In this episode, Jared discusses the marketing strategy for Gigging Musicians in order to maximize their influence over their market. He attempts to answer the question how do I get as many gigs as possible?
What's up gigging musicians. It's Jared. And today I wanted to talk about Market Domination. So some backstory about my string quartet, when I launched it back in 2016, I had no idea what to do, honestly, I had gotten two degrees in music. One was a music education degree from Penn State. And then I was in the middle of my second degree, my master's degree in orchestra conducting at University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. And what degrees in general are really good for is to teach you how to work for somebody else, which means relying on somebody else to hand feed you the gigs, and not really teaching you how to get them yourself, which was very frustrating. But you know, it works for some people. But the sad thing was, I kept seeing all of my friends graduate from these music schools with the intention of becoming an performer for a symphony orchestra or a touring company. And the the people who actually did what they set out to do were the exception to the rule, not the rule. Far too often, I would see people get these degrees and then go off and work in a field other than music, because it was too hard. And they weren't equipped for the challenge of making it as a as an actual musician. But, so when I was starting Dream City Strings, you know, I had this training of how to be an awesome musician. You know, how to put together an ensemble and rehearse and how to know the history of all the pieces, but not how to get the gigs. And so I didn't know what to do. So what I did was I went online, did some research and the first the first real resource that I found, was this book published, I think it was in the 2000s, called The Musician's Guide To Brides by a harp player named Anne Roos. Which, you know, might have been slightly outdated at the time, but it was still great, because it was, it was something somebody wrote about this very problem I was having, having, how do I get couples to book me for their weddings. And so it was just in that moment that I think I had this, like, lightbulb go off that this is a real study. This is just as legitimate to study, as you know, music history of the 1800s. And they're not teaching that in college. So to me, just knowing that there were resources out there, meant that I could pursue this I could dive deep into this and learn and apply my my learning to my actual situation. And so I did you know, the first, one of the one of Andrews's suggestions is exhibiting at wedding expos, which works for some people doesn't work for others, you know, you everybody has their own opinion about them. There are ways to optimize wedding expos. But like, for me, when I exhibited at my first wedding Expo is actually the Wisconsin LGBT Chamber of Commerce's wedding Expo. And it was great because it was kind of low pressure was a smaller wedding Expo and I can kind of learn how this these expos happen. And what I learned very early on was like, how the wedding industry worked, you know, I was placed next to a venue who was, you know, like a farm venue, this whole Expo, it happens in a ballroom at a hotel. And there are just tables of all these different vendors. And what's amazing about it is that this ballroom is kind of like a miniature representation of your local markets wedding industry. And so you know, I was placed next to wedding venues, there were wedding planners who were there, they were dress shops, they were also like vacation planners, and weight loss people like all these people who are latching on to the wedding industry. And just that experience alone blew my mind that like, this is the industry that you're in, I'm not in the music industry, I am in the wedding industry. And these are all the key players. And so what that made me realize is that, like when a couple is planning their wedding, they're not necessarily like ready to book music right away. In fact, most couples, the first thing that they have to do is lock down the date at their venue, because without the venue, they don't have a place to actually host the event. And then I realized like they have this journey that they go on is after they booked the venue typically they booked the photographer next. Some of them at that point will book a professional wedding planner. A lot of them elect to go at it alone. But what happens when they go at it alone or even when they have a wedding planner? Where do they find the rest of the wedding planning team that will come together to make this amazing wedding on their day of. And so another thing that I realized is that these brides do go to wedding expos but they also are searching on online directories like WeddingWire and The Knot. They're also performing good Google searches. They're also on Pinterest. And they're also on.. I'm sorry, the name is not on off the top of my head right now. So yeah, they're doing all these searches online to find their wedding planning team going to expos. And they might come across your group at one of those things like, say you have a WeddingWire.com membership. And I'm not, you know, I'm not a paid affiliate for WeddingWire.com. But my group is on it. When they go to WeddingWire.com, and they see your group for the first time, they might not be ready to actually plan the music yet. And so they they'll see your group name, they'll be like, Oh, that looks cool. I'd love to have so and so's jazz quartet at my cocktail hour, but they're like, I'm not ready, I still need to get my caterer locked down. So then they'll go search for caterers. And they'll go to another wedding Expo and try out some food. And oh, hey, that group that I saw on WeddingWire is also here at this wedding Expo. And so that's a second touch point that they now see you they saw your your profile on WeddingWire.com. But now they actually get to see you live at a wedding Expo, that's the second time they're seeing you, they're still not ready to book. They're like, Oh, I need my dress now. So they're going to go dress shopping, and go to the bridal shop downtown. And the thing is, if you have a partnership with this bridal shop, and they have your cards on their table of marketing materials of all the local vendors that they're partnered with, and they see the card for your jazz quartet, that's a third time that they've seen it. And by that point, they might be ready to start thinking about the music. So they take your card, then they go on your website. And that's a fourth touch point. And if they like what they seen, then they'll reach out to you and maybe eventually book you. And so the lesson here is that, you know, I've had people ask me, do I need a website? You probably heard my podcast a couple episodes ago about Do I need a website. And the thing is, in order to be the most successful, we can be in this wedding industry that we're in, we need to dominate the market, we need to dominate the conversation that's happening in these people's minds be on Pinterest be on WeddingWire be on as many places as possible Facebook ads if you can afford them. Because, you know, like I said before, when they encounter your group for the first time, they might not be ready. And that is totally okay. But are you going to be in a place that they can find when they are ready. And if you're everywhere, it's impossible for them not to find you. So that is kind of the lesson of market domination for wedding musicians. And it's not a bad thing to be everywhere. It is a lot of work. So you don't have to do all of these at once. You know, start with one or two. And you know, you'll still get people to book you from those one or two. But the more different channels that you appear on wedding expos, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, I think Instagram was the thing I couldn't figure out before. So the more of these channels that you're on, the more chances they are. There are for that couple to find you when they're ready. And trust me they will be reading and they will remember who they've seen. It's just were you in a place that that they were looking at, by the time they were ready. So that's, that's Market Domination for you. I hope that you found this useful. If you did, please make sure to like and subscribe to this podcast and join the conversation that we're having at the Gigging Musicians Facebook group, just do a quick Google search. It'll be the group powered by BookLive. And make sure to get your two week free trial of BookLive Pro the software I use to book and plan all of my gigs so that I don't have to spend all that extra time. You can get your two week free trial at BookLivePro.com. Thanks for listening and I'll see you on the next episode.