Google Adwords for Musicians
Let's be honest, there are a literally thousands of ways to promote your music these days. Whether it's building a Twitter following, a Facebook dynasty, linking in with LinkedIn, air time on Pandora, Bandzoogle, Stereoposter, StoryAmp – the possibilites for self-promotion are endless. New platforms are arising constantly and can lead to great press for you and your music when you know how to use them, and Google Adwords is no exception.
Anyone can use Google Adwords. Using a Cost-Per-Click system (CPC), Google allows you to set your bid for clicks to stay within your pre-set daily budget. Offering geographical and demographic targeting, Google Adwords helps you reach your ideal audience one click at a time. Join the conversation on MusicThinkTank.com as Dave Cool brings us a guide to GoogleAdwords.
"Google Adwords might not be the first method you think of using to promote your band. But, if you’re looking to book weddings or other private gigs, Google Adwords can be an effective method of driving visitors to your website and reaching potential clients."
I tried adwords on several occasions and was never too happy with the estimated results whether it was the “reach, potential views, ect.” obviously I was bidding low numbers but even when calculating a 4 figure number I wasn’t convinced plus they weren’t to clear at the time about their dashboard, very confusing and not user-friendly, they continue to update every now and then which makes it even harder to stick with a set dashboard.
Good stuff Dave. I agree with everything in the article.
Most artists are afraid of Adwords or just do not know how to use it (hard to blame them). If you don’t know what you are doing it isn’t going to work.
But very few musicians are using it – which means its wide open – and with a small budget and the right approach, you could generate gigs, fans and sales.
I know of one jazz artist that has had success running Bing ads to promote local gigs and releases.
Being a musician, music marketing consultant and Adwords geek, I know there are ways to help good musicians who have an open mind and a budget take advantage of Adwords.
Not to long ago Altavoz had a team of MBA’s from UMCP Robert H. Smith School of Business come in and run an adwords campaign for us on physical distribution – http://goo.gl/4tEv5G –
What the MBA’s found out was that Artists used Google Search to find Labels that offered physical distribution as part of it’s release strategy. The Labels themselves however were not focused on it physical distribution, So there is a mismatch from our limited study as to what these parts of the recording equation are even after today from each other and Altavoz will be announcing a few services aimed to bridge this gap.
It’s best to have Google Analytic’s, up and running ( Altavoz now offers this as a service to our labels and we’re sharing dashboards to track campaigns) and established micro or structural data on your site; This allows the BOT(s) that spider the intertubes can find and make sense of information that confroms to Schema.org requirements in lieu of outdated SEO tricks.
Why an Adword campaign for Physical Distribution? Well, Since last week physical sales were 56.1 of total units sold and I would hope that it makes sense that being successful includes selling to the whole spectrum of available distribution channels, not just one.