Traffic vs conversion ads for Spotify promotion

Author

Andrew Southworth
September 11, 2024

Hey friends!

Today we’re going to talk about traffic vs conversion ads for Spotify / streaming promotion.

If you’ve ever seen me explain how I run Meta ads to promote songs on Spotify, you’ve probably noticed I use a ‘conversion’ campaign. This involves sending people that click on our ad to an intermediary landing page where they have to click another button to go stream the song.

The landing pages typically look something like this:

You can make these simple landing pages on SubmitHub Links, Hypeddit, Smart Noise, FeatureFM etc.

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Why do we need a landing page?

But many people ask me ‘why do we need the landing page all? surely it would be more efficient to just go straight to Spotify?’.

Logically that makes sense, but in practice going straight to Spotify from an ad campaign fails 99% of the time. You need the landing page to make the entire campaign work in the first place otherwise you simply won’t see any streams on Spotify from your campaign.

Okay, but why doesn’t it work to send people straight to Spotify from an Instagram or Facebook ad? Why does the landing page solve the issue?

The answer

It all comes down to the optimization parameter of the ad campaigns. When you run a traffic campaign for link clicks it’s optimizing to get as many link clicks on your ad as possible. It doesn’t care what happens afterwards.

When you use a conversion campaign with a properly setup pixel on a landing page you’re optimizing for a result that’s further down the funnel. For Meta to register a conversion and optimize the campaign around it, the potential listener must:

  • Click on the ad

  • Land on the landing page

  • Click one of the DSPs on the landing page

Bot accounts exist on social media platforms and can click on ads. You can imagine that a bot account on Facebook or Instagram is very unlikely to interact with a web page if it clicks on an ad. The traffic campaign will register these bots as a successful result while our campaign ‘filters’ them out.

People accidentally click on posts and ads, and some people more than others. Meta knows exactly which ads you click on, and how likely you are to click on more ads in the future. Our conversion campaign would filter these people out as well, as it’s unlikely someone would accidentally click on the ad and then also accidentally click on the landing page.

Lastly by targeting a conversion event further down a funnel we’re more likely to achieve more intentional potential listeners with our ads. If someone is so uninterested in your music that they aren’t willing to click a second button to hear it, do you really think they’re going to become a fan?

In conclusion… I never use a traffic campaign for promoting music on streaming platforms, and I rarely use them for anything else unless there is no other option.

If you want to learn how to run conversion campaigns to promote your music on streaming platforms, check out my course Spotify Growth Machine or head to my YouTube channel.

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Whenever you’re ready, there are 4 ways I can help you:

  1. My courses. Spotify Growth Machine teaches you how to use Facebook ads to promote your music on Spotify. YouTube Growth Machine teaches you how to grow a YouTube channel organically and how to use YouTube ads. Fan Growth Machine teaches you how to build a website, online store and grow your email list.

  2. My ad agency specializes in running Facebook conversion ads to promote your music on Spotify.

  3. Website / Store / Funnels. MusicFunnels is the best all-in-one platform for music artists to make a website, online store, sales funnels and build their mailing list.

  4. 1-on-1 consulting. You can book 1-hour calls with myself or my team here.

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