An Experiment in Getting People to Show Up

Hey, gigging musicians! Jared Judge here! Just wanted to chat with you about an experiment I'm running, that I'm really excited about little worried and nervous, but super pumped. It's in a field that I'm not experienced with at all, which is, how do you get a crowd to show up to your gigs. And so, I run a string quartet, wedding String Quartet specifically. And we never have to worry about drawing a crowd because the crowd is pre built the bride and groom. They always bring the crowd, they send out the invites, they promise a great meal, fun times dancing. And I never have to worry about a crowd showing up to my gigs, simply because that's not in my job description. But I do know that a lot of gigging musicians do struggle with that. That's something that is maybe a point of contention for a lot of people. And there's a whole slew of people that I've spoken with who said like they've had bad experiences with venue owners, like bar owners, that kind of thing, that were mad at them, because the bar owners thought that by booking them, they would draw a huge crowd. And, you know, the band is not that we're not marketers, we're not marketers by trade. We shouldn't be responsible for bringing slews of muse of people coming to our shows. But for some reason, they assume that that's our job. And you know, that's not going to change, people are always going to expect that of us. And so instead of just kind of whining about that, I wanted to try and experiment for that. So I'm currently working with a Milwaukee musician, Ethan Keller shout out to Ethan for this. He was recently booked, I helped him get booked to add a rooftop bar here in Milwaukee, for their relaunch party. And when I was chatting with the general manager of this bar, about the booking and everything, she kept saying the words over and over again, bring his following. And, to me, like alarm bells were going off like this is a situation where she's got expectations of him bringing a following bringing people getting people into her bar, to spend money on drinks, buy food, and then become lifelong patrons. And this falls on his responsibility because he has to bring his following, which again, nothing wrong with that, per se, it's just kind of how it is. And so I wanted to help Ethan out. And I wanted to try out something new that I think is going to really work. And so a tiny bit of backstory is that I have a brother who is an entrepreneur, shout out to Brian, if you ever listened to this, he runs a company that I'm not going to get really specific about what they do. But his he focuses a lot on marketing. He is a really, really good marketer. And this is not a product you would necessarily expect to see in any stores. But one of his most successful marketing tactics has been to run a contest. So he will do a giveaway on Facebook, and run some Facebook ads, Instagram ads, and give away free product in exchange for people providing their email address. And so he runs these ads, he gets people to sign up. He knows exactly how much money he's spending to get one person's email address. And then he then uses those email addresses. And sometimes it gets phone numbers to to send follow up messages to get these people to take action. For him the most valuable action they can take is to make a purchase on his online store. But I was thinking to myself, I didn't epiphany. What if I were able to run a contest for Ethan, and for this bar, where I could give away some sort of prize. And, you know, I was thinking what what kind of prize do people like at a bar? Well, they like drinks, why not just give them a round of drinks for them and a couple friends. So that's what I'm doing. I had epiphany to run a contest to get people to show up to Ethan's show. And so what we're going to do is we're giving away a $20 gift card to this bar. We're going to run some Facebook ads, Instagram ads at, you know, targeted at people who go to this bar or people who go to bars similar to this in my city in Milwaukee and drive them to a page that collects their email address and phone number and then send some follow up messages to get them to show up at the bar. And so we're you know, I got approval from the bar for this. Ethan's in on it too. We're headed today this morning. I got up early and wrote the copy for the page. The funnel that's going to be running this contest and my Our next challenge is going to be to write the ads and choose the targeting and all that instead of live. So this thing is happening a week from yesterday. So we got to launch this ad over the weekend, and just get people there. So I'm really excited to share that with you. Because it's an experiment that I'm, I've seen success in other industries, you know, my brother's storm. I think it'll work for live music. I just don't know, it's so exciting because of the uncertainty about that. And so I am very hopeful. I will report back to you guys how it goes. But yeah, always be experimenting. And for musicians. I know, we're not marketers. But for many people, they think that's in our job description. So why should we fight against this? Why are we fighting against something that if we were able to actually knock it out of the park, then we would be seen as much more valuable than just somebody who comes in plays their guitar, sings, collects money and then leaves. So become a real partner in the marketing and the operations of whatever venue you're playing at. And you will instantly become seen as a much more valuable resource than just an expendable musician that, hey, there are hundreds of musicians in any city. You know, why should we choose you? Instead of just being a commodity, you're now an asset, you've created something much more than what they were expecting. So that that's all I got for you today. I'll keep you posted. I'm excited. And you know, keep keep getting out there keep gigging keeping creative. We gigging musicians are the change makers were the ones who are fighting to keep live music alive. And we deserve to make a living doing what we do. And we really have to do everything in our power to make that happen. So that's all for now.