How to win the global battle for under-priced attention

Under-priced attention is exactly what it says on the tin: attention that is lower priced than what it should be. For example, instead of digital advertising that should be $584, you’re only paying $27. It is an opportunity that simply can’t be missed. If you refuse to take it, you are literally leaving future revenue on the table. Assuming you want to make the most of the opportunities available to you within the music industry, you shall want to read on. During this article, we’re going to discuss the current underpriced opportunities of attention, and how you can utilize these to advance your career.

During the past few decades, marketers have had a difficult time figuring out how to adapt radio ads to television ads during the transition period. Now, we are seeing the exact same difficulty within marketing during the shift from television to digital. During 2019, marketers are struggling to understand exactly how to create content that works terrifically for the digital consumer. Are you creating just one video and running paid media behind it? Or are you running 50 videos to see which one performs the best amongst your target audience? These are all strategies that shall be commonplace in 24 months. But getting ahead of the market right now is a good idea.

One of the most prominent forms of current underpriced attention is the Facebook advertising platform. With the ability to target people by their location, language, age, relationship status, music taste, and so much more, the opportunities for targeting your ideal fan base are literally endless. For example, if you are a music producer looking to increase your following, you could easily target people who live in The Netherlands aged 18-32 that love EDM who regularly attend music festivals twice a year. The capabilities and details as to the type of people you can target are absolutely incredible. 

When people turn on the television, they instantly pick up their cellphone and scroll through their social media feeds. Why? Because consumers have become so desensitized to television ads that their attention has been diverted to the device which we carry around with us all day: our phone. The ads are slickly embedded between status updates of friends, family, and their favourite pages. The only reasons as to why your ad won’t convert are either that the targeting was terrible, or the creative wasn’t great.

But don’t just take our word for it. The average cost of a single 30-second television commercial tends to be around $80-120k on mainstream television. A lot of television shows in Europe & Australia generate approx 600,000 views per episode. This gives an average CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) of approximately $166. Now, let’s compare television advertising to Facebook. Running ads in North America against an audience that likes electronic music, the average CPM is approximately $8. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out which is the better deal.

Likewise, with Instagram, you can run swipe up ads in the native language of your audience to directly grow your profile, get more Spotify streams, and sell more show tickets. How come? Because it’s where the attention of the end consumer is. No matter what your views are on organic reach of Facebook & Instagram, it is literally undeniable that they are extremely underpriced for the value they offer. It’s also crazy how many people have opinions on Facebook ads – yet have never run one in their life. And so the number of people who spent $137 on an ad, didn’t perform well, and then they said the entire ad platform is useless is astronomically high. It’s crazy.

Don’t leave money on the table. Because in 5 years, it’ll cost $3,000 instead of $80 to reach 10,000 people due to supply & demand of the market alongside competition from large corporations. Don’t look back and realize that instead of building your artist brand to 5000 followers, you could have built it to 500,000 with minimal ad spend. There is an incredible opportunity available to you. Don’t lose it.

Another prominent underpriced marketing opportunity during 2019 is using influencers on several social networks to promote your music. Due to it being a fairly new phenomenon within social media, literally, nobody knows how to price themselves (at the time of writing). For example, a travel influencer with 150k followers may charge $950 for a post. Meanwhile, another person with similar numbers may only charge $230 for a post. Literally, you could message 50 people on Instagram & Facebook offering for them to shout out your music in exchange for a small fee. Or alternatively, you could find YouTubers and get them to integrate your music into their content (If they obviously like the track). It’s a simple case of emailing 2000, getting accepted by 253, and going on to gain millions of views per track. Plus if they feature your Spotify link in the description of the upload, you’ll gain a lot of streams at almost zero cost (apart from your time).

Underpriced attention is undoubtedly the biggest driving factor that will accelerate the growth of your career 20x. The question is not a case of if these methods work, they do. It’s a simple case of are you willing to put in the work? Are you willing to put in hundreds of hours of finding & learning about this attention in order to grow your brand? Hopefully, your answer is yes. There is a lot of opportunity within the current digital marketing environment for literally anybody wanting to step up & do whatever it takes to become successful.