Is Your Gig Marketing Missing This?

What's up gigging musicians. It's Jared Judge and today I wanted to chat with you about one of the most overlooked components of a gigging x marketing strategy. But before we get into that quick message that this episode is brought to you by our sponsor BookLive. BookLive is a software tool that helps gigging musicians manage their gigs in a way that lets them spend less time on the admin work more times, booking and playing shows. Get your free trial today at BookLive.com. Alright, so, one of the most overlooked aspects of a gigging x marketing plan is I've looked at many, many musicians websites, you know, I do a lot of coaching for musicians to help them make a career out of gigging. And just I do a lot of industry analysis and one of the biggest missing factors that it's a consistent thing that's missing across many of the websites because I check the websites. And I also check their gigging calendars, and there's a direct correlation between those that have this and those that don't. And it's video. So I know what you're thinking many musicians have videos, some of them even put them on their website, have them at like a bar at their gig. And that right there is the problem is that the videos that they do have, one is either they don't have video or two, the video they have is poor quality. And maybe is in a situation that's less than ideal for actually showcasing your work. It might be a, you know, one of your fans had a cell phone, that they were just recording you and it's shaky, and the sound is not good. And so when you put that on your website, you know, that's great for like showing that, hey, we're out there doing things. The problem is that it doesn't give people a real sense of the value that you provide as a musician. and the value you provide as an entertainer to. And so I have, you know, I've checked many websites, and some of the top groups that I work with, they literally invest hundreds and 1000s of dollars a year on getting new video assets. There's actually one of the bands I work with which we actually featured on this podcast a couple of weeks back the shirts and skins. If you listen to the his podcast episode, he actually his band is so big that they actually now own a soundstage that they put on, they actually like hold these recording sessions, where they record video of the band. And they hire a professional videographer and sound recording engineer to put together well produced gig videos. And that's what they use in all their marketing materials. They put that on their websites, they put that on there. Their directory funnels, like wedding wire, the not gigs, salad, etc. And because they have such well produced videos, a customer that watches these videos instantly sees this is an act that takes themselves seriously, that has a really great product. And they are doing so well that they actually have the money to invest in high quality videos and recordings. And so at this point, you know, many younger musicians are younger in their career musicians that are just kind of doing this as a hobby might, you might say something like, well, I don't have money to invest in a soundstage. I don't have money to hire a videographer, I don't have money to hire a recording engineer, which is totally fine. Because you know, that was me too many years ago when I started. And actually, I'll tell you a little bit about one of my coaching students right now that I'm coaching a musician, a jazz singer who has a band, and they had no video to they had actually a couple gig videos, but the quality was not good. And so they needed to up their game. And so, as part of my coaching with them, we actually created some video. And we didn't really, you know, he didn't have the budget to hire out those people. And so he asked, you know, how do I do this on a budget. And I said, well, let's do a small mini recording session. And we can get the venue for free. We can use if an iPhone because I have an iPhone is one of the iPhone 10s that has decent camera. And I also have a phone tripod that can put the phone on there. And that way it's stable video, nobody is going to shake the camera. And they also bought a while ago, a microphone, a Shure microphone that plugs into my phone records really good audio too. And so we here's that here's the trick. Here's how we got the venue for free. There's a venue in my city that they have. It's a cafe, and it's open to the public. And they have a stage. And so instead of pitching this to the venue is hey, we want to come in and record this band. Instead, we pitched it Hey, we want to provide your cafe customers a free lunchtime pop up concert. And so, you know, they get immense value out of having free live music. But this bandleader gets immense value out of having a really nice looking stage, that we can then set up a basic equipment of, you know, the iPhone on the the tripod with a nice microphone, and they just play, they have a concert. And there's no pressure on this, you know, it's not a very busy cafe. But ultimately, the bandleader gets a great result, they get tons of video out of it. And it all it It costs was there time. So that's a pretty great story. I'm helping him edit the video right now. And it did come out really good. So I'm super excited. But it's not professionally produced by any means. And that's okay, because the people coming to your website, the fact that you've put some time and effort into it. And this is not just a, hey, we're doing a bar gig, let's have a fan record a video that this actually has a tripod, so it stabilized. And the sound is decent because of the sheer microphone. That alone is better than most band videos that I see. And the videos that we produce will sell gigs. And so I'm super excited for him because this is one of the big missing pieces in his gigging strategy. And he now has that in his arsenal. So if you don't have video for your act right now, that would be a way to do it a way to do it pretty much for free. But it does take time. And it does take a little bit of effort and a little creativity. And how do you get your venue space for free, because you don't want to just do this in your bedroom, you want it to look decent. And so think about how you might do that in your city. So that's all I got for today. Make sure you go and get some good video of yourself. And once you have decent video like this, that's when you start to book your gigs. You know, you get money. And then if it's working for you, then you invest in a professional recording situation. You know, everything is just I need this to be good enough to get me to the next step. doesn't have to be perfect on the first take. In fact, perfection is what gets in the way of people making progress. So get started, just get something basic out there and work your way towards the next step. So thanks for listening. Hope you enjoyed this episode of The gigging musician podcast, and I'll see you on the next episode.