Find Your Coca-Cola Song: Where to Target Meta Ads When Your Budget Is Small

If you had $1,000 to promote a new song, would you spend it targeting the US, Europe, or... maybe Brazil?

I had a call with a student who was releasing a song that week. He asked me to look at his ad campaign and see how he could improve his results.

I had a few notes, but the main one, the one that turned into a whole conversation, was this: he wanted the ads to target the US.

His request made sense, buttttt it's the wrong move, and here's why.

Tier 1 countries cost a lot more

Targeting tier 1 countries (the US, the UK, Australia, Canada) with ads is more expensive than targeting tier 2 countries (South America, Eastern Europe and so on). For the same budget, you get far fewer listeners in tier 1. Sometimes a listener costs 10 times more.

Targeting tier 1 only makes sense if your budget allows it. Most musicians can put $1,000 or less into a release, which is why I recommend tier 2.

Now you might ask, what's the point of the campaign if it doesn't reach my target audience in tier 1 countries?

Here's the point. You use ads alongside a playlist campaign. Playlists give you streams, ads give you saves, and together they trigger algorithmic playlists, which can multiply your results. I explain how the two work together in this article about save rates.

If you target the US with a $1,000 budget, you might not create enough impact to trigger algorithmic playlists. If you target Bulgaria with the same budget, your chances are much better.

What Coca-Cola has to do with your music

So how do you reach the people you want in tier 1 countries? This is when I told my student about the Coca-Cola company.

Coca-Cola has thousands of drinks, some popular and some less so. They want you to become a fan of many of them. And they do it by promoting one single product, for over 100 years: the original Coca-Cola.

When they release a new drink, do you think they spend their whole marketing budget on it? I'd bet they don't spend even 0.1% of it on a new product. Why? Because there's no proof yet that people want it.

What I told my student is this. You're about to spend your entire marketing budget on a song you don't even know performs well yet.

Why not spend some of it promoting the new song to tier 2 countries to trigger algorithmic playlists, and spend the rest promoting your best-performing song to tier 1 countries?

That's your signature song. It's the entrance to your world, the song that makes someone go back and stream everything else you've made. It's what Coca-Cola is to the Coca-Cola company.

How to split your next campaign

Before your next release, open Spotify for Artists and your social media analytics and find your Coca-Cola song. Then split your campaign like this:

• The new release: run ads to tier 2 countries to trigger the algorithm cheaply.
• Your Coca-Cola song: run ads to tier 1 countries to reach the audience you want.

That's two campaigns from one budget. You use a proven song to bring people into your world, while the new one earns its place with the algorithm.

If you want to set up campaigns like this yourself, my whole Meta ads system is in Label Level Ads. And if you'd rather I run them for you, that's Song Growth Using Ads.

Keep promoting it after you're tired of it

There's one more thing Coca-Cola can teach you.

You know that feeling when you've posted about your song a few times and you start thinking, "If I have to hear this song one more time, I'll explode"?

Here's what I've learned. When you feel tired of your release, your audience is probably hearing about it for the first or second time.

We forget that most people don't see every post. They miss the first one, scroll past the second, and only notice the third for some weird reason. And even then, they might need a few more nudges before they listen.

Coca-Cola has been sold since 1886, and I can guarantee you knew it existed before you saw their last ad. So why does a huge company keep advertising an old product you've already seen? Because the more you see it, the more likely you are to drink it.

Treat your music like Coca-Cola. Here's how to keep promoting a song without feeling like you're annoying people:

• Switch the angle and keep the song. You don't need 10 videos that say "out now!" Tell 10 different stories around the song instead: what inspired it, how you produced it, a line that almost got cut, a comment that made your day, or who the song reminds you of.
• Make it about them. Ask your audience what the song reminds them of, or invite them to comment on a lyric that means something to them. The more involved they are, the less it feels like promotion.

I used to think that once I'd shared something twice, it was already old. That mindset made me promote my music less. Now I know that for most people, the second or third post is the first time they're paying attention.

If Coca-Cola has been promoting the same product since 1886, why would you give up after one week?

A content idea to try: react to your first song

How would you react to the very first song you ever made? It's a strong hook that draws people in, and reacting to that old song makes a fun, relatable video that helps your audience feel like they're getting to know you.

This idea and hundreds more, with examples, are in The Content Vault.