[Dixielandjazz] Advertising

Tue Nov 7 11:24:21 PST 2006

Larry,

Thanks for your insight.  I have found the yellow pages, both print and internet
have been of little value and I have never gotten my money back.  I have stopped
using them.

I have a lot of business cards with me and I tell people I am a "Jazz Clarinetist".
Many are intrigued and I give them a card.  It is surprising how often, several
years later I will get a call and the person will say "I don't know how I got your
card, but I am interested in using your band".

I keep thinking I should get two of those magnetic signs and hang them on my car the
way the building contractors do.  Then I am advertising all the time as I run
errands, etc.

Russ Guarino
Jazz Clarinetist.

"Larry Walton Entertainment - St. Louis" wrote:

> 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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> > Dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com
> > http://ml.islandnet.com/mailman/listinfo/dixielandjazz
> >
>
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