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QuoteHey John! The other day in the coaching call I mentioned I've been testing this and doing pretty well, and I have a bit of an update for you if you were still messing around with this.
I found that even though Facebook recommends the use of link clicks since we don't have a pixel on Spotify, optimizing for landing page views is still superior. Even though they can't track it, the algorithm still seems to aim for a segment more likely to let the page load. After tweaking that, I'm getting a lot more people becoming listeners and followers after clicking.
I'm also up to 7% of my streams coming from algorithmically-generated playlists and climbing, which reinforces my earlier theory that this can eventually hit a critical mass of algorithmic organic promotion. In other words I suspect that although we obviously can't hope to get anywhere near breaking even on ad spend from just running traffic to Spotify, there's a good chance that eventually the algorithm kicks in and multiplies the listener base to the point where we might even surpass breaking even and hit profit.
I'm basing that assumption off of my experiences with Youtube doing something very similar, so obviously I have no guarantee, but I'll be sure to keep you updated with anything new I find!
1:34 pm
June 7, 2011
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Hey Kevin,
That's interesting. It's hard to believe that optimizing for landing pages has an impact when that isn't actually tracked, but perhaps click farms or more prevalent than we think and are being filtered out. Are you targeting a worldwide audience by chance? If so then taht would make a bit more sense to me. As would your cheap CPC.
I think your theory about the algorithm is likely. It totally makes sense.
My personal experiments with Spotify ads have been a total bust from any ROI standpoint. In fact they seem almost pointless so far. Because a stream doesn't get counted until 30 seconds of listening time, and clicks aren't any cheaper than I pay when trying to get subscribers, I actually pay far less per subscriber than I do per stream. It's crazy. But I'm only targeting a US audience. Perhaps I should try worldwide as a result.
I'd be curious to hear what you're doing.
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I tried worldwide for the first day of testing with this, but I didn't like the results so I narrowed it to US, UK, Canada, Finland, Sweden and Germany (the latter three being related to my genre). But the vast majority of my listens are still coming from those first three countries, so I don't think that's to blame for my CPC.
I do have a theory about the CPC though. It's a cold audience of about 5 million, which comes from grouping together about 4 interests. I know you generally recommend against that, but I wanted to simultaneously test another theory while doing this. Namely, I've been seeing more and more that a larger audience size directly correlates to cheaper clicks. Since I pretty much never run ads to an audience of this size, I was curious what that would do. And evidently it leads to $0.03 clicks.
I also have my copy and images pretty damn well dialed in for my genre at this point, so that might also help things along.
My new dilemma is that it seems the listeners gained through this method aren't guaranteed to stick around. Admittedly it's only been a few days, but the growth hasn't been a steady incline, rather it sloped back down after a certain point, as if even the people who are streaming a lot of the songs aren't saving them to playlists or anything like that. Might be a bust after all, but it's still a little early to conclude that.
2:58 pm
June 7, 2011
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I definitely agree that over the last 6 months, larger audiences have been performing much better. The algorithm has just become so good at honing in that when you have a big audience FB seems to be able to find more ultra targeted people. I haven't tried grouping lately, but it stands to reason that if lookalike audiences are performing better - based purely on the targeting ability of the algorithm - grouping audiences might also be working better. I'll have to play with it.
While they are hardly third world countries, nations like Finland, Sweden, and Germany are still infinitely less competitive than the US. So that still strikes me as a likely factor, but who knows. How large is your budget? a very small budget could also lead to numbers like that.
Whatever the case, .03 cents a click to cold traffic is fantastic. I've only ever gotten landing page views that cheap with warm audiences.
Can I ask though... if you are able to get .03 clicks, you should be able to get .12 subscribers. Which I assume you are not. so why the discrepancy? This again points to lower quality traffic to my mind, but I have no idea. I'm not trying to press you here, I'm just genuinely curious what your set up is as .03 landing page views to quality cold traffic in the US is almost unheard of.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
I don't feel like you're pressing me or anything, I actually appreciate the opportunity to talk about it more since it gives me the chance to explore ideas in more depth.
So it has climbed up to $0.06 in the US, still holding at $0.03 in the UK though. Budget is just $2 a day for now as it's not the main focus of my advertising budget by any stretch of the imagination.
But as far as my subscriber cost, that's what's most interesting about this to me. With ads aiming to get people to sign up, the cost per click is more commonly between $0.20 and $0.30.
The only difference is that this ad copy verbally identifies that clicking the button will allow them to listen on Spotify, as opposed to "get free music" or whatever my usual wording is for my list-building ads. So as far as I can tell, people are just that much more willing to stream on Spotify than they are to "get free songs."
Also, another inconsistency compared the psychology behind squeeze page ads: Video and images perform equally well across the board. Dynamic creative keeps coming back with literally the same cost per click between my best image and my best video. So I guess in this case there's no drawback of satisfying curiosity like there would be with subscribers?
12:37 pm
June 7, 2011
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That's interesting. I think your small budget against a huge audience is a big part of why clicks are so cheap. I'd bet that if you increased that to $30/day you would see that number sky rocket. But I could be wrong. I may need to play with that a bit as recent changes in algorithms have really improved the effectiveness of going after large audiences. Too big used to be a bad thing.
That is interesting that you see a big decrease when you mention Spotify. I have not seen that. I've been running identical ads (one pushing spotify, and one pushing the squeeze, and haven't seen a huge difference in click price, even when I only target peple that like my target audience AND Spotify. I may need to do more testing though.
The drawback with video doesn't always happen. It just CAN happen. But it can also go the other way and really help. I suspect that one of the things that is happening with you is specific to the metal genre. It's a really well defined tribe. Fans are really hungry for music, and they can identify what they like very quickly. So it sounds to me like your video delivers exactly what your fans are looking for just as well as your headlines do.
Sounds like you're doing great.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
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