Music Marketing & Promotion Experience (Part 5)

The graph "Campaign Rankings" gives an overview of the different types of promotion campaigns (IG: Instagram; FB: Facebook) and categorizes them in five arbitrary groups:

rank 5) New Song (highest ranking category)

rank 4) Music video

rank 3) Live contribution

rank 2) Behind the scenes / blogs

rank 1) News / other blog topics (lowest ranking category)

The 'New Songs' category is assiciated to the highest ranking since this is what (DIY) musicians regularly should do, especially in these times where streaming and social media platforms change the way how music is consumed. The CEO of Spotify recently noticed that musicians are expected to release quite regularly / frequently across the year. This is putting a lot of pressure on the shoulders especially of DIY musicians, who need not only to be creative but also need to act on their marketing and promotion - otherwise, the newly released music will probably not find the right fan base. The other categories rank in a decreasing order with 'News / Other Blogs' at the lower end of the arbitrary.

As easily recognizable, the majority of the non-paid info ads fall in the category 'New Song' (rank 5). Two ads are associated with 'Behind the Scenes / blogs' category, only one ad is belonging to 'News / other blog topics' (rank 1).

The final target groups and regions as well as the hashtags differed only slightly between the campaigns that were tracked in an Excel-style spreadsheet as depicted in the figure below (only a part of the large spreadheet is shown as example here).

Within the period of the campaigns from August 2020 to April 2021, more than 486.000 people were reached. Of those, approximately 4.900 homepage visits, corresponding to approx. 1% of the reached group of people. Approximately 60% of the new homepage visits belong to paid promotion campaigns. At the end of the entire 8-month-campaign, more than 1.355 new users visited the Homepage. As a side effect, the total number of new streams on the music platforms increased (approx. 19.420 overall streams) during this period. However, it should be noted that this was not the primary goal of the Ads campaign.

The CTR - Click-Through-Rate (or Impressions-to-Click-Rate) - for the Instagram Ads range between 0.12% - 1.58% with an average of 0.68%. The CTR-values for the Facebook Ads range between 1.56% - 1.76%. 

Interestingly, one Instagram Ads resulted in a CTR of 1.58 which is comparably high as the Facebook Ads. The "IG Fade out lines (rem)" ad contained a very attractive and most liked fotograph that apparently attracted attention and interaction.

In the music business the CTR for Instagram Ads has recently (Q1-2020) been reported to be in the order of 0.22% for feeds to 0.33% for stories (Source), whereas the CTRs for Facebook Ads are around 1.11% (newsfeed) but trend further downwards.

In conclusion, the Fantomacs promotions correspond to the average CTRs reported elsewhere and lie within the decreasing trend over the years.

The diagram shown on the right shows the average cost per click (CPC) values for the paid campaigns. The values range between 0.1 € - 0.8 € per click (see note below). The cost for Instagram Ads range between 0.7 $ to 1.0 $ per Click, depending on several other factors like e.g. industries, physical locations, days of the week, time of year, ad placements, targeted ages, targeted sexes, and other categories (Source).

The cost per click of the Fantomacs promotions correspond to this range. Only the 'By the lake' promotion is with 0.78 €/click somewhat in the high range.

Note:

The Instagram promotion 'Fly with me' Bandcamp is still in progress and therefore the value is still significantly higher.

The Cost per Aquisition /or Conversion (CPA) looks pretty comparable to the above plot and was, therefore, not shown.

In the previously published part 3 episode of this series, the 'Around the Corner' promotion was still in progress. Therefore, I'm pleased to show results of this campaign here.

The 'Around the Corner' campaign resulted in the highest Reach of all campaigns done so far. As high as 303.000 people have seen this promotion and 768 profile and/or weblink licks were performed. The number of streams was only a sub-portion with 122 streams corresponding to a revenue as low as 0.12 € - wow! This really brings you down to earth!!

Note:

The Instagram promotion 'Fly with me' Bandcamp is still in progress and therefore the value is still low.

The next graph show the number of conversions for all paid ads ranging between 26 - 768 (website and profile visits).

Note:

The Instagram promotion 'Fly with me' Bandcamp is still in progress and therefore the value is still low and presumably will increase to 150-250, finally.

In total, the revenues from streaming platforms after 8 month are 7% of the total promotion cost spent so far, the current status is depicted in the figure on the left hand side. However, the promotion cost are actual, whereas the revenues are significantly delayed. The payments from the distributor (in this case: AMUSE.IO) are delayed by a minimum of 3 month.

Therefore, the situation is probably better than shown in the figure. One need to have patience, especially in this business - but certainly this is also true for other businesses as well.

When looking to the overall picture it appears that the paid promotion campaigns on Instragam & Facebook do not (fully) pay-off. Taking into account the fact that the cost are actual whereas the revenues are not (delay of >3months) the proportion of expenses vs. revenues will develop over time. However, there is doubt to believe that the promotion cost will level out with the revenues from streaming platforms in the end.

As discussed in part 4 of the blog series, however, there is also a "soft factor" to be taken into account since the paid promotion campaigns generate much more visibility than the non-paid info ads which become evident comparing the reach / impression values between the two types.

So, stay tuned, keep reading this blog, enjoy listening to my music and take care!