Social media is THE BEST place to advertise your work as an artist.
You can grow your fanbase and introduce your music to new people, get them to buy your new albums, and inform them of new events of yours like exhibitions and performances.
Instagram in particular is perfect for artists. And running Instagram ads can help you reach tons of new people.
So if you’re wondering HOW to run Instagram ads for artists, this mega post will go over everything you need to know.
I’ll explain the strategic side of what you need to do before you start the ad campaign, how to create good ad creatives, and how to figure out your ad campaign goals.
First Things First
BEFORE you create ads, you need to make some changes to your Instagram account.
If you have a personal account, switch over to a business account asap.
This will help you in the long run with advertising, because it will give you stats of engagement and interactions with your followers and other people.
This will help you decide on the proper trends, and changes that you will need to make in order to get more reach into your fanbase.
Switch Your Instagram to a Business Account (From Personal or Creator)
You will also be asked if you want to connect your Facebook page to the Instagram business account – which is something you MUST do if you want to see good results.
It will link your accounts ACROSS Meta, and this will make things a LOT easier for you.
How To Make The Ad Creative
Let’s take a look at our ad creative we are going to run next:
Make The Ad Eye-Catching But Authentic
When you’re creating ads, make sure that you create something that the audience will NOTICE.
Your ads must NOT be generic, because people will move past them without even noticing.
If you need ACTUAL engagement, make sure that your ads can grab the attention of anyone scrolling through social media. You can use a free tool like Canva for this.
Also, you and ONLY you will know EXACTLY what your brand is about.
So make sure that the ESSENCE of your brand is in your ads as well, without going in other directions just to be creative.
If you are writing slogans or text into your ads, make sure they go with the overall VIBE of your brand. If your brand’s voice and the tone of your adverts don’t really match, it can be a problem.
Also make sure that they have a LOT of color in them.
Bland adverts don’t really grab attention, and static ads where nothing moves are quite boring as well. So make sure your ads move, and showcase your creations in them.
⚡Also Read: Instagram Ad Account Not Found
Don’t Use Stock Footage
Do NOT use stock footage in your adverts if you want people to engage with them.
Stock images are easy to spot, and people will just move past them as they are NOT authentic.
While stock images are free, you will end up with common images that have been used in COUNTLESS other projects as well.
So if you want your ads to be unique, do NOT use stock footage or images.
Instead, you can add something like a snippet of you performing at a show, or a performance of a new song that you’re releasing.
Make The Call To Action Prominent
Make sure you mention what you want people to do, once they come across your ads.
Are you inviting them to a show?
Or are you asking them to buy tickets, or pre-sales for a new song or album?
Make sure you mention what you WANT them to do. If you make these steps vague or the links hard to find, people will just move on without engaging at all.
Read Meta’s Advertising Policies
You will also need to make yourself familiar with the advertising policies on Meta BEFORE you run Instagram ads for artists.
There are certain words, images etc.. you are not allowed to use.
Plus, your content will be checked daily, and if your ads don’t comply with the policies and standards of Meta, they will get taken down, AND you might even lose your account entirely.
So if you DON’T want that to happen, make sure you read the policies first.
Setting Up The Ad Campaign
To set up your ad campaign, you will need to head to the Meta Ads Manager. Once you log in with your credentials, you can start setting up your ad.
Choose Campaign Objective
You can start by selecting what your CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVE is, and you have three objectives to choose from:
- Traffic – Select this if you want to send your audience (ANYONE who sees your ad, really) to a link or website.
This can be a subscribe link to a channel, or your Instagram page or maybe pre-order or pre-save a new album or song coming out soon.
- Engagement – Select this if you want new people to look at your page, interact with the posts through likes, comments and shares.
This helps a lot with expanding your fanbase and follower count.
- Sales – Select this if you’re trying to get people to buy your products, may it be your albums, singles, or any other creation of yours.
Each of these options will lead you to additional preference adjustments, which the ads manager will walk you through, so you DON’T have to worry.
Budget
Next you have to set the budget you’re willing to spend on your campaign, but make sure that you put an amount that you are COMFORTABLE with.
You should NOT spend a lot of money on your campaign on the first try, because you’re still learning the whole process.
Start with around $5 – $10 daily budget.
You can also set up start and end dates of your campaign.
Target Audience And Ad Placements
Setting up the targeting options is probably the MOST important part of the whole process.
Luckily, you don’t have to guess this. If your Instagram account is a business account, head over to analytics and check insights. You should be able to get an idea of the age, gender and location of people that follow you.
Target this audience on the ads.
Also set up detailed targeting with interests and behaviors. If you don’t do this you won’t get results period.
You can find more about this here.
You can also select the ‘look-alike’ audience, which means Meta will automatically find people who haven’t really interacted with you but are similar to your existing audience.
For placements, select Manual and just select Instagram. Uncheck the others. You can keep the other placements default because Instagram does a good job at that.
The challenge is to make sure that your ads are appealing to THAT crowd.
Edit Ad Copy And Upload Ad Media
Now it’s time to edit the headline, and the description which your audience will see when the ad is published.
You must make sure that these phrases are catchy and interesting, because if they’re not, your audience will simply scroll past them and you will lose engagement.
So make sure that your ad headlines and descriptions stand out!
⚡Also Read: Facebook Ads For Youtube Subscribers
You should also select a “call to action” which will tell the audience what you want them to do.
After that, you can upload the ad you created earlier. You can do variations of images and videos or you could do just one.
Add The Link
Your ad MUST have a link if you select traffic as the campagio goal.
This could be to a page for buying or pre-saving your album, singles, registering for an event, or buying tickets for your new show.
So THIS is where you upload that link, and make sure you double check it.
Review And Publish
You can finally review the whole ad you made, and if you’re satisfied with everything and what your final ad looks like, just go ahead and publish the campaign.
Monitoring Performance
What remains is JUST some routine follow-up and maintenance to your ads.
You need to regularly check how your ads are doing through Ad manager, and get an idea of how the ad does with the particular audience demographic.
When you spot an underperforming ad, all you have to do is tweak targeting.
Continue to do this until you get the hang of it and then you can make more ADVANCED changes with a BIGGER budget!
