An Experiment in Getting People to Show Up Part 2: Results

What's up gigging musicians, it's Jared Judge. And I want to tell you the results of that experiment I was running about getting more butts in seats. So let me give you some backstory on this. For those of you who are just tuning in, I run a wedding String Quartet. And we do over 150 gigs a year, as a result of doing those gigs, we have made a lot of connections in our town here in Milwaukee. And one of those connections is a restaurant that was having a roof top launch. So they have a rooftop bar. And the wanted to launch it, because it's springtime here, weather starting to turn nice. Major League Baseball is back going into a game tonight super pumped about that. So they're doing a rooftop launch. And they wanted musicians for that launch. They didn't want my string quartet, of course, because we typically do more elegant events, you know, we're not typically your, your bar entertainment. But you know, as a result of playing all my gigs, made some connections and have become known as somebody who can help book other kinds of musicians aside from just myself. So they were using me to book a guitarist, his name is Ethan Keller, he's amazing. And when the bar manager, the general manager approached me, she mentioned, oh, I want somebody with a following, which I don't know about you. But that just, that's a scary word for me. Because, you know, when my string quartet doesn't have a following, and two, I just don't understand, or really care that much about building one. That's not my goal with my string quartet, we don't need a following to, to get booked and then get paid for our gigs. So what I was doing was I booked him. And I, I told her, look, you know, I'm not too sure about bringing a following. And that's really not my specialty. But, you know, as a musician, and specifically, as a gigging Pro, who has really worked hard to get the word out there about my quartet, I can definitely bring people to the event. And how do I do that? It's not necessarily by relying on Ethan's following, which, you know, he does have a following, which is great, but I don't think musicians really should be in a position where their following is the thing that makes or breaks their performance. So I said, there, let's run an experiment. And I'll bring some people. And here's how I'm going to do that. Because I know that you want people to come and drink and have a good experience that you roof top. That way they spend money. So your bar earns earned revenue, and you have some repeat customers who enjoyed the performance and your rooftop so much, they'll definitely come back. Now that the weather's nice. So here's how we're going to do that, we're going to run a promotion, where we announce the launch of your rooftop, we are going to announce that you're having Ethan Keller play. And we're going to do a giveaway. So you'll partner with me, I'll partner with you, we will give away a round of drinks or whatever you choose as your prize package. If you're down for it, and they were definitely down for it, it was well within their budget to provide a gift card to for a round of drinks. And then we three people will promote. And the musicians can do this too. But you know, we're just learning how to do this ourselves and seeing if it works. So I volunteered, I'll be the one to run this promotion, we will collect email addresses. And what we did was we ran some Facebook ads to this contest, which that's a skill that musicians need to learn because that's just an incredible and powerful way to build your following and get people to interact with you and book you. So we ran some Facebook ads to a contest page. And we made it a viral contest, which meant that the people who entered could earn more entries by sharing it on their own Facebook and social media. And by doing a couple other actions. And we used a tool, pretty cool tool, and might share that more later. That just enabled us to do all of these additional viral contest type things. And we ran some Facebook ads to it. We only spent about 20 bucks on it. And the results were incredible. And we got those results in because last night was the event. So by the end of our promotion, which we started, really with not enough time, we got 58 people to sign up for this contest. And we only spent 20 bucks on that, which means we were spending under 50 cents to acquire each email address. And what's really amazing and here's the secret part that most musicians don't know how to do is that those 58 email addresses are now your audience members that you can send emails out to end target new Facebook ads that because those people that signed up, were interested in one of three things, one, free drinks, for sure. To Ethan Keller his performance, and they're interested in him and following him around, and three, the restaurant themselves. So each of those email addresses are super valuable if you know how to run email, follow up campaigns, which that's a story for another time. But you know, you can earn literally hundreds, if not 1000s of dollars in the future. off of each of those email addresses as a musician, you can sell your merge to them, you can sell, you know, you can announce your album launches, you can do get them to book you if they have people who are looking for you for a private event in the future. And you literally can make 1000s of dollars off of each email address. And it only costs 50 cents each. But so I delivered those email addresses to the bar manager. And she was super happy. I also talked to their like marketers as well. And they're like, yeah, we we do some email campaigns, like this was super valuable. And so not only did I get more people to show up at Ethan's performance, I also became known as an amazing partner for this bar, that they will, you know, they said to me, this was so successful over the course of the summer, we're going to do this more often. We love to this contest idea. It really helps build our email list. And we see you as a really key partner in what we're doing. So that's kind of the lesson there is like, one this experiment worked. But to win a bar hires you. They're not hiring you just because they like to listen to your music. They're hiring you with a purpose. And this is consistent, like people are always booking musicians with a purpose. Other than just your musics really cool. Unfortunately, most musicians don't realize that. But when somebody is booking you, they want to accomplish a goal, which for the bar, they wanted people, they wanted to fill seats they wanted people drinking. And yes, they did pay for you, because they thought you might bring a following. But it's not a passive play here. If you can be more active in the partnership between you and the person that's booking you, in fulfilling their goals, you're going to be seen as a reliable partner that cares about them, and builds a relationship with them, and builds a relationship with their guests. And that is the key to them, booking you again and relying on you more. So I was just really pumped to share these results. Because these results were I was really worried that this wasn't going to work. But it did work. And I'm excited because other musicians can and should do these sorts of experiments and fulfill the goal of the person that's hiring them. That's all I got for you today. We're in the process of relaunching our website for BookLive Pro. BookLive Pro is the tool that we used to grow my string quartet from zero gigs to 150 gigs in our second year. So check out that new page it is it should be live by the time you listen to this. That is BookLivePro.com and make sure to subscribe to this podcast, share it with your friends. And if you do wind up running this experiment in your band, I would love to hear about it. So drop me a line. My email address is Jared@BookLive.com. And we'll see you in the next podcast. Thank you so much