Use Facebook Advertising And A 'Band Page' To Gain Tremendous Amounts Of Paying Fans For Your Music

"Will Facebook Advertising help my band gain paying fans and exposure"? That's likely a question that you've asked yourself, well consider this.

What do you think is the main way that people really learn about music?

70% of my new music comes from my friends who tell me about some band that they've become really passionate about.

In conversation, they would say to me "Man, Sufjan Stevens is just one of the coolest new artists. He combines electronic and folk music in such a intricate way. You've really got to take a listen to know what I'm talking about".

You don't have to be Jason Mraz to have a band page that looks like this. But please...please don't try to look like Jason Mraz...

Their passion shines off of them. They love the music, and they want you to know about it as well.

Are they getting paid to tell you? No, not a chance. It's all driven by passion.

Now imagine that you had an online way to share your passion with other people. A network for being social. That's Facebook advertising!

Facebook advertising is the biggest social network for you to leverage in your online marketing efforts. If you are planning on promoting your band online, the first step you need to take is to build a page for your band.

Basically, people will be able to "Like" your music (Similar to how you can "Like" TheRealMusician.com at the top right of this page). You can have exclusive content (Songs, Videos, etc) that is only available to people who like your band as an incentive to get more people to become engaged fans.

And when people listen to your music, you can direct them to buy your tunes as well. Building your page is the #1 step you need to take in your Facebook advertising (If not your entire online marketing efforts in general).

How Do I Build A Band Page For Facebook Advertising?

Building your initial band page is actually really easy. Make sure that you already have a normal Facebook account, and then follow these steps to get the process started:

• Look to the left of your page. On that column if you scroll down there should be a "More" link. Click it, and it should reveal a "pages" link. Click on that link now.

• At the top right of the page, click the "Create a page" link.
• From here everything should be self explanatory. Select that you are an artist, and just follow the forms and directions that Facebook advertising gives.

  You will need to put in information about your band, bio, and everything else that you can see as useful. We are going to spend more time on the bio once we are making your page more professional, so for now just create your page.

You should be able to upload a graphic of your band. To gain some instant attraction with anyone who visits your page, I recommend you take a look at This Tutorial to learn how to create really creative and amazing Facebook Pictures.

These pictures will instantly stand out to your audience, and will create the impression that you are a professional band. Why is this important? Here's why...

Imagine you are visiting the page of a band. Their page is poorly put together, and they have very little fans.

It's likely you might not even listen to their music, especially if you can't listen to it on the first tab of their Facebook advertising page.

But if the band has 23 Million "likes" for their band, and it looks like this:

It's likely that you will at least want to listen to their band. Heck, if other people like it then it must be good (Not that I'm making any statements about Linkin Park, It's just the example picture!)

Creating the impression that you are a professional band is important, as people are more likely to click that "Play" button if you are.

And it's also why it gets easier to gain new fans as you go along (Your first 100 will be the hardest!). When people can see that you have lots of fans, it builds a lot of credibility for you and each fan becomes easier and easier to gain.

Which leads me to my next point…

How Do I Make My Band Page Look Professional (Like All Those Big Artists That Have Record Deals?)

It's great that you built a Facebook advertising page, but it's likely that you don't have a page that looks even close to the example up above.

Here's how you can make your Facebook advertising Page look really professional.

You are going to want to get yourself a Facebook advertising Page creator. There are several different programs you can use to make and manage your Facebook advertising page. Some are Free, and some are paid.

I've tried a bunch of different Facebook advertising Page creators, and the two main ones that I have discovered that are worth your time are RootMusic's Bandpage and FanBridge's DamnTheRadio.

Choosing Between BandPage and DamnTheRadio

Now DamnTheRadio and BandPage both have Free Versions, as well as Premium Paid Versions ($29.99/Month and $1.99/Month, respectively).

They are both pretty user friendly, but I will say that BandPage has an easier to use interface, and in general it looks better as well.

Now the Free Version of DamnTheRadio has more options than the Free Bandpage, but the Paid Bandpage is only $1.99/month and it has a ton of great features as well.

I don't want to do a massive review on either of them (On this page at least, maybe I'll thoroughly review them later), but I want to give you the scoop on which one to use.

Basically, the main thing that separates them is:

• DamnTheRadio has Built In Analytics for Premium ($29.99/Month) users. No Analytics on BandPage (Yet, although you can still use the built-in Facebook Analytics).
• DamnTheRadio has more options for advanced features like Sweepstakes and Contests
• BandPage is more user friendly
• BandPage looks more "Modern" and has a much better looking Audio Player

If you are an advanced Facebook Advertiser, then DamnTheRadio might be a better option due to some of their advanced features such as their analytics.

Analytics allows you to analyze your users behavior, and make changes to your page based on what works (Maybe you single song sells better than putting your whole album up on the page).

For most bands I would recommend you use BandPage. Especially since the Premium Option is so cheap and offers some neat functions. For example, you can set it up so that people can sign up for your mailing list in order to download a song for free, similar to Bandcamp.

Getting people on your mailing list in this way is genius, as they often will only need to click that "Allow Facebook to Access My Information" button (Without even having to enter their email).

It also seems like BandPage does enough updates, that they will likely start doing some sort of analytics in the future.

Plus it's really easy to set up (I put my basic page together in about 30 minutes), and has a more "What you see is what you get" kind of interface.

How Do I Get More People To See My Band Page? (How To Promote Your Facebook Page)

In the same way that you might have an album recorded, but no one has heard it, at this point you simply have a band page, but that doesn't mean that you have any fans or activity on it.

You are going to want to do advertising for your page. You will want to mix Facebook's Paid Advertising with their Free Organic sharing.

Organic sharing is simply when people share your page with their friends. This is like what I spoke about at the top of this page, when you are so passionate about a band that you want your friends to know about it.

Promote Your Facebook Page For Free (Takes Longer, More Work - Free)

For your free advertising, you will want to share your Facebook page:

• On Your Facebook Wall.
• On The Facebook Wall's of Events your band is playing at.
• On Your Myspace page.
• On Your Twitter Status updates.
• On Your Band Website.
• Message your friends and ask them to become your fan. Most likely your first 50 fans or so will end up being your friends.
• Anywhere else you can think of.

Once you have 25 fans, you will want to claim a unique URL for your Facebook page.

This way you will have a url such as this: www.facebook.com/ahumannothing.

If you feel comfortable, and you start having a bunch of fans (300+) then you can ask your fans to share your band page with their friends as well.

Read my article about How A Facebook Comment Box On Your Band Website Can Help Market Your Band.

Here's my plug for this article. Wait...I think I already did one...no wait...that's later. I did one later, it's in a few paragraphs!

BandPage Premium has a function where you can allow fans to download your music for free, but they have to Tweet about your band first. This is an awesome function that I recommend you use if you decide to upgrade to the premium option

Promote Your Facebook Page With Paid Ads (Get Fans Quicker, Less Work - Costs Money)

The Facebook advertising platform is a really cost-effective way for you to promote your band.

You are able to target people based on their age, gender, geographical area, interests (most important), etc.

You can learn How To Set Up Your Facebook Advertising For Your Band Here. <---

That article will bring you through the process of creating an ad on Facebook. It touches on a few bidding strategies as well, but if you've never made an ad before then it is a must-read!.

If you want to learn more advanced strategies for bidding, you can read my article "How To Get A Lower CPC (Cost Per Click) On Your Facebook Advertising".

The basic strategy that you want to take is to target people who are already fans of bands that your band sounds like. There are definitely many other targeting strategies, but for now let's just focus on this one.

For example, for my band (A Human Nothing), I target people who are fans of the following bands:

• And So I watch you from afar
• Animal Collective
• The Arcade Fire
• At The Drive In
• Battles
• The Besnard Lakes
• The Dillinger Escape Plan
• Explosions In The Sky
• Extra Life
• Faith No More
• Frank Zappa
• Godspeed You Black Emporer!
• Grizzly Bear
• Grupo Neuvo de Omar Rodriguez-Lopez
• Hella
• How To Destroy Angels
• If These Trees Could Talk
• Irepress
• ISIS
• Jaga Jazzist
• Jakob
• Karnivool
• Kayo Dot
• King Crimson
• Lovage
• The Mars Volta
• Mastodon
• Maudlin Of The Well
• MeWithoutYou
• MGMT
• Mike Patton
• Mogwai
• Mr. Bungle
• Muse
• Nine Inch Nails
• The Number Twelve Looks Like You
• Omar Rodriguez-Lopez
• Cedric Bixler-Zavala
• One Day As A Lion
• Peeping Tom
• A Perfect Circle
• Pink Floyd
• Porcupine Tree
• Radiohead
• Rishloo
• Russian Circles
• Sigur Ros
• Sleepytime Gorilla Museum
• The Sound Of Animals Fighting
• Tera Melos
• Thom Yorke
• Tomahawk
• Tom Waits
• Tool
• Tortoise
• Trent Reznor
• Tyondai Braxton
• Zechs Marquise

As you can see, this is a fairly extensive list. I recommend you target at least 15-20 bands that you feel are similar to your band.

Also keep in mind that the bands that you are targeting don't just have to sound like your band, they could also just be bands that have a similar audience to your target audience (people who are likely to like your music).

For example, my band doesn't really sound much like "Tortoise", but the type of person who would listen to Tortoise is likely to like my band (Because of the type of tastes they have).

And the type of Tortoise that listens to people who don't like my music, doesn't exist!

Just don't target bands that have aren't similar to your music at all, or don't have the same audience. I know it's tempting to target "Rihanna" fans because she has a buttload of marketing and "likes" behind her, but you will most likely just end up blowing your money and annoying a bunch of people with your irrelevant ads.

Keep it real, keep it simple, do what makes sense.

Quick Tip: Put the "Like" Button right in your ad, 80% of people who "Like" paid advertisements do it straight from the ad itself.

Use these techniques for paid (and organic) Facebook advertising and you will gain quite a large audience for your Facebook page.

A friend of mine received around 2,200 'likes' for his Facebook page with only $200. And all he had on his page was a single song.

Seems like a pretty lucrative advertising platform doesn't it?

Don't miss out on this amazing opportunity just because it's really easy to do! Start your Facebook advertising today, because it's going to be an important part of your online marketing for your band.

And remember, the more fans you have, the more people are going to come to your shows and buy your albums.

And when you start selling out concerts, you can expect that you probably won't have to work a day job any more. At that point, you'll be able to play music for a living.

That's a goal I am dedicated to, and I hope you are just as dedicated to reaching it, as I am to teaching it! (That was a totally accidental rhyme by the way).

If you haven't done so already:

(That's A Clue!)

Return from Facebook Advertising to Music Careers

New! Comments