Advertising
Copywriting
Digital Marketing
What we will cover
- What are the benefits of Spotify advertising?
- Will Spotify advertising create leads for my business?
- What’s the cost of a click?
- Overcoming selective attention
- Write the Spotify Ad well in less than 100 words
- Make the ad feel relevant to the demographic so listeners identify
- Emotional is an underplayed hand
What is Spotify advertising?
Spotify advertising is an audio advertising platform, the audio ads are 15 or 30 seconds long and they play between songs. They can be combined with a display ad that appears on the application, meaning you can include a call to action (CTA) message and a link.
This form of advertising is very similar to Radio ads, however unlike radio advertising it is served within the Spotify application, giving it a few benefits. You get a more analytical view of the user, who they are and where they listened from, allowing you to measure and tweak your campaigns.
Spotify listeners consume various content throughout their day from music to podcasts, on multiple devices, from phones to TVs and game consoles. This demographic data allows you to be more targeted also, meaning you can target your personas in a way that radio can’t offer.
The limitation then, is how many people are using Spotify? Luckily, that’s not really an issue, by the end of September 2022, Spotify had reached 456 million monthly active users (MAU) globally (up 20% Year on year), of which 274 million were ad-supported MAU (up 24% YoY).
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Maya Angelou
By comparison, Google Ads can be extremely effective when used in the right way for the right kinds of products and services. But it’s not the only game in town and when looking for a bump in brand awareness and familiarity, little text ads doled out by machines against competitive keywords is most definitely unemotional.
Research shows that Spotify advertising can make brands seem genuine, innovative, smart and trustworthy but it also has some subtle benefits found traditionally in above-the-line channels. When’s the last time you made an emotional connection with a Text Ad?
Will Spotify advertising create leads for my business?
Maybe, but that’s a conversion question. But it will get clicks.
Spotify advertising has one primary advantage over traditional paid adverts like Google Ads: the messaging at point of delivery is non-competitive and you have the undivided attention of the listener. This is a primary benefit.
So unlike Google Ads at the top of the search page where there can be several competing ads in the users eye-line, a Spotify Ad is delivered in isolation through the auditory channel and importantly at the point of delivery, is the sole message being delivered. Again unlike Google Ads, there’s no competitive keyword algorithm that trades one ad against a competitor and drives the price up. Spotify Ads are essentially dumb in this respect which can play to your business advantage. Think of it as a “non-competitive blue ocean”.
At this point you have the uninterrupted attention of the listener and so if you can make a good delivery with a compelling emotional message that resonates with your target audience, and gently calls for their engagement, you will get a click.
How much does Spotify advertising cost?
If you haven’t done it before, you can start advertising on Spotify from £250. They have some free access to creative and production tools like a library of background tracks, voice actors, and professional audio mixing, more on that later.
When starting out, Spotify operates a pay-per-click model, with advertisers only paying when users click their visuals not just listening to their ads played out audibly. There are various ways of setting out your advertising but initially, you will find it’s an excellent platform for brand awareness, you will get lots of impressions, but earning clicks and conversions is a little harder.
What’s the cost of a click?
At Vu, we’ve run two kinds of campaigns and the cost of a click can change depending on how the campaign is approached.
The Wide one-shot campaign
The first is to hit a series of locations & demographics where the Spotify Ad is played out for maximum exposure to the biggest number of people. In these types of campaigns the listener will likely hear the ad once or twice in a month-long campaign. So to get the click, the ad has to be curious.
We’ve noticed on these ads that the cost per click can be as low as £2.40 which is kind of good but not valuable if it doesn’t convert on the landing page.
The Narrow repeat campaign
The second kind of campaign is different.
The budget stays the same but the location and demographic become highly targeted. In our experience, this leads to fewer clicks and the cost per click can double. The landing page conversion rate is not necessarily improved, so what’s the point?
The point is this: your organisation can benefit from brand familiarity and evoke strong feelings in customers.
A single hearing of a widely broadcast ad has but a single chance to do it’s only possible job: get a click to try for a conversion.
However, a Spotify Ad which is played up to 6 times repeatedly to the same audience not only retains the potential click of the single ad each time, but reinforces the message of the brand each time it’s heard. Audio advertising creates feelings of brand familiarity by simply repeating the message to the listener. It’s how it’s always been done above-the-line.
So now the perception of your genuine, innovative, smart and trustworthy business starts to get sticky in the minds of people.
Customers stop asking “what” and start feeling “why”. That’s emotional engagement.
Overcoming selective attention
OK, so we’ve got ourselves an ad that plays 6 times to each user and retains its potential for a click each time it’s heard. But what happens when listeners don’t choose to listen?
Some things we can’t control.
If a Spotify listener hits the mute button when ads play and they’ve learned to do this as a pattern of behaviour there’s not much we can do about it.
Selective attention however can be overcome. Do this:
- Write the ad well
- Make the ad relevant to the demographic so listeners identify
- Produce the ad well
- Encourage a call to action
- A bit of gentle humour engages the audience
Write the Spotify Ad well in less than 100 words
30 seconds is not a lot of time. 100 words is probably too many.
Write with economy and make it customer centric. Too many words will make your message feel rushed, your voice talent will struggle to squeeze it all in, and it will feel desperate. Relax. Say less and get more.
Here’s a nice example from a recent campaign we did for Vu. It contains just 83 words and some emotion. The listener goes on a concise journey of beautifully expressed emotions.
“[Playful disdain] As a Marketing Manager, when I ask my digital agency to improve the happiness of the brand and they shove a clown in the logo, [dry] I think about changing career.
“[Playful] But seriously, I need to work with a team who can understand my needs. [With strong emotion] So that’s why I work with Vu.
“[Playful] Are you struggling to communicate with your digital marketing agency?
“Try Vu. Tap on the banner to find out more.
“[Knowingly happy] Now we all speak the same language. You got it? I thought so.”
In these 83 words we identify with the customer’s frustrations, offer a solution and a call to action for the listener. There’s no fat to trim and the message is short, clear, empathetic and with the right voicing, has the potential for a little light-hearted comedy frustration we can all identify with.
Make the ad feel relevant to the demographic so listeners identify
Your concise script will do this when combined with the right voice talent.
In our recent “As a Marketing Manager” campaign, we wanted to appeal to female marketing professionals so we needed to hire a professional female actor with a tone that works as the embodiment of genuine, innovative, smart and trustworthy. Vu asked actor Luci Fish to work with us on this campaign.
We asked Luci because of her voice quality and experience working in commercial campaigns. Luci was able to take the script and importantly, self-direct at her own studio and so the sessions could all be done remotely.
Luci gave Vu a number of takes with differing emphasis adding moments of humorous interpretation which made the editing process very easy. We edited Luci’s work into the main production, mixed and bounced down to the maximum 30 seconds permitted by the Spotify platform and we were ready for broadcast.
Emotional is an underplayed hand
Vu is a small business and we need to think and play differently sometimes. As a team working in marketing, we see an advantage of going to a less crowded space and not always doing what others do.
We can’t always compete in traditional paid advertising channels. So by advertising in established but underutilized channels that have the targeting power and reach of the usual suspects but with added emotion, we find our Zag.
That’s why we do Spotify advertising production and placement here at Vu. Scripted and recorded in a good studio with voice actors to get the best results for emotional engagement. We buy the advertising space, target the demographic and make a memorable and most definitely emotional campaign customers will remember because of the way it made them feel.
Are you ready to get emotional with your customers? Do it with voice.
Do you know anyone who may be interested in this project?
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