In this episode, Jared discusses the power of Facebook ads for musicians and shares his personal success story of booking a gig using this strategy. He highlights the importance of investing in your music career and provides insights on creating effective Facebook ad campaigns. Jared emphasizes the significance of video content, tracking numbers, and monitoring profitability. He encourages musicians to try out Facebook ads and announces an upcoming course on the topic.

"Yesterday was the second appointment I had, and this one was the first one that closed right on the spot. They said yes, we would love to have you. And they paid their deposit right then and there. It works. I am super excited about it."

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Hey, what's up gigging versus Jared judge, welcome to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast.

This is actually earlier than I'm normally up for recording these podcasts. But I'm on my way to a networking group, where I am sponsoring the meeting with some live electric violin. This group is called Venue Hub.

And they are the collective of venue owners. And we're talking more like the high end ballroom venues, wedding venues, that kind of thing. And, yeah, I'm playing. So I'm really excited. It's gonna be a fun day, just got my PA system and equipment out of the storage unit.

And I'm on my way now, I'm about to get on the highway soon. But the reason why I'm podcasting now is to do a follow up on yesterday, which was all about the Facebook ads strategy, part one, which, if you have not listened to that episode, yet, you totally should, because I got some big news since then.

Last night, I booked my first gig from that Facebook ad strategy, which is awesome. So excited. So let's, let's talk about that Facebook ads strategy. First, we do have to address the objections of that many musicians might have to running ads to get gigs.

And, you know, should you spend money on your music career? Well, do you already spend money on your music career? Do you pay for instruments do you pay for strings? Well, why not pay to get the word out there about what you do.

And last podcast episode, I talked about how the biggest problem musicians faces, people simply don't know that they exist. And maybe a tiny little percentage of people do.

But is that enough to sustain your lifestyle as a musician to sustain your career to make it so you don't have to have a side hustle, or you know, work at a job you don't like in order to make ends meet?

And so if the if those answers are, yeah, I don't have enough people booking me, then you got to drive more traffic to you, you got to drive more people to you. And so Facebook ads really solves that problem.

It's one of the many ways that you can do that. Just just to make it clear, it's not the only way. But it is very fast compared to other methods. For example, when I first launched these new Facebook ads, I launched them about a week and a half ago, and I got my first two or three leads the same day that I launched them.

And you know, for those of you don't know what a lead is, a lead is simply somebody filling out your form saying, hey, I'm interested in learning more. And they'll give you their email address, maybe phone number, the date of their event, the venue, and any other details that might be relevant.

So let's talk about the strategy like first off getting leads every single day for your act is amazing. Like, as a business owner, in general, if you run a business, there are two things that drive your business.

They are leads, and then they are sales. So leads is the lifeblood, it's like the blood pumping through your veins. And then sales is when those leads turn into actual booked gigs.

Or if you're running like a business, it's when somebody makes a purchase of your products or services. So we want both. And Facebook ads really accomplishes both, which is amazing. But there is a bit of strategy to it.

So when you're running Facebook ads, you have to create what's called a campaign. There is a tool, I'm not going to go too deep into the how to do it, because it's kind of hard to explain in a podcast, but he would use something called the Facebook Ads Manager.

This is not boosting posts, we were seeing posts really is not effective. So you would waste a lot of money boosting a post hoping for this to work, you would use what's called the Facebook Ads Manager and create your own campaign.

And in that campaign, you would choose who to show your ads to you can choose to show them to just people in your city. And you can target based on other criteria to like if they like certain bands, or even if they're engaged to get married.

So that's a pretty cool feature. And then you put together an ad. And then the ad itself. You know if you if you've ever been on Facebook or Instagram, you see ads all the time. Even if you have an ad blocker on sometimes they get through.

And not a lot of people actually use ad blockers. So it's still very effective to show ads to people in Facebook and Instagram. And so when you run a an ad on Facebook, it actually also posts to Instagram too.

So you get kind of two for the price of one, but you're still paying for both, but you get both without having to do extra work. I guess that's how we'll say it. So the ad itself, you have to choose what's called ad creative.

And so ad creative is the photos, videos and text that you put on the ad and how you set it up. So you I do recommend putting video, because ultimately we want to show people the result they can have when they hire your act to perform at their event.

So video works really well, it's like going to Costco and getting a free sample of the pretzels, and then, you know, some people are going to buy it. So give people a sample by putting video doesn't have to be great video, like my videos are a little blurry.

