If you want to build a fanbase using ads, you don’t need to know everything, but you do need to know the basics.
Fortunately, it only takes a handful of campaigns to propel your business forward.
These campaigns are applicable across platforms—Meta, Google, Snapchat—you name it.
And while naming conventions may vary, the structure and idea behind each remains the same.
Here’s how it’s done.
Awareness
An awareness campaign is the most basic thing you should know how to do.
Video views, reach, ad recall lift—these are all things you’ll want to optimize for to build that initial group of people who know who you are.
And while you can easily boost a post and get results, the better way is to run this campaign inside your ad platform.
You have more control over the setup, and you’ll be where you need to be to start using the data you gather at this stage.
One of the biggest errors I see here is when people optimize solely for the views or reach without a plan to pull people down the funnel.
Yes, the vanity metrics help, but they are so much more powerful when you use them as part of a larger marketing system.
Followers
Different platforms refer to this in different ways—followers, page likes, subscribers, etc..
The point here is to keep people around for the long term.
But beware just targeting anyone with this campaign.
Not all followers are created equally.
It’s better to have a lesser amount of the right kind of followers (read: those who will engage on organic content later) than a greater amount of the wrong kind (those who will follow and never engage with your content in the future).
I recommend using a retarget strategy for this campaign rather than cold targeting.
This is the first place that awareness data comes into play.
With the right awareness and retarget combo, you’ll find yourself with a much higher quality result and your ad spend will keep paying dividends after the fact.
Streaming
If you’re making music, you have to get people to streaming platforms to listen.
Now, the biggest player is obviously Spotify, and that’s the one I recommend putting your energy into.
If you can get traffic to your catalog on Spotify, it will naturally flow everywhere else—Apple Music, YouTube Music, etc.
Running a streaming campaign is an awesome way to sort of bundle your awareness and follower campaigns into one thing too.
So this is especially helpful if you’re on a tighter budget.
Now this sort of campaign can be more complex to set up as you start creating landing pages and conversion events and monitoring off-platform results, but when done correctly, this single campaign will fuel growth across the internet.
If you’re releasing music, this one is a no-brainer to have in your arsenal.
Leads
It doesn’t matter how big social media gets— email is still king.
If you’re serious about building a long-term fanbase full of die-hard fans, you’ll need their email addresses.
Bonus points for phone numbers.
The point is, you can use ads to collect this unique identifier for every person in your audience.
The trick is giving them something for free in return.
That, and running an effective retargeting strategy.
Just like with followers, you want to be selective with your long-term engagement strategy.
Quantity is great for views and streams, but quality is best for followers and subscribers.
Use awareness ads to get on their radar, then retarget them with an offer for a free download or merch discount in exchange for their contact information.
You’d be amazed at how effective this is.
Sales
Businesses require sales, otherwise it’s just a hobby.
The one that traditionally jumps off the page here is merchandise, but don’t sleep on tickets.
More and more these days, DuPree X is helping artists sell out shows on the other side of consistent growth on social media and streaming platforms.
And, truth be told, this really is the objective every artist should be shooting for (assuming they want to play live at all—you don’t have to).
But assuming live shows are part of the equation, nothing beats them.
The live show allows you to develop personal relationships with fans, sell merchandise onsite, collect email addresses, and it will bolster your local streaming numbers before and after the event as your fans prepare for the show and celebrate afterwards.
It truly gets no better than this.
But, again, just as with followers and leads, you’ll need to be prepared to institute a more complex, multi-step funnel approach here.
Not just anyone is going to fork over cash for an evening that requires them to get off the couch (between leaving the house and paying for tickets, it’s a one-two punch of commitment).
So start with awareness first, then work your way though the rest until you ultimately arrive at the live show.
If you can get each of these campaigns right, you’ll be in a phenomenal position to own and understand every layer of your customer’s journey from start to finish.
If you want to build a fanbase using ads, you don’t need to know everything, but you do need to know the basics.
Fortunately, it only takes a handful of campaigns to propel your business forward.
These campaigns are applicable across platforms—Meta, Google, Snapchat—you name it.
And while naming conventions may vary, the structure and idea behind each remains the same.
Here’s how it’s done.
Awareness
An awareness campaign is the most basic thing you should know how to do.
Video views, reach, ad recall lift—these are all things you’ll want to optimize for to build that initial group of people who know who you are.
