[Dixielandjazz] Band Advertising and sales 101

Thu Dec 6 11:58:41 PST 2007

A few minutes ago I booked a second St. Patrick's gig for next year.  This gig was the direct result of a flyer I sent out last April.  I almost immediately got 10 gigs off of it and they have been trickling in ever since.  This month alone I have booked six gigs directly as the result of my flyer for various Christmas parties which counting the five for next year brings the total to around 25 from it.  This month I booked 11 jobs which is about double for last year.  One quartet for NYeve and three singles.  The rest are for my Duo.  I also am working for other bands a couple of times.    About half are new clients that I had never played for before and some are return calls from the original 10.  Today's booking was with a new client.  I think many of them saved my flyer.

This is also in part due to my directing them to my web site on the flyer.  Several gigs were booked through my web site.  The info on the booking page comes directly to me via e-mail.

For those of you who are new to the list I took a non credit web site development course at my local Jr. College.  Counting the website cost, printing and mailing the total was about $200 for the first mailing.  If you are not too savvy about the web you might give this a try.  I think the course was $65 but because I am over 65 I got it at half price.  Websites cost from Free to about $10 a month.  You can spend a lot more but you don't have to.  Mine costs about $10 a month and there is a web domain fee but that's not much.  It's a lot cheaper than Yellow pages and much better in some ways but your print advertising has to direct people to the site.  I also took a course in Photoshop and did the photography myself.  I already had Photoshop (expensive) but Photoshop Elements ($90-$100) is cheaper and can do the same things.

It took me about a day to find and put about 100 telephone numbers and addresses into a data base.  I also called them all and got their fax numbers and in many cases the name of the person to send mail to so there was some effort went into this.  I will do another mailing after the first of the year.

If you want to learn how to do advertising copy for a band go to the blurbs on the back of record albums or CD's and always write in the third person.

If anyone wants to see what I did I can e-mail you off list a copy of the flyer I sent out and maybe you might pick up some ideas.

One is, I always when they ask me how much I charge I ask them what their budget is.  A lot of you don't do that.  If it's less than what I want I try to bring them up and sometimes I am surprised and make a couple of bucks more if their budget is more than I expected.  I have converted a couple of really low ones to what I wanted too.  I also try to get them talking about something else as soon as I can and get the focus off of the price.  I come back to it eventually after I know what they are expecting to spend.  I ask them things like how big is the room and how many people.  I don't really care most of the time but that gives me a time to think about sewing up the deal and how much I can get.  I get a lot less dickering over price and a whole lot fewer hang ups (almost none).

Previously when someone called, the conversation usually went something like How much do you charge?  I would tell them and then the line would go dead or some version of that scenario.  I used to lose half or more of the calls.  Now I sell almost all.  I had an aunt who tried to never let anyone out of her store without selling them something.  She never stopped and was an incredible salesperson.

My print advertising tells them who and what I am and my web site shows them photos and has some sound clips which pre sells me.  I don't have to do as much talking as I did before.

My advertising sells me more than the band and if you are uncomfortable about bragging on yourself get over it.  I haven't played with every famous band in the country but I do have some credentials which I'm not backward at all about using.  

The lady that booked me today said with wonder in her voice "you can do everything"!! That's what I want to hear.  For those of you who still have Music for all occasions on your cards I suggest you update.  I want them to really believe that I can do everything not just read it on a business card and go HO HUM or say Yeah Right!  I never want to be HO HUM.

One thing that helped me at first is I wrote out some telephone scenarios with the most difficult questions to answer and posted it by the phone.  After awhile I got pretty smooth coming back with answers.  That telephone conversation will make the difference between booking and staying home so you need all the help you can get to be good at it.  I occasionally go brain dead and revert to old dumbness but it's getting less and less and the bookings are picking up.
Larry
St.Louis