[Dixielandjazz] Advertising

Tue Nov 7 11:04:23 PST 2006

Two big problems with advertising in general.  First the leader cut isn't 
all that much but even if it was leaders do a whole lot of extra work for 
that money.  Secondly at least here, advertising costs an arm an a leg.

I had this very cool idea.  I would run an ad in the daily paper in the 
Obituary section.  They have various ads for funeral homes and florists.  My 
reasoning was: older people read the obits often and send flowers.  What 
better place for a band that can do funerals and play music that this group 
really likes.  A stroke of Genius......until I found out what it cost.  The 
rate was $15 a day and no you couldn't pick and choose days.  You had to 
take ads for every day except Sunday.  The weekend papers cost more.  There 
were no discounts if you took less than 6 months and no I couldn't do it 
anyway because bands were in another section.  I would have to book a pretty 
good job at least every two weeks above my booking rate now to pay for that. 
Getting more jobs might be a justification to raise prices to cover it but 
you start losing some because of that too.  The idea is to make money not 
lose it.

The big problem with newspaper advertising besides cost is that young people 
just don't read newspapers and TV ads are out of the question.

IMHO Yellow page advertising is worthless most of the time.  I would be 
interested in knowing if any members of the list use Yellow pages and do 
they feel it's worth it and why.  I found that I got a lot of calls from 
other bands pricing me and people looking for the cheapest band and very few 
hit pay dirt.

After that just where would you suggest advertising that is affordable?

The thing that makes bands different from building materials or any other 
"thing" and most services is that there is only one of you to sell for a 
particular night.  The four Saturdays after Lent are almost always booked 
with weddings as is a couple of other times a year.  Since there is only one 
of you how do you optimize your advertising?  You can run a sale on shoes 
and sell a thousand pairs and if you run out issue rain checks but a band 
has just themselves.  One shot per night.   That makes advertising in effect 
much less cost effective.  An owner of a DJ service can have multiple setups 
and hire DJ's as needed.

I find most advertising to be not that effective anyway.  The best turnover 
we ever got was by putting flyer packets on cars at the wedding shows after 
they priced us out but the DJ's didn't like that and wanted to fight us and 
went around taking them off the windshields as we put them back.  We even 
got chased once.  A very interesting time.  We actually got more calls doing 
that than playing for the bridal fashion shows and paying the venue.  That 
was a lot of wear and tear.  We started doing it as a group and three or 
four of us tended to keep them inside.  We did that for three years at about 
a dozen bridal shows.

You can be in the bridal shows but they cost about $1500+ here for a booth 
and they don't let you perform or play music only hand out cards or CD's. 
They do give you a mailing list and at 39 cents plus printing costs you can 
get into a couple of hundred dollars real fast.  We would typically book two 
to four weddings from each show.  The trouble was that so many would get 
married on about the same dates like the month after Lent.  We have a large 
Catholic population and they don't marry during Lent which almost kills the 
wedding band business for that month and a half.  Then everyone wants to get 
married on the same days.  The other side of the sword is that everyone gets 
engaged at Christmas and if you aren't playing someplace public in January 
or at the Bridal shows it's difficult to book jobs.

Some of you in your music business are fortunate to have a steady clientele. 
I don't advertise at all in my sign business and I have more work than I 
want.

I would really be interested in any suggestions that anyone has about 
advertising and success stories that they have had or do you find it 
difficult to advertise.

The best thing that has come along seems to be the internet but how has 
anyone optimized that to be an effective tool?  How do you get people to 
visit your web site?

I follow the six foot rule of sales....everyone within six feet of me knows 
that I am a musician and band leader.  I actually made a contact last night 
for an anniversary party in the web design class that I took to develop my 
web site.  Word of mouth, mostly mine, seems to work fairly good but I would 
like to be more effective AND at the same time take more money home.
Larry Walton
St. Louis

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Barbone" <barbonestreet at earthlink.net>
To: <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Monday, November 06, 2006 3:59 PM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Advertising

> "pat ladd" <pj.ladd at btinternet.com> wrote (about advertising)
>
>
>> Hi Tom,
>>
>> I think this is a point which is either appreciated or not. It can`t be
>> taught.
>>
>> I used to run my own business selling building materials. Everything from
>> cement and gravel to wallpaper and paint. When things were bad in the
>> building trade, a regular occurence as house building became a political
>> football, I always doubled my advertising budget.
>> My competitors took the line `business is down, I must cut my costs. Cut
>> back on advertising`
>>
>> I could never understand the logic of that  which was no doubt the reason
>> that I kept taking my competitors over.  When the word got out that I was
>> going to retire I had national concerns standing in line to buy me out 
>> and I
>> finally sold for a ridiculously large figure with lots of `0` after it.
>>
>> My father used to say  `Early to bed and early to rise
>> Work like hell and ADVERTISE`
>
> Solid advice from both Pat and Pat's Dad.
>
> Many businessmen I ran across in my day gig life viewed advertising as a
> cost and so when ever they hit a business slowdown, they cut the 
> advertising
> budget. Very short sighted.
>
> IMO advertising (and promotion) is an investment in the future of the
> business. It goes to the very essence of what business focus is: "The 
> prime
> purpose of business is, to stay in business." (Harvard Business Review
> article by Peter Drucker several decades ago) That's why one advertises
> and/or promotes.
>
> I do think it can be taught. And believe it is taught in Business Schools
> all over the world from The Harvard Business School to the college of hard
> knocks. Some folks who have attended, heard, and then discarded the 
> subject
> matter are just poor students.
>
> That's what the band leader is supposed to do with part of the leader fee
> money, rather than buying a Turbo Porsche. Or, if in the big leagues, just
> check out all the ads in the "Entertainment" section of newspapers like 
> The
> NY or LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune etc., etc.
>
> Or, after a successful business career of advertising investment, you can
> take the excess money and buy an airplane and/or a country Estate like 
> list
> mate Pat Ladd. :-) VBG.
>
> Cheers,
> Steve Barbone
>
>
>
>
>
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