Many artists and creators shy away from ads because the prospect of getting started is, quite frankly, overwhelmingly. 

Ad platforms are complex, and there is a steep learning curve to nail down every nuance of how to maximize each platform’s potential. 

Not to mention, the more we take on, the more money we need to spend. 

But for those of us with smaller budgets and little time (or desire) to learn every detail of any given ad system, there is an easy, low-barrier-to-entry way to get started—a traffic campaign on Instagram. 

So let’s take a look at five different platforms (and ten different objectives) we can run ads for using one simple traffic-style campaign, all inside of one ad platform—Facebook ads. 

Note: For our purposes here, we’ll be examining the ad level only and all the ways to maximize this single piece of the system. 

Instagram 

Let’s start with the obvious—we’re running ads on Instagram, so let’s learn how to grow on Instagram. 

There are two primary destinations we can use in our ads to grow on Instagram: our profile and our reels. 

With the first method, we’ll simply drop the link to our Instagram profile in the URL portion of the ad. 

With the second method, we’ll use the Reels tab on our profile to send users straight to more video content since that’s what they’re seeing from us already. 

In both instances, we’ll use the “Watch More” call to action since that’s generally what we can expect from them when they reach their destination. 

Spotify 

I guess this one’s pretty obvious too. 

Y’all know I love sending new listeners to Spotify. 

With Spotify, the two most effective destinations I tend to use are my artist profile and a specific song. 

Bonus points for sending listeners to a playlist, but we’re going to focus on the first two destinations this time around. 

When using our artist profile link in the URL field of our ad, we’re optimizing for followers. 

When we use the track link, we’re optimizing for streams. 

With both of these destinations, we’ll use the “Listen Now” call to action. 

YouTube

What artist doesn’t want to grow on YouTube? 

Now, we can certainly use YouTube’s own built-in ad platform to supercharge our growth, but in the interest of keeping all of this inside one campaign, let’s look at how to use ads on Instagram to achieve this same thing. 

Again, there are two destinations we can look at for YouTube: our channel and a specific video. 

Much like with Spotify, we’re optimizing for subscribers with the channel URL, and we’re optimizing for views with the video URL. 

We can even think about sending people directly to a YouTube Short, which features a handy “Subscribe” button on it if they’re not already tapped in. 

We’ll use the “Watch More” call to action for this one. 

TikTok

Yes, TikTok has its own ad platform too, but if you don’t want to spread yourself too thin learning multiple ad platforms at once (and if you want to keep everything in one place) we can use Instagram ads for this as well. 

While we can’t target TikTok as an affinity inside Facebook’s Ads Manager (lil’ tech bro competition there, no doubt) we can still target similar affinities to get the job done. 

At the ad level, we can either send users to our profile to optimize for followers or directly to a specific video to optimize for views. 

We may see a higher return on investment with TikTok’s built-in ad system on this one, but, again, this is an exercise in ease of use and keeping things lean. 

Let’s use the “Watch More” call to action again here. 

Apple Music

And last but not least, Apple Music. 

We can apply the exact same system to Apple Music that we’re using on Spotify. 

Now that Apple Music has rolled out its Favorites feature, we can optimize for new followers on the platform by dropping our artist profile link in the URL field of our ad. 

And, as has always been the case, we can push for more streams by linking directly to a specific song. 

Just like with our Spotify ads, we’ll want to use the “Listen Now” call to action on this one. 

Final thoughts

Now, the ideal way to structure this campaign is to give each destination (and goal) of your choice its own ad set with its own budget. 

I’m generally a fan of using campaign-level budgeting in most contexts, but in this case, ad-set budgeting wins. 

With a simple $10 / day budget, we can give each of these goals $1 per day, every single day, to optimize growth across ten different destinations simultaneously. 

Talk about easy.