Grassroots 3 Recommendations | PRO

Create and run a Fan Finder
(Ad Campaign)

In our community, indie artists ranging from beginner to advanced have generated millions of new listeners and fans using our Fan Finder Method. This campaign focuses on the things that make musicians go viral - common characteristics of popular videos past and present - to create and implement social media advertising campaigns which generate fans on autopilot.

Once you have a strong brand and a branded social media presence, you can begin earning fans for your music using Fan Finder campaigns. Even if you do not have a marketing budget, this training will help you create Fan Finder videos and distribute them organically. 

We recommend this strategy because it is the most effective we have seen over 5 years of marketing artists every day, and it will serve as the main mechanism for bootstrapping and growing your fan base.

Relevant Trainings

Key Performance Indicators

Cost per Long-form View

Whether you are advertising a 4-minute video on Facebook News Feed or a 30-second clip on Instagram Reels or TikTok, the main metric to focus on in a Fan Finder campaign is the cost you pay to generate a long-form view; this indicates how much it costs to generate a truly engaged viewer.

Regardless of the length of video or platform on which you are advertising, you should test and refine audiences and videos in the campaign to achieve as close to the top benchmark as you possibly can.

Cost per Follower

While most social media ad platforms do not directly display a Cost per Follower, you can determine how much (on average) it costs to generate a follower by dividing your ad spend by the amount of followers you gained during the given time period. It can be helpful to understand how your ad spend and long-form views translate into new followers.

However, it’s important to understand that many engaged listeners will not go through the trouble of following you - you will generate many more long-form viewers than you ever do followers (and that’s okay!)

Benchmarks

Implement Warm Audience Post Boosting
(Ad Campaign)

Once you have begun to generate growth in your social media fans and followers (and your listeners on streaming platforms), the next step will be to keep these people engaged so that they don’t forget about you just as quickly as they learned of you.

To do this, we recommend implementing a consistent habit of posting images and videos on social media and then boosting these posts to your existing "warm" audience (people who have already interacted with you) using a $1-a-day ad campaign.

Relevant Trainings

Key Performance Indicators

Cost per Engagement

Because this ad campaign is usually created with the “Engagement” objective, the Key Performance Indicator for this type of campaign is “Cost per Engagement”. Clicks, views, comments, replies, shares, and reactions all count as a form of “engagement”.

Tracking this metric can help you determine when a particular post performs exceptionally well. This, in turn, allows you to improve the content and captions you post over time by knowing what works best (based on actual data).

Benchmarks

Create and run a Follower Finder
(Ad Campaign)

By implementing the Fan Finder Method, you should end up with one or more performance videos that listeners are highly receptive to on social media. If growing streams and followers on Spotify or Apple Music is a goal for you, these high-performing videos can be ideal for directing traffic to your Spotify or Apple Music profile using Instagram Reels ads.

If you want to focus on growing your streams and streaming followers, you can take our Spotify Field Guide training to learn more about how Spotify works and how to strategically approach the platform to get more out of it than you put in.

Relevant Trainings

Key Performance Indicators

Cost per Click

Because Spotify and Apple Music do not allow you to track how users interact with your songs and artist profile, the closest key performance indicator to focus on in a Follower Finder campaign is the cost you pay to generate a click. A certain percentage of those who click on your ad will also play your track - but not all. Test and refine the audiences and videos you use in your campaign to achieve as close to the top benchmark range as you can.

Cost per Follower

Another reason that not being able to track users on streaming sucks - you can’t really determine how effective your ad campaigns are at generating followers.

But, you can track the growth of your followers on streaming and divide the amount of followers earned in a week into the amount of ad budget spent during that week to get a rough estimate. Tracking this can be helpful for understanding how changes in your ad strategy impact your follower growth.

Benchmarks

Research and identify your fan avatars

Most artists who are successful in growing an initial fan base fail to ever learn very much about them. But, this is a key signal - the types of people who end up enjoying and sticking around for your music and content can teach you a lot about how to find more fans, more often.

In our "How To Turn Listeners Into Fans" training, elder community member Jesse Gillenwalters will show you how to build "fan avatars" - descriptions of your ideal fan - by communicating with and learning about the fans you've already earned. This, in turn, will help you find more fans, make better offers, and earn more revenue in the long run!

Relevant Trainings

Learn the Buddy System and ideate your Fan Journey

Every marketing and business strategy taught and practiced in our community plugs into an overall framework: The Buddy System. This system describes the journey that your audience takes from stranger to listener to fan. It also describes the “areas” of your business that you will have to set up by building and deploying campaigns and projects.

Though it may be too early in your career to fully build out your Buddy System, it will be immensely helpful for you to understand the Fan Journey going forward. By learning The Buddy System first, you will be able to understand which part of the relationship each campaign facilitates and how the campaigns you construct fit together to form a complete business.

Relevant Trainings

Create and implement recurring content

This may be hard to believe if you aren't very familiar with digital marketing, but email marketing is the cornerstone of almost every online business - even in the 2020s. Email marketing performs better than any other form of online marketing, generating an average of $30-40 for every $1 spent.

To bridge the gap between where you are now and a profitable music career supported by fans, email marketing is a key skill you will need to learn and develop.

This training will help you create your email list, begin emailing regularly, and build helpful automations. These automations will ensure that every fan who joins your list, signs up for/purchases an offer, or grows cold and stops opening emails is taken care of automatically.

Relevant Trainings

Create an email list and email automations

This may be hard to believe if you aren't very familiar with digital marketing, but email marketing is the cornerstone of almost every online business - even in the 2020s. Email marketing performs better than any other form of online marketing, generating an average of $30-40 for every $1 spent.

To bridge the gap between where you are now and a profitable music career supported by fans, email marketing is a key skill you will need to learn and develop.

This training will help you create your email list, begin emailing regularly, and build helpful automations. These automations will ensure that every fan who joins your list, signs up for/purchases an offer, or grows cold and stops opening emails is taken care of automatically.

Relevant Trainings

Create 1-4 Permission Offers

In the music industry, not much attention is paid to email marketing. This sadly missed opportunity is made no more obvious than in the "offers" artists make to entice fans to sign up for their email list - including the all too tragic "Get Updates" (oh, goodie!)...

Experienced digital marketers know that the best way to grow an email list is to craft cant-resist offers that make people want to join the list. By creating enticing offers that your audience receives when subscribing to your email list, you'll both ensure that more fans joint he list while also generating excitement and enthusiasm about being a subscriber. It's a win-win!

Relevant Trainings

Build and launch a (basic) website

Unfortunately, most artist websites are glorified business cards. All too often, artist websites simply fail to capitalize on the power of digital marketing. This is especially tragic when you consider the mindset of the average person who makes it all the way to an artist's website...

We spend so much of our time on social media sites, Google, and Amazon that its rare for anyone to visit any other type of website. When someone makes it to your artist website, it's not by accident - they sought you out! So, we want to make the most out of every website visit by creating a website with high-powered email marketing and e-commerce features that translate into long-term fans and sales.

Relevant Trainings

Implement website tracking and analytics

"That which is measured, improves. That which is measured and tracked, improves exponentially."

As an online artist in the digital age, you will likely use your website for many high-value purposes - including to host landing pages that entice users to sign up for your email list, purchase a product, or register for an event.

But, not all landing pages are created equally - some of them suck - and a sub-optimal landing page will yield sub-optimal results. By implementing tracking and analytics on your website, you will be able to identify when a landing page is underperforming and make steps to improve it. And, you will know exactly how much those changes improve that performance - down to the percent!

Relevant Trainings