Brian Hazard recently wrote a great post on
Music Think Tank about using
ReverbNation's
Promote It tool to promote a
Depeche Mode song, "But Not Tonight," that he covered on
Facebook. The Promote It tool is unique in that it automatically generates dozens of optimized Facebook ads based on past
Promote It campaigns, and continually optimizes your campaign based on
the performance of those ads. Right now there are two types of campaigns available: you can either promote a song and promote
your Facebook page, but soon you’ll also be able to promote shows as well.
Here are the 9 steps to starting a Promote It campaign that Brian came up with:
"1.
Which Song Would You Like to Promote? You should
pick one that grabs the listener in the first 5-10 seconds. The song I
chose starts right in on the first verse, with no instrumental
introduction whatsoever.
2.
Pick 5 Similar Artists. Since I was promoting a
Depeche Mode cover song, I picked the band and its members’ solo
projects:
Dave Gahan (lead singer),
Martin L Gore (songwriter), and
Alan
Wilder (long-departed yet still beloved keyboardist/producer) - plus
Erasure, since half of that duo was in the original line-up of DM. The
product manager for Promote It told me that artists who have between
50,000 and 500,000 likes work best, and my results bear that out:
The Dave Gahan ads performed so well that they completely crowded out
the rest. Perhaps it’s because Depeche Mode has millions of casual
fans, but only the most serious ones keep up with the lead singer’s solo
work, and are therefore more motivated to check out my cover.
3.
Write Ad Text. You can choose to author one of
the ads yourself, or let Promote It generate them all. Since my custom
ad was outperformed by the auto-generated ads, I won’t bother sharing it
with you.
4.
Choose Picture. Your choice here can make or
break the campaign! My previous campaign was identical to this one,
except I used a close-up of yours truly. The results were pathetic. It
should come as no surprise that a photo featuring 1) a world-famous band
and 2) an attractive female does a better job of catching the eye.
5.
Geo-Targeting. Choose between local (your state),
national, all English-speaking countries, or global. Theoretically you
should get the best results from global, but national did just as well
for me in my limited experience.
6-8.
Name Your Campaign, Sync with Facebook, Start Date. Pretty much self-explanatory.
9.
Budget. Choose between $25, $50, $100, $250, or
$500 on a one-time, weekly, or monthly basis. I recommend you experiment
with successive $25 campaigns until you find a winning formula, and
expand from there.
It seems like the tool really works. Brian's $50 campaign lasted six days and got some impressive
results, as you can see from the graphic below:"
This looks like a great tool that's well worth the few bucks that it takes to implement a campaign.
Read the rest of the article here.
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