But they still show the result people get when they hire me. And then the text of the ad should really reinforce what they're seeing. And kind of make them thirsty for what you got. I like to use social proof in my ad, which is, you know, here, we've played X number of gigs.

And people love us, here's what they have to say. And then the ad itself, you can tell Facebook, what should they do when they click on the ad. And I like to send them to a form so that they fill out and become leads to me.

And so I set that up. And when I first put it out there, you know, I had no idea if it was going to work very scary, because you're essentially telling Facebook every day, I want you to spend a certain amount of money.

And if Facebook does not guarantee that in return for your money, you will get leads, or you will even get bookings. So it is kind of scary doing that. But you do have to accept that risk a little bit in order to find out if it will work for you.

And so I said told Facebook, go ahead and spend 20 bucks a day, which you know, you might be thinking 20 bucks a day, that's a lot. However, I know exactly how many gigs I need to book from these ads in order to make them profitable.

And the amazing part is, like many businesses don't even know these numbers. I know these numbers because of what I talked about last episode, which is the profit margin built into each gig.

And so because I know these numbers, I am monitoring it like a hawk to make sure that I'm not paying more than I can afford to get one of these gigs.

Most businesses don't know these numbers, which is insane, they could be like spending so much money on Facebook ads, even getting sales from Facebook ads, yet still lose money because it costs them more on ads to get a new customer than the customer itself brought in.

So I think that's crazy if you don't monitor your numbers. But just because there's extra work involved does not mean that you should not try. And I feel like you'd be shooting yourself in the foot especially, I've been teaching a bunch of the students and Fulltime Music Academy How to run these Facebook ads.

And so it's gonna become a more common strategy among musicians. And you'll probably start to see some of these ads to, I'll have to show there, tell them how to target so you show it to just the right audience.

But it's a very effective strategy. Since I launched last week, I've been averaging about three leads a day. And then I book appointments with these people, so that we can figure out if it's a good fit, because I'm not a good fit for everybody.

I don't want to play for everybody. I just want to play for the right kind of people. And then yeah, run the ads, like three leads a day, book the appointments. And then after that, sorry, it's among the highways kind of a little bit of traffic, we're figuring it out.

So book the appointments with them, have a brief conversation, and at the end of the conversation, if it's a good bid, ask them if they'd like to secure the date. And I'm so excited because yesterday was the second appointment I had.

And this one was the first one that closed right on the spot. They said yes, we would love to have you. And they paid their deposit right then in there. And I'm sending them the contract this morning.

So it works. I am super excited about it. Now that I have proof that it works to get these gigs, which I knew it would work because I've sold other things through Facebook ads. But now that I have proof that works for gigs, now is the time to optimize and tweak and scale the ads.

So this is all about you know, making sure that the numbers and the math really does work long term, so that when I start to spend even more money on Facebook ads, those numbers stay consistent.

And I know that I'm consistently profitable, which means that, you know, it's basically I put in $1, I get two out, and I can keep running Facebook ads without worrying about losing money. So it's interesting.

One final thought is that if you are a solo act, that does not really have any business partners or anything like that. You really do have a bit more flexibility as far as how much you can spend on Facebook ads, because you don't necessarily need to.

I mean, let me put an asterisk on this but like you don't necessarily need to worry about profit margin as much as those who have partners or even bandmates because your fixed cost is yourself as a musician, now, I still recommend having a fixed profit margin a percentage that you put away for each gig.

And that should be the number that you can spend up to on Facebook ads in order to break even. But if you're a soloist, you can go a little bit more because that will just come out of your your take home pay as a musician.

So I still feel like you should be rigorous about your numbers and try to keep your admin costs per gig to less than your profit margin.

And so that's gonna be my focus is, you know, let's maintain that and make it even better so that we get to take home even more profit. So I can invest more into, you know, our Oh crap, I gotta merge.

This is live, we're in downtown Denver on the way to a networking group and I almost got hit by a car. Alright, so yeah, keep your keep your ad costs and keep an eye on your profit to make sure you're not spending more than you're making.

Alright, well, I hope this inspires you to try it out. By the way, if you want to try it out. I am launching a course on this that is going to be a part of Fulltime Music Academy.

And you can get a free trial of Fulltime Music Academy included with the BookLive software. So go to BookLivePro.com Get a free 14-day trial and that will include the Facebook Ads course when it is launched.

Because I feel like you know, this could be a huge game changer for us private event musicians. I want everybody to have access to it. So thanks for tuning in to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast I'm just about at my networking event.

And wish wish me luck. And I'll see you on the next episode. Take care everybody. Bye