Did you ever wonder how many clicks each spot on Google’s top 10 search results usually gets?
A study on Eye-Tracking Analysis of SE Users’ Behavior conducted in Cornell University reveals the following data, which means number 1 is still the best spot to be on Google’s organic rankings.
But there are no guarantees to getting to number 1 and there could be too much competition.
Well, that is why multiple number 1 rankings for very targeted long tail search phrases that are dialed in to a search engine user’s intentions are better than general keywords that have higher search volumes.
To read the full article visit Distribution of Clicks on Google’s SERPs
I thought about writing this post on band promotion because I often hear new bands and struggling musicians wishing they got more paying gigs. Getting a paying gig is good, I mean… you spend a lot of time, energy and even money on getting your act together.. rehearsing, traveling to rehearsals and gigs (gas can be a pain if you travel by car), buying your gear, etc. But getting paid gigs for new acts can be very difficult.
While I believe it is great to get paid, I don’t mean to say you should think of a band as a business. What I am saying is, it would be practical to at least have your costs covered.
Of course, that would depend on you and your reasons why you are in a band in the first place.
Some bands want to play; love to play; feel that playing and getting their music out there is the best compensation there is.. and the return of their investment in effort, time and money is that opportunity to get up there and PLAY. There are also others who work towards a long term goal like building their own following and getting their music across to them.
The reasons why you do it, pretty much sums it up.
But, if you wanted to get paying gigs, here are a few things you can do.
1. Work on Your Product
Once in a while I come across a client who struggles with promoting their product or service, and put in a lot of effort only to get minimal results. The main reason is, they have not been able to accurately develop, define and refine their product, which is why aggressively promoting something mediocre will always yield mediocre results.
So what is your product? The band, and your music. The key question is how do you set yourself apart from the rest. What is it you do that is unique, or what is it that you can do better than everybody else?
“What do you want people to remember and LIKE you for?”
2. Define Your Music/Repertoire
Repertoire defines what type of band you are. It also defines who your audience is. I believe writing and recording original material is great because by having your own music you create an asset that others do not have. It is that that final sum of a collaborative creative effort that brands your band. BUT, does not guarantee success, since for your band to be successfully recognized for your music, you would first need to attract an audience that gets to hear and appreciate it.
On the same note, being a cover band does not mean you cannot get paying gigs. There are a lot of cover bands that get paid well for small bar gigs or even major events.
What it comes down to is the novelty of the band, and your draw. Novelty is that something about you that people will want to come see; and your draw is the size of the crowd you can gather at your gigs.
3. Market Yourself
You would need to sell yourself to people who you believe would appreciate your band and what you have to offer. There are basically two types of people you want to market to; there are the people who you want coming to your gigs and appreciating your music, and the people who are in a position to hire you for gigs.
This can actually be the classic “the chicken or the egg scenario”, where you actually grow your audience and get more exposure by being playing more gigs, but to get more gigs you got to get invited or hired by people who have a hand in making gigs happen.
But it need not be complicated. You just have to do both at the same time.
Networking is key. The more people you get to meet, the more contacts you establish, the closer you get to your goal.
Ways to Network.
a. Use the Internet, put up a website that tells people about you and your music. Use social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace to build a network. Use media sites like YouTube, MetaCafe and DailyMotion to spread your music and build a list of followers/subscribers.
Always mention these sites during gigs; when you talk to other people about your gigs, during shows, and include them on printed materials such as stage back drops, fliers, calling cards, etc.
Make people WANT to go to your site by offering them some sort of benefit they get by going, for instance.. you can tell them that they can listen to a live-stream of your music on your site, download your music from your site (if you allow), or tell them you give away free merchandise like shirts on occasion and mechanics on how to get free stuff are on your website.
b. Print business cards, or calling cards. That way you are able to hand people you meet something that they can refer to when they need to contact you or if they refer you to other people who might need you for gigs. A business card says a lot of things about you, it pretty much says, you mean business, you got it together, and your can be relied upon to deliver if contacted for a gig. It creates a good impression about your band.
c. Do quick sets at small parties that you are already there to attend in the first place. Parties or gatherings are a great way to build up a following. This grassroots approach can lead to viral promotion. Never underestimate the power of word of mouth. If you know that a friend is putting together a party, offer to do a few songs. Let’s face it, being in a band is cool, that may be one of the top reasons you even started one.. so don’t wait for an opportunity to play fall right on your lap, you create your opportunities.
d. If you are not that established, volunteer to front for other bands who are friends of yours AND are established. Established bands typically have a huge following, grab the chance to get yourself in front of that audience, their audience. You might not get paid for this, but it is an investment that will yield long term benefits. Through this opportunity, you show people what you can do, tell people about your website or where you are online, you can hand out business cards and talk with people in the audience or show promoters.
e. Find radio stations that play material from unsigned bands. Getting your music played on a radio station is one of the most difficult things to get done. You will be turned down by a few, but you cannot let that setback stop you from being persistent and trying them again later or trying to find other stations that will play your music. If you are in college, get your music on your campus radio station, if your university has one. That said, I personally found it a lot easier to market your band and network when in college, it was so easy because in college you meet a lot of new people all the time, and get invited to a lot of parties and events.
