Music Marketing

The Importance Of Geo-Targeting Messages on Facebook

Screen shot 2011-06-29 at 11.34.33 PM You’ve heard the saying before… “Location, location, location!”

For musicians and music marketers, knowing where to reach your audience is just as important as knowing when to reach them.

As many readers may know, Facebook analytics provides a plethora of valuable information about fans and how they interact with an artist’s Facebook page – from how many “likes” the page has, to charts that graphically depict user/fan engagement.

But have you ever taken into consideration why people may have unliked your page over time?

The potential reasons are endless, but the most affinitive reason is this:

You’re sending out messages that are not relevant to them.

For instance, if you’re playing a show in San Francisco and you blast your entire audience with that update, fans outside of the San Francisco Bay Area may interpret your post as useless and “spammy.”

They’ve already chosen to “like” you, which means they want to stay informed about you, but over time they’ll begin to lose interest if you continue to blast their wall with irrelevant posts. The more you do this, the more likely a fan will “hide” you from their Wall. They may still “like” you, but the communication channel has effectively been rendered useless.

Reaching out to your entire audience is OK when you have something more general to say like a new album release date, a new line of merchandise, or a magazine feature. Geo-targeting is more useful when creating region-specific campaigns and initiatives that are designed to ignite fans in a given area.

Here’s How To Do It

In Facebook, create your post as you normally would, but right before you send it out, click the icon below the text box that looks like a padlock. It’ll then display a drop-down where you can select the option to “Customize” your post. From there, enter the region where you want your message to be geo-targeted to.

When done effectively, geo-targeted campaigns result in higher fan engagement/retention numbers and hopefully higher sales figures, as well.

This post is by regular Hypebot contributor, musician and music marketer Hisham Dahud (@hishamdahud).

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6 Comments

  1. Here’s what is curious to me about this strategy, and of course I welcome feedback.
    Fans are your #1 marketing tool, always will be. My problem with geo-targeting is that a fan in Los Angeles won’t be able to tell their friends in Chicago to go see their favorite band when that band is heading to Chicago, if they are left out of the information being posted.
    When I see my favorite band post info they will be in Los Angeles… I tell all my L.A. friends they should go, and they do the same with me here in Boston. I feel like the Social Network is just that… the ability for people to interact and tell each other about things by just pressing the share button and telling their friends to go check it out. If I don’t see this information in my feed in order to spread the word… than “word of mouth” marketing is stifled. Frankly, I’d rather loose a few casual fans and post my shows without geo-targeting with the intent of growing a more solid base of fans on facebook that want to help get the word out. Otherwise, the number of likes are a useless empty number anyway.
    And in addition, fans travel to shows and get their friends in that city to go with them. It scares me to think that the loudest fan with the desire to help spread the word will be overlooked.
    I think there is a difference between fans and likes. Fans want to know a bands every move and are people who want to spread the word about your music. Someone who just presses the like button is not necessarily a fan. Personally, I do not consider a “like” a fan until they have been converted to an email sign up.
    Facebook is a tool in the marketing tool box, it’s only a small piece of the pie that makes up getting the word out. I know how often I miss postings from some of my favorite bands that are coming to my city… I can only imagine how many fans don’t see every posting by a band. To make that percentage even smaller seems like it’s squandering away a post.
    And you know what? if that artist is interesting, I read every post no matter what. I like to use Chris Trapper as an example. He makes very witty/funny and often sarcastic remarks on his FB page (almost daily) and always includes what city he is heading to. I don’t care if i’m not in that city… I like reading what he has to say! And I can honestly say that I have created new fans for Chris all over the country because I know where he is going to be and I am excited to tell my friends to go see him.
    I think people are too transient these days to be able to rely on geo-targeting.
    I do believe there are good and important ways to use geo-targeting such as messages and for event invites. But show announcements posted in the status update is not one of them, As long as the artist keeps their FB postings and interaction interesting and compelling enough to keep their fans tuned in… real fans will over look the postings of shows from other cities, and perhaps embrace them.

  2. The best way to validate geo-targeted ads in an area besides the one you are targeting is a proxy website like geosurf.com
    Now your band can be in LA and you can target users in Chicago with no problem

  3. @Weary Facebook User – Well said, I totally agree! I travel to shows outside of my geographical location, even sometimes to other countries and would not know about some of these shows if they had just been targeted in close proximity to the location of where the event was being held. I think it is important for bands to keep their fans informed of where they play regardless of their geographical location!

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