And while you can easily boost a post and get results, the better way is to run this campaign inside your ad platform.
You have more control over the setup, and you’ll be where you need to be to start using the data you gather at this stage.
One of the biggest errors I see here is when people optimize solely for the views or reach without a plan to pull people down the funnel.
Yes, the vanity metrics help, but they are so much more powerful when you use them as part of a larger marketing system.
Followers
Different platforms refer to this in different ways—followers, page likes, subscribers, etc..
The point here is to keep people around for the long term.
But beware just targeting anyone with this campaign.
Not all followers are created equally.
It’s better to have a lesser amount of the right kind of followers (read: those who will engage on organic content later) than a greater amount of the wrong kind (those who will follow and never engage with your content in the future).
I recommend using a retarget strategy for this campaign rather than cold targeting.
This is the first place that awareness data comes into play.
With the right awareness and retarget combo, you’ll find yourself with a much higher quality result and your ad spend will keep paying dividends after the fact.
Streaming
If you’re making music, you have to get people to streaming platforms to listen.
Now, the biggest player is obviously Spotify, and that’s the one I recommend putting your energy into.
If you can get traffic to your catalog on Spotify, it will naturally flow everywhere else—Apple Music, YouTube Music, etc.
Running a streaming campaign is an awesome way to sort of bundle your awareness and follower campaigns into one thing too.
So this is especially helpful if you’re on a tighter budget.
Now this sort of campaign can be more complex to set up as you start creating landing pages and conversion events and monitoring off-platform results, but when done correctly, this single campaign will fuel growth across the internet.
If you’re releasing music, this one is a no-brainer to have in your arsenal.
Leads
It doesn’t matter how big social media gets— email is still king.
If you’re serious about building a long-term fanbase full of die-hard fans, you’ll need their email addresses.
Bonus points for phone numbers.
The point is, you can use ads to collect this unique identifier for every person in your audience.
The trick is giving them something for free in return.
That, and running an effective retargeting strategy.
Just like with followers, you want to be selective with your long-term engagement strategy.
Quantity is great for views and streams, but quality is best for followers and subscribers.
Use awareness ads to get on their radar, then retarget them with an offer for a free download or merch discount in exchange for their contact information.
You’d be amazed at how effective this is.
Sales
Businesses require sales, otherwise it’s just a hobby.
The one that traditionally jumps off the page here is merchandise, but don’t sleep on tickets.
More and more these days, DuPree X is helping artists sell out shows on the other side of consistent growth on social media and streaming platforms.
And, truth be told, this really is the objective every artist should be shooting for (assuming they want to play live at all—you don’t have to).
But assuming live shows are part of the equation, nothing beats them.
The live show allows you to develop personal relationships with fans, sell merchandise onsite, collect email addresses, and it will bolster your local streaming numbers before and after the event as your fans prepare for the show and celebrate afterwards.
It truly gets no better than this.
But, again, just as with followers and leads, you’ll need to be prepared to institute a more complex, multi-step funnel approach here.
Not just anyone is going to fork over cash for an evening that requires them to get off the couch (between leaving the house and paying for tickets, it’s a one-two punch of commitment).
So start with awareness first, then work your way though the rest until you ultimately arrive at the live show.
If you can get each of these campaigns right, you’ll be in a phenomenal position to own and understand every layer of your customer’s journey from start to finish.
If you want to build a fanbase using ads, you don’t need to know everything, but you do need to know the basics.
Fortunately, it only takes a handful of campaigns to propel your business forward.
These campaigns are applicable across platforms—Meta, Google, Snapchat—you name it.
And while naming conventions may vary, the structure and idea behind each remains the same.
Here’s how it’s done.
Awareness
An awareness campaign is the most basic thing you should know how to do.
Video views, reach, ad recall lift—these are all things you’ll want to optimize for to build that initial group of people who know who you are.
And while you can easily boost a post and get results, the better way is to run this campaign inside your ad platform.
You have more control over the setup, and you’ll be where you need to be to start using the data you gather at this stage.
One of the biggest errors I see here is when people optimize solely for the views or reach without a plan to pull people down the funnel.
Yes, the vanity metrics help, but they are so much more powerful when you use them as part of a larger marketing system.
Followers
Different platforms refer to this in different ways—followers, page likes, subscribers, etc..
