Symphony's automated marketing tools are designed to help artists grow their fanbase effectively. To make the most of these tools, follow these best practices, categorized into several areas.
Conversions
Artists can use this playbook with or without Symphony Conversions, but we recommend using conversions to get 4-6x better results than non-conversion campaigns.
By embracing this feature, you can connect with fans who truly resonate with your art, and effortlessly grow your streams, sales, and overall reach. We've simplified the complexities of high-tier ad targeting to put it in the hands of every creator.
Selecting a Creative Asset
We recommend boosting an existing Instagram post vs. uploading a new asset. When you select an existing asset, your ad will include all of your existing organic engagement (likes, comments, shares, views). This ensures that when new fans see your ad, it already has social proof and looks more appealing.
Best Practices with Ad Content:
The 5 Second Rule: The first 5 seconds of ad content determines whether someone will stop scrolling and watch the ad or keep scrolling. Use moving scenery in the first 5 seconds to catch a potential fan’s eye.
Quick Cuts: Ads with quick cuts work well in engaging viewers. Think about when you’re scrolling through your IG or TikTok feed - you tend to stop scrolling when a video has something happening on it that catches your eye and then continue watching if the video is compelling.
Videos over Images: Videos always perform better than images for ads. Use a video that’s sized 4x5 for feed (e.g. 1080 x 1350) and 9x16 for story (e.g. 1080 x 1920) and upload both for maximum effectiveness.
Make it feel organic: A potential fan is watching an ad to eventually listen to your song and become a part of your world. Ensure your ad stays within your creative world to make it feel authentic.
No Explicit Content: Remove swear words, explicit content, or any scenes with smoking - Facebook tends to disapprove those ads during their ad review.
Selecting Ad Destinations
With Symphony, you can easily select different platforms to send fans to, from Spotify to Apple, to your own custom link. We recommend selecting only 1-2 platforms at once, based on where your fans engage the most. For example:
only Spotify or
Spotify + Apple Music or
YouTube or
Link in Bio (Symphony Website / ffm link)
Adding too many platforms will split your budget between each link, leading to worse results.
Setting your Budget
The Symphony minimum budget is $10 / day, offering full flexibility and control over how much you want to spend. However, we recommend running a campaign for at least 10 - 14 days to ensure effective targeting, totaling around $100 - $150 USD.
Budgets below $100 tend to cause Instagram's ads to focus in on cheaper countries.
Selecting Additional Interests + Geographies
Symphony's AI will generate ~500 audiences automatically that are used when targeting, however we also recommend adding in a few additional audiences by clicking "Improve your Audience Targeting" on the Review step.
Geographies: We recommend keeping the default targeting, and adding in your top 5 cities based on Spotify, Instagram, or TikTok data or target areas where you have upcoming shows or events.
Audiences: Add in a few related artists under the "Search for similar artists to target" section - this will let you find any artist in Spotify. Symphony will pull in related artists that are available to target within Facebook & Instagram's ads targeting library, so you can broaden your approach when it comes to targeting.
With every campaign, we automatically target your existing fans, fans similar to your existing fans, and fans of your genre. Based off these sets of audiences, we create 200-500 different custom audiences.
Your existing fans is made up of people that have engaged with you Facebook and Instagram, as well as people that have clicked-through to a streaming service across your Symphony music sites.
Fans similar to your existing fans is made from lookalike audiences based off your existing fans.
Fans of X genre is pulled from Spotify and cross-referenced with Facebook's targeting database.
Note: You are unable to remove these audiences
How to know if a campaign is doing well
You can evaluate a campaign's performance using key metrics like cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-conversions (CPCV) (if enabled).
A good cost-per-click for a music campaign can be anywhere between 5 - 50 cents / click. The more monthly listeners you have, the lower you want your cost per click. If the cost-per-click (CPC) is higher than that, it may make sense to pause the campaign and test another creative asset. If you're using conversions, your cost-per-conversion (CPCV) should be no more than double your cost-per-click.
If the cost-per-click is lower than that, then the campaign is crushing it and it may make sense to extend the length + budget.
You can track your cost-per-click after a campaign is live, under the "Performance" and "Daily Stats" sections of your dashboard:
When to pause your campaign
Consider pausing your campaign if it has a cost-per-click over 50 cents per click (CPC) or a cost per conversion (CPCV) that is more than double your CPC. Reevaluate your creative assets, location targeting, or messaging to optimize for better performance or plan your next campaign.
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