In this episode, Jared shares a unique strategy for booking gigs that most musicians don't think to do.
What's up gigging pros. It's Jared, I want to let you know that I am relaunching some of my Facebook ads to try to help me get more gigs. So a while back on this podcast, I ran an experiment where I used Facebook ads. And I ran a video of my group performing at a wedding. And I think the call to action like what did I have people do after those Facebook ads was just go directly to my, my band or my groups website. And if they liked what they saw, then hopefully they would book an appointment with me or something like that. And it worked kind of like it wasn't a smashing success like I had hoped it would be. But we did get some nibbles. I actually did book a couple gigs from it. However, if you know anything about running Facebook ads is that you're paying for those ads, you set a daily budget where you could go as low as like a couple dollars a day and I think I was doing $5 a day. And you know, I have talked about this a lot where you know, as gigging as professional gigging musicians, you need to build a profit into your gigs, because it shouldn't just be on the bandleader to sustain the entire bands operations like that shouldn't come out of your cut of performing, you should have a separate profit margin that takes care of like advertising. And so I basically have, you know, roughly $200 built in the each gig that you know, can go back towards marketing, and these Facebook ads, which means that, you know, it needs to cost me at most $200 in Facebook ads, in order to get one booking for it to be worth it. Which you know, when you think about that$200 To get a gig is, it sounds like a lot of money, but it's actually not that much considering, like, if it's effective, if it works, it works. And if I can get it to cost cheaper than $200, then that is like the gold standard. That's how you really turn on the fuel into your bookings. And of course, you know, this isn't the only way I get bookings, I get them mostly through my partnerships with venues and the directories I listed. And plus all the the awards, my group is one, but why not try something new, you know, it's almost the end of the year. And I don't know when this podcast will be released. Perhaps it will be in the new year when it's released. It's November right now. And, you know, just as professional as gigging pros, one of the things we do is we keep learning, we are always experimenting and trying new things. And so I have decided that I'm going to try those Facebook ads again, because I know that I can make them work. And the thing is, I think that when I first ran the experiment, I wasn't approaching it in a very strategic way. Which is, is great that I validated that we could actually book a gig from it. But it wasn't, you know, it didn't follow a lot of the marketing principles that I've been learning and studying and applying. And that's why I feel like round two is going to be so much better. So here's my plan for round two, instead of just sending people directly to my website, and hoping that they book a consultation with me or submit an inquiry, I'm instead going to give them something because a lot of you know, advertising these days is give people something first, before asking anything in return. And so I'm going to give them something I'm going to give them a PDF of the most popular Milwaukee wedding music playlists that we've played at actual weddings. And my ad is going to talk about that I'm going to say, hey, you know Milwaukee engaged couples, I know that it's tricky. Getting into wedding planning, there's already so much overwhelm involved in that it's essentially another full time job. Plus, most couples getting married have never booked music before. And it's intimidating and overwhelming to think about hiring somebody to handle music, when, you know, most people just don't have that much experience planning music in general. So, as a solution to that I would love to offer them this free PDF of Milwaukee's most popular wedding music. And, you know, they will give me their email address in exchange for that. And then after that, I will immediately offer them a free consultation. So it'll be a bit more of a direct approach to getting them to book that consultation, which as you know from one of the other episodes, that consultation is a sales presentation. That's what I'm selling them on us playing at their wedding. And I have great success with that sales presentation. And actually I've been since we launched BookLive Academy a bunch of my students have started to implement that sales presentation to great success too. So I think getting them getting more couples to come in through, giving them this free download will give me a higher chance of getting more sales presentations. And if I can get one sales presentation by spending $200 in ads, then that will be successful, that'll be the same level of success as I got from the previous one, roughly. But I know that like this style of serving and giving before you ask anything return, does actually have a higher return on investment. So I think it'll go a lot better. I will, of course, give you the results here. Because if it works, then this is a secret that needs to be shared. Because, you know, at the end of the day, I feel like all the musicians who listened to this are talented, and their music sounds good. And it's entertaining. The problem is that they just don't teach marketing, in music lessons, or music school. And really, that is what moves the needle for how successful you are these days is your ability to market and sell your services. And that is something that I think there's a huge opportunity for musicians who have that ability to stand out. Because I don't believe that it's about learning more songs or getting better at your instrument, which, you know, I think that's, that's natural, you're gonna want to do those things anyway, as a musician, but I don't think those are the things that go that make a difference between how many gigs you book, once you achieve a certain level. It's the marketing and it's the sales. So I will let you know how that experiment goes. And I hope that this inspires you to start doing some experiments to, if you haven't learned about like running ads or anything like that, you know, I'd be happy to share that with you. Part of this is in the Gigging Secrets book which is free, you can get your Free copy at GiggingSecrets.com. But really, where we dive deep in that is inside of BookLive Academy, which is a course you get a free year subscription of BookLive Pro, the software. And then you also get access to an exclusive Facebook group for BookLive Academy students where I share screenshots and I go live every week in that exclusive group, just sharing like, Hey, here's how you set up a Facebook ad or here's how I'm doing this in my live music business at this time. So you can actually you can enroll in that right now, I might I might not leave this up very long. I just kind of want to do it as an experiment. You know, we always run experiments. But you can enroll right now at BookLiveAcademy.com if you're interested, but I might take that down soon. So if you're listening to it, and it's gotten, I'm sorry, there are other ways that you can work with me. But yeah, I hope you guys got some value out of this. And remember, you are just one gig away.