The point here is to keep people around for the long term.
But beware just targeting anyone with this campaign.
Not all followers are created equally.
It’s better to have a lesser amount of the right kind of followers (read: those who will engage on organic content later) than a greater amount of the wrong kind (those who will follow and never engage with your content in the future).
I recommend using a retarget strategy for this campaign rather than cold targeting.
This is the first place that awareness data comes into play.
With the right awareness and retarget combo, you’ll find yourself with a much higher quality result and your ad spend will keep paying dividends after the fact.
Streaming
If you’re making music, you have to get people to streaming platforms to listen.
Now, the biggest player is obviously Spotify, and that’s the one I recommend putting your energy into.
If you can get traffic to your catalog on Spotify, it will naturally flow everywhere else—Apple Music, YouTube Music, etc.
Running a streaming campaign is an awesome way to sort of bundle your awareness and follower campaigns into one thing too.
So this is especially helpful if you’re on a tighter budget.
Now this sort of campaign can be more complex to set up as you start creating landing pages and conversion events and monitoring off-platform results, but when done correctly, this single campaign will fuel growth across the internet.
If you’re releasing music, this one is a no-brainer to have in your arsenal.
Leads
It doesn’t matter how big social media gets— email is still king.
If you’re serious about building a long-term fanbase full of die-hard fans, you’ll need their email addresses.
Bonus points for phone numbers.
The point is, you can use ads to collect this unique identifier for every person in your audience.
The trick is giving them something for free in return.
That, and running an effective retargeting strategy.
Just like with followers, you want to be selective with your long-term engagement strategy.
Quantity is great for views and streams, but quality is best for followers and subscribers.
Use awareness ads to get on their radar, then retarget them with an offer for a free download or merch discount in exchange for their contact information.
You’d be amazed at how effective this is.
Sales
Businesses require sales, otherwise it’s just a hobby.
The one that traditionally jumps off the page here is merchandise, but don’t sleep on tickets.
More and more these days, DuPree X is helping artists sell out shows on the other side of consistent growth on social media and streaming platforms.
And, truth be told, this really is the objective every artist should be shooting for (assuming they want to play live at all—you don’t have to).
But assuming live shows are part of the equation, nothing beats them.
The live show allows you to develop personal relationships with fans, sell merchandise onsite, collect email addresses, and it will bolster your local streaming numbers before and after the event as your fans prepare for the show and celebrate afterwards.
It truly gets no better than this.
But, again, just as with followers and leads, you’ll need to be prepared to institute a more complex, multi-step funnel approach here.
Not just anyone is going to fork over cash for an evening that requires them to get off the couch (between leaving the house and paying for tickets, it’s a one-two punch of commitment).
So start with awareness first, then work your way though the rest until you ultimately arrive at the live show.
If you can get each of these campaigns right, you’ll be in a phenomenal position to own and understand every layer of your customer’s journey from start to finish.
Take the next step
Read the Newsletter: Explore previous issues of The One Thing to learn at your own pace and upgrade your marketing knowledge for free.
Book a Consultation: Schedule a one-on-one call with me to improve your marketing across paid advertising, social media, and more.
Become a Client: Hire our team to manage your marketing across streaming platforms and social media so you can focus on what matters most—making music.
Take a Course: Join the hundreds of artists who have successfully learned to automate their growth on Spotify using paid ads on Instagram.
Take the next step
Read the Newsletter: Explore previous issues of The One Thing to learn at your own pace and upgrade your marketing knowledge for free.
Book a Consultation: Schedule a one-on-one call with me to improve your marketing across paid advertising, social media, and more.
Become a Client: Hire our team to manage your marketing across streaming platforms and social media so you can focus on what matters most—making music.
Take a Course: Join the hundreds of artists who have successfully learned to automate their growth on Spotify using paid ads on Instagram.
Take the next step
Read the Newsletter: Explore previous issues of The One Thing to learn at your own pace and upgrade your marketing knowledge for free.
Book a Consultation: Schedule a one-on-one call with me to improve your marketing across paid advertising, social media, and more.
Become a Client: Hire our team to manage your marketing across streaming platforms and social media so you can focus on what matters most—making music.
Take a Course: Join the hundreds of artists who have successfully learned to automate their growth on Spotify using paid ads on Instagram.