaign with ads released on Instagram
Now, let's have a close look at each of the presented points, so you will understand how to promote your music properly using Instagram.
Set Realistic Goals for the Instagram Ad Campaign
To accomplish the best result with your Instagram ad campaign, you should set realistic goals. If you are at the beginning of your path and you have a small audience, the initial goal could be to increase the number of followers and listeners. You can even mention specific numbers, so it will help you when planning the main part.
Use Instagram Target Features to Boost Your Campaign
Instagram allows you to decide who will see your ads. Since you launched the campaign to make your songs noticeable, it's essential to present them to those who'll value your genre and style. The first method to analyze demographics and understand who may be your target audience is to look at artists in your genre. On Spotify, in your artist profile, find the "Fans also like" tab and proceed to find more artists in the genre. Choose similar profiles and notice them, so they will be your orienters when developing your audience in Ads Manager (it allows you to create campaigns for both Facebook and Instagram).
Deep analysis of engagement and user activity helps you understand what formats are appreciated by users. With that, you’ll also understand how to create further ads for Instagram.
Analyze the promotion methods used by musicians in your genre. Understanding their patterns will help you optimize content for advertising and use the best practices to push your tracks via your Instagram account. When you define your target audience, it will be easier to manage ad distribution and track the activity.
Ads Manager provides access to advanced analytics, allowing creators to choose appropriate targeting parameters. The "Advantage+audience" option allows you to receive suggestions to prioritize your audience.
Music Promotion on Instagram: Do It Yourself or Hire a Manager?
Music promotion is about finding a proper approach to mix different mechanisms of promotion and achieve better results. The main question here is: how do you manage your music promotion? Musicians deciding to do everything themselves have multiple tools to do it. Apple Music and Spotify, for example, have templates to share tracks on Instagram. Apple Music Marketing Tools and Spotify for Artists respectively have a complex system of tools, including visual constructors, template constructors, analytics, etc. On Apple Music, you can work with the following tools:
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Templates for promotion.
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Link generation tool for email marketing.
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Access to the embedded player to preview your playlists or single tracks.
Spotify for Artists, at the same time, divides tools into 4 blocks. Depending on purpose, you use them to communicate with your audience and amplify your music promotion on Spotify and other platforms, boosting your business, and building connections with fans. For example, Audience Segments, as a part of Spotify for Artists, helps you receive detailed data about your listeners, including
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The most dedicated listeners over the past 28 days.
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Listeners who streamed your music without intentions.
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New active listeners.
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Reactivated listeners who remained inactive but got back to high activity.
Besides having tools to create Instagram ads and manage them, it’s essential to have enough time. In case you don’t have time for proper ad management and development, it makes sense to hire a marketing specialist responsible for social media promotion, including Instagram. Moreover, when artists combine free and paid promotion methods, managing the amount of promotive data, tracking results, implementing changes, developing long-term strategies, etc.
In case you wonder what platform to choose between Spotify and Apple Music for music distribution, check out our recent article. We outlined key features of both platforms, including content management, algorithms, monetization, built-in tools, and other points.
Choose Appropriate Ad Format for Instagram Ads for Musicians
The ad would be more valuable if it's presented in an appropriate format. Visual content presented in an appropriate design will get higher engagement than one that does not look good. Overall, there are 5 types of ads on Instagram:
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Photo ads
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Video ads
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Carousel posts
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Collections
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Shoppable posts
Since your goal is to distribute your music, you should run ads in appropriate formats. Photo ads and video ads are the best options, as they can be easily combined with parts of your songs. Since ads won't be your regular Instagram posts, you need to think outside the box and develop something unusual. The idea is not only to get a catchy video but to choose a proper song fragment so it will make users interested in your music. Famous bands and artists often use footage from the previous shows to announce the upcoming events.
Christoph Schneider, the drummer of Rammstein, announced his participation in the upcoming Europe Drum Show in March, using the footage from previous performances.
Your ads should also contain a call to action, showing users that they are 1 click away from high-value content. Having a clickable button is not enough, as your post should have something special to make people stop and engage. Make CTA match the design of your post, so they will deliver a strong message of what you want to share.
Use Subtitles in Your Videos
20% of Instagram users watch Instagram reels with the sound off. It's a solid number, because reel format is one of the most common for advertising on the platform, especially for musicians. How would you promote your music on Instagram if every fifth user turned off the sound? By using subtitles. Captioning Instagram reels when it's reasonable is extremely valuable because people will surely notice subtitles and focus attention on your posts. So, if your posts contain valuable information and you want to deliver it properly, consider using captioning videos.
Set Up Instagram Ads Depending on the Budget
The amount of advertising content mostly depends on the budget. You invest in pushing your posts through your Instagram feed to make people engage. If you want them to engage with your music on Spotify or other platforms, you should lead them directly to your profile.
What also matters is how you split the budget for Instagram advertising. It could be an overall amount of funds, as you divide it and spend gradually, or a daily budget where the amount of funds is decided every day. People choose daily budgets if they are not sure about how long their campaigning will last. If it's your first experience in promoting music via Instagram, consider spending around $10-15 per day. Monitor the engagement and check analytics to see how ads perform during a week or more. Additionally, use marketing tools related to Instagram, as they'll allow you to advance your capabilities in the following areas:
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Analytics & research tools to find additional information about your audience, recent activity, engagement, etc.
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Design & edit tools to enhance your content, develop new formats, and bring something special.
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AI-powered tools bring access to artificial technologies and simplify the working process in many aspects.
These additional tools and planned activities you implement will help you stand out among other musicians and deliver unusual content for potential listeners. When people come to Instagram, they don't want to see uninteresting footage or content based on outdated trends. If some artists rely only on Instagram stories expecting high engagement, you will make a difference by implementing a complex social media strategy. Later, you may start music promotion via TikTok, Facebook, and other platforms, but Instagram is a must-have platform for your activity.
Are Instagram Ads Worth It for Musicians?
Social media advertising makes a difference for all creative specialists, including musicians. Since artists want not only to get impressions and increase the stream count but also to increase their audience and establish themselves among others, they use other platforms to share their work. A complex promotion strategy with complex analysis and regular changes and investments will lead to your success. Moreover, getting additional paid Instagram promotions will also make the difference, as it gives your content an additional push.
Advertise your music wisely and use the best available instruments to achieve your goals.
Should musicians use Instagram ads for promotion?
Is it safe to use music on Instagram posts?
Do Instagram ads allow to use music?
Should You Invest in Your Instagram Profile?
Noah Carter
Most marketing guides are vague, but this one actually gave me solid steps to follow.
Most marketing guides are vague, but this one actually gave me solid steps to follow.
Jordan Miles
Musicians NEED to understand this if they want to reach real fans.
Musicians NEED to understand this if they want to reach real fans.