Last week, our heroes recovered the Teslatronic engine from Baron von Chaos and were speeding toward the border when his minions attacked the train and... wait no, sorry. That's the serial I'm writing. In last week's thread, I talked about interacting with potential customers and turning yourself into a brand rather than a generic product. Now we actually get into the nuts and bolts of marketing.
The conventional wisdom is to make a list of potential clients in your area and start cold calling. This worked in the past. Not so much anymore. In fact, I have a theory that there was no such thing as clinical depression before cold calling was invented.
Conventional wisdom also states that you should have lots and lots of business cards and that you should hand them out at every opportunity. I've given away thousands of business cards myself since 2007. I got... maybe 1 gig out of doing so.
And conventional wisdom further tells us that to remain competitive you must take out ads in print media and brag about how much better your rates are than your competition. Which puts you in a really interesting position when the best ad space costs three figures and your competition is a 17-year-old dude doing birthday parties for $50 a pop so he can buy more porn and weed.
All this tells us that conventional wisdom is a ridiculous load of pig crap. The digital age has changed the rules significantly, but a lot of the people who made their reputations/fortunes in the time before that don't realize it. Most of them are so secure in their positions they see no reason to change. This poisons a lot of new blood by making them race to the bottom in an effort to establish themselves.
Let's quickly recap what work we've already done. In part 1, you learned not to be dependent on social media as a passive way to generate leads. The numbers are too unreliable. In part 2, you gave some thought to your target market and what sort of shows you're offering. And in part 3, you learned a little about talking to them and managing yourself as a brand that they can't afford to do away with or replace. That might not sound like much, but in reality this is a lot of the hardest stuff out of the way already. If you've kept up with me for the last month, then you're making considerable progress.
To move to the next step, take your shows. Think about what you do from the audience's perspectives. It's said that a good salesman sells benefits, not features. What that means is that you figure out what the prospect wants and then tell them how what you're selling solves that problem. I would take that a step further and say to sell people on results. What is the emotional benefit that you provide? This can be a tricky question to answer, but it's important.
Let's say you want to do kids shows. Telling a parent that you provide a more memorable birthday is good, but you can also make them feel better by saying that since you are holding all the children's attention for half an hour, that frees up the parent to stop doing work maintaining the party, stop trying to wrangle the guests, and get to relax and enjoy that moment with their child. The former is a benefit. The latter is a result because there's an emotional appeal to the parent as well. This is one of the most important elements of writing good copy.
Copy writing like anything else takes practice and experience to get really good at, but with a few basics you can get started. For one thing, the headline should grab the attention of the reader by appealing to them and/or their problem. The body should begin by pumping up their problem. Describe the emotional cost of it. Then, giving out as few details as possible, tell them what you have to offer and finish with a call to action (that is: give them the order to call you ASAP). Again, it takes practice to get really good at it, but it's not the arcane, impenetrable art that some people think it is. To learn more, I recommend books by Dan Kennedy and Robert Bly.
The most important thing that will influence your copy is who your market is. If you're planning to do mostly home parties, that will require different copy and different media than if you were marketing to restaurants or night clubs. In the case of home parties, it might be worth looking into some of Richard Webster's books on establishing your business as a mystery entertainer. Community newspapers aren't great, but can be relatively useful if you target your market properly.
If you're going for private venues on the other hand, then I would recommend direct mail. It's what it sounds like. But rather than sending just another sales letter in just another envelope, I would suggest using a 3D mailer. Yes it requires more of an investment up-front, but it pays for itself pretty quickly since it keeps you top of mind.
Send between 1 and 3 3D mailers, each one a different object with a slightly different sales letter, then call. Make sure the letter informs them that you will be calling and when. Ask if they got your mailer, and transition into asking what day they'd like you to come in for an audition. Frame the question that way and it increases the odds of actually getting your foot in the door.
You're still going to get rejections, mind. Just keep sending them a fourth, unique 3D mailer with a follow-up call once a month asking them if anything has changed. Be polite about it, but eventually either things will change or they'll give you the gig just to shut you up. Point is, be persistent without being a cretin about it. On average, it takes a lot of marketers 7 touches to finally secure a client. The vast majority of magicians trying to make it don't because they've give up almost instantly after the first "No."
This would also be a good time to look into networking. Keep in mind that you don't go to networking looking for gigs, you're looking to make connections with people who might know someone interested in booking entertainment. I used to be an advocate of BNI, but the problem with that organization is that chapter chemistry is a major issue and if they don't know how to easily explain the benefits of your work, you won't get many referrals. Don't be the guy who goes to a networking event just to collect business cards, please.
Ideally a good networking group will have at least a handful of people who frequently associate with your target market or have dealt with the entertainment industry in some capacity before. Take the time to build up good relationships with these people, and you will be rewarded. Just remember that it's a slow process and one of give and take. It's said that the best way to get a friend for life is to help them move. Think about that for a second.
Next week, we'll get into making your press kit and web site.
The conventional wisdom is to make a list of potential clients in your area and start cold calling. This worked in the past. Not so much anymore. In fact, I have a theory that there was no such thing as clinical depression before cold calling was invented.
Conventional wisdom also states that you should have lots and lots of business cards and that you should hand them out at every opportunity. I've given away thousands of business cards myself since 2007. I got... maybe 1 gig out of doing so.
And conventional wisdom further tells us that to remain competitive you must take out ads in print media and brag about how much better your rates are than your competition. Which puts you in a really interesting position when the best ad space costs three figures and your competition is a 17-year-old dude doing birthday parties for $50 a pop so he can buy more porn and weed.
All this tells us that conventional wisdom is a ridiculous load of pig crap. The digital age has changed the rules significantly, but a lot of the people who made their reputations/fortunes in the time before that don't realize it. Most of them are so secure in their positions they see no reason to change. This poisons a lot of new blood by making them race to the bottom in an effort to establish themselves.
Let's quickly recap what work we've already done. In part 1, you learned not to be dependent on social media as a passive way to generate leads. The numbers are too unreliable. In part 2, you gave some thought to your target market and what sort of shows you're offering. And in part 3, you learned a little about talking to them and managing yourself as a brand that they can't afford to do away with or replace. That might not sound like much, but in reality this is a lot of the hardest stuff out of the way already. If you've kept up with me for the last month, then you're making considerable progress.
To move to the next step, take your shows. Think about what you do from the audience's perspectives. It's said that a good salesman sells benefits, not features. What that means is that you figure out what the prospect wants and then tell them how what you're selling solves that problem. I would take that a step further and say to sell people on results. What is the emotional benefit that you provide? This can be a tricky question to answer, but it's important.
Let's say you want to do kids shows. Telling a parent that you provide a more memorable birthday is good, but you can also make them feel better by saying that since you are holding all the children's attention for half an hour, that frees up the parent to stop doing work maintaining the party, stop trying to wrangle the guests, and get to relax and enjoy that moment with their child. The former is a benefit. The latter is a result because there's an emotional appeal to the parent as well. This is one of the most important elements of writing good copy.
Copy writing like anything else takes practice and experience to get really good at, but with a few basics you can get started. For one thing, the headline should grab the attention of the reader by appealing to them and/or their problem. The body should begin by pumping up their problem. Describe the emotional cost of it. Then, giving out as few details as possible, tell them what you have to offer and finish with a call to action (that is: give them the order to call you ASAP). Again, it takes practice to get really good at it, but it's not the arcane, impenetrable art that some people think it is. To learn more, I recommend books by Dan Kennedy and Robert Bly.
The most important thing that will influence your copy is who your market is. If you're planning to do mostly home parties, that will require different copy and different media than if you were marketing to restaurants or night clubs. In the case of home parties, it might be worth looking into some of Richard Webster's books on establishing your business as a mystery entertainer. Community newspapers aren't great, but can be relatively useful if you target your market properly.
If you're going for private venues on the other hand, then I would recommend direct mail. It's what it sounds like. But rather than sending just another sales letter in just another envelope, I would suggest using a 3D mailer. Yes it requires more of an investment up-front, but it pays for itself pretty quickly since it keeps you top of mind.
Send between 1 and 3 3D mailers, each one a different object with a slightly different sales letter, then call. Make sure the letter informs them that you will be calling and when. Ask if they got your mailer, and transition into asking what day they'd like you to come in for an audition. Frame the question that way and it increases the odds of actually getting your foot in the door.
You're still going to get rejections, mind. Just keep sending them a fourth, unique 3D mailer with a follow-up call once a month asking them if anything has changed. Be polite about it, but eventually either things will change or they'll give you the gig just to shut you up. Point is, be persistent without being a cretin about it. On average, it takes a lot of marketers 7 touches to finally secure a client. The vast majority of magicians trying to make it don't because they've give up almost instantly after the first "No."
This would also be a good time to look into networking. Keep in mind that you don't go to networking looking for gigs, you're looking to make connections with people who might know someone interested in booking entertainment. I used to be an advocate of BNI, but the problem with that organization is that chapter chemistry is a major issue and if they don't know how to easily explain the benefits of your work, you won't get many referrals. Don't be the guy who goes to a networking event just to collect business cards, please.
Ideally a good networking group will have at least a handful of people who frequently associate with your target market or have dealt with the entertainment industry in some capacity before. Take the time to build up good relationships with these people, and you will be rewarded. Just remember that it's a slow process and one of give and take. It's said that the best way to get a friend for life is to help them move. Think about that for a second.
Next week, we'll get into making your press kit and web site.