Running YouTube Ads as a Musician

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Here’s everything you need to know about running successful YouTube ads as a musician.

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October 27, 2022

As a musician, you have the power to touch people through your music. But regardless of how passionate you are about your craft and how skilled you are as an artist, your music will only have an impact on people if they actually find you and your work.

One of the best ways – in the digital age – to reach a wide audience and put your work out there is by running ads on YouTube. If you’ve ever hesitated to run ads on YouTube because you aren’t sure if they will work for musicians, read our article below.

Why Promote Your Music With YouTube Ads?

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It’s no secret that YouTube advertising is an essential piece of brand growth and marketing; in fact, YouTube advertising is so effective that 70% of YouTube viewers reported to have bought a product after seeing a YouTube ad about it.

Although you aren’t selling products or services, YouTube ads are just as effective for musicians hoping to promote their music. This is due to the fact that, aside from YouTube having ad types built specifically for businesses hoping to sell things, the platform also offers ad types that are geared toward raising awareness and attracting viewers.

How Do You Run Ads as a Musician?

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Define Your Target Audience

Before setting up any ad, you’ll need to understand your target audience and think about who are the people who are most likely to enjoy the music you write. Defining your target audience will allow you to maximize the potential of your YouTube ads.

If you can, it would be best if you create a specific profile or persona of who your ideal listener is. Think about where they’re from, how old they are, what their interests are, and other important factors. Only then can you move on to running your ads via YouTube’s built-in advertising platform.

Set Up an Advertising Campaign

YouTube has many ad types that serve various purposes. As a musician, you’re going to want to choose an ad type that increases awareness of you and your work. YouTube recommends the following ad types for building awareness:

  • Skippable In-Stream Ads. These ads allow you to reach as many people as possible within your budget via skippable ads that may run before, after, or even during a video.
  • Non-Skippable In-Stream Ads. Like skippable in-stream ads, these ads may play before, during, or after a video. The difference is that viewers can’t skip these ads.
  • Masthead. These ads allow you to reach more potential listeners in a short period of time by featuring your video prominently at the top of the YouTube home page.

How Long Should a Music Ad Be?

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In November 2020, YouTube launched a new version of ads called audio ads. These ads are part of YouTube’s strategy to engage more music and podcast listeners.

If you’ll be opting to advertise a video that focuses more on music than anything else, running a YouTube audio ad is worth checking out. Note, however, that the ad length for YouTube audio ads is 15 seconds at most.

If you want to give equal emphasis to audio and video – say, for example, you want to advertise a music video – you can go with YouTube’s traditional ads. The optimal length of these ads is 43 seconds. Note, however, that with YouTube’s Trueview ads, the viewer can skip the ad after five seconds. So, you’ll want the first five seconds to be engaging.

How Much Should a YouTube Ad Cost?

Set Your Bid and Budget

When setting up your ad, you’ll need to decide on the right budget and bidding options for you. The budget you set will establish the charging limit for a specific advertising campaign. In other words, your budget should be the average amount you’re comfortable spending each day.

Your maximum cost-per-click bed is the highest amount you’re willing to pay for one click on your ad. With higher bids, your ads will receive more traffic; however, you’ll spend more money up until the budget that you set.

Consider Your Goals

There are several bid strategies available to you when you set up your YouTube ads. To streamline the decision-making process for you, refer to the following points:

  • More Traffic. If you want more traffic on your website, YouTube channel, or video, you may consider focusing on clicks. You’ll want to enable cost-per-click bidding for your campaign.
  • Awareness. If you want more people to know who you are and what you do, you may wish to focus on impressions. In this case, you can use cost-per-thousand viewable impressions bidding.
  • Views or Interactions. If you’re promoting a specific music video on your channel and want to increase the views or interactions on that specific video, you can use cost-per-view or cost-per-thousand impressions bidding.

What Should You Do Next?

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At this point, you know the basics of advertising on YouTube as a musician. You can choose to get started with setting up your first advertising campaign; however, your first campaign may not be as successful as you want it to be, and you might have to resort to trial and error. Although you might reach your goal eventually, it’ll cost you a lot of money.

The smarter way to get started with running ads on YouTube as a musician is to work with a complete music marketing agency like Musicvertising.

At Musicvertising, we help promote your YouTube music content and gain targeted subscribers, real views, and consistent engagement in a matter of days.

The process of working with us is simple:

  • You choose a video you wish to promote.
  • You provide a couple of keywords or phrases that best describe your video.
  • We promote your video to YouTube viewers searching for your keywords or who are fans of similar musicians.

Musicvertising helps you gain a larger fanbase and promote your music via targeted YouTube advertising. We have several plans to fit any budget. From day one, you can already track the results of our promotions via YouTube’s analytics platform.

Work with us today to build the loyal following you deserve.

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