If your music does get airplay and attention, your band WILL get attention.
4. Management / Representation
You have to have a manager. An authority figure who you trust and count on to work for nothing less than the success and well being of the band.
A manager should be a tenacious businessman. He is a negotiator, understands marketing, and most importantly he believes in the product he is entrusted with. His main goal is to sustain and develop further the product he manages.
Having a manager can have many advantages, and one of the things I see managers being able to do that bands that manage themselves cannot, is be objective. The manager sees something that individual members in a band do not see, this is especially true when some members of the band develop egos that cloud their judgment. Members have a tendency to get tunnel vision and might not respond well to other people’s opinions that may not be flattering, a manager knows if criticisms are valid and take these not emotionally but objectively.
A manager is both a member of the group and outsider; a member because he works with the group to achieve their goals. He is an outsider who can make rational decisions and even be critical of the group if it fails to deliver what their audience expects.
Musicians can sometimes be the most stubborn of people, and the least receptive to criticism, and a trusted opinion from an authority figure can help the band work to better the product. Remember that the manager is above all a businessman, and he runs the band because it is “profitable”… the easier to market a band, the more money it makes, the more money the manager makes as well.
Managers should also be very aggressive and persistent, a friend of mine (a manager for a huge act) once told me a story about how she approached bar after bar only to get denied each and every time and was given all sorts of reasons and excuses. She never gave up, and did not give up on her band… today that band is a major recording artist… and actually they have been big for some time now.
So, if you are a new band that needs to promote yourself and get more gigs, and hopefully paying gigs…
- you have to be a band that can draw an audience
- you have the ability to make people who catch your gigs, like you or your music enough to want to be in touch with you so they know where to go for your next gig
- you have to build your reputation and brand yourself and your music
- you have be aggressive and get gigs and not simply wait for them, and if you are able to successfully do this and your band becomes successful, the offers will actually start coming to you
- you have to have someone.. a manager, who takes care of business and does this well, so that you are left to do what you do best which is put on a good show or create music that your audience appreciates.. as a performer it might be best to not worry about anything and let the manager do that worrying.. all you need to think about or focus on is having a good show or having a good time on stage.
Your brand is now online and you’re feeling pretty good about your product knowing that you’ve made the global internet leap. But just because it’s online that doesn’t mean it’s presence is actually doing anything for you. In fact it could be hurting your reputation and sales if negative press is created on anything from personal blogs to product reviews to consumer news sites. You can monitor your brand online and get a rough idea of what is going on based on the activity it tracks. However to really understand your viability online and where you can leverage your business you need the monitoring converted into hard numbers that you can analyze. This is known as online brand analysis.
The first things you would typically look at when trying to measure a brand are the online revenue, total leads, average value of each order placed, conversion rates, cost per acquisition or transaction and the return on the investment of the online campaign. While these are all very valuable things to track and analyze that’s not all there is for online management. Since the online world can also correlate to the brick and mortar sales world and vice versa you have to look at how they influence one another and other units of measure to evaluate in looking at your total online presence and marketing.
Views of online advertising spots
How many times were your advertising commercials, videos other ads clicked on and watched? This will show you whether or not they were worth the page impression and later sales that they generated.
Visits to online store
How many people went to your online store? This is simple. Look for the number of unique visitors over a given time period and you have your answer.
Total page impressions versus sales
There may have been a million page impressions but how many turned into actual sales and what was the value of those sales? You need to see the average order total so you can make a numerical representation of sales versus page impressions and how that figures into the cost you spent in advertising and marketing to bring those sales in to begin with.
Duration of content viewing
How long did a person spend on each page of your site? Looking at the amount of time spent will help you see whether they were just popping in to look for freebies or actually shopping and learning about your products.
Traffic to web address from an offline ad
If you have specific web addresses that a person has to type in not be connected to through a search engine you can track this. Understanding how many hits come from an offline source can help you see how known your company is that a person can type in your website without searching for it or how well your outside campaigns are going.
Offline influence
The most important perhaps, how your online presences leads to offline sales. Look at how the online marketing and store increases or decreases your physical store sales.
If you have any questions about online branding, visit my blog and use the contact form to ask a question.
Just concluded an interview with Larry Kim of WordStream and he showed us an onpage SEO tool that would help website owners and bloggers develop content for their pages and find the right words and topics to attract their desired audiences.
WordStream On Page SEO Tool
Uploaded by RoySencio. – College experience videos.
Everyone in business nowadays knows that you have to be online to have serious earnings potential and stay competitive in the marketplace because the vast majority of consumers are online and many go online to seek out their future purchases or compare prices on items. Thus having a recognizable online brand identity and specific marketing is essential for a successful product sales campaign. Developing a brand strategy for online business is similar to developing one for regular marketing purposes, you simply have to redefine some elements and take your mission and goal of expansion and credibility further.
1. Define product demographics
Who will be interested in your product and want to purchase it? What kind of person is the brand made for? Set some clear demographics so you know who you’ll be marketing to and have some sort of concept of what you might do to spark their interest or catch their attention.
2. Tune into demographics’ online portals
Once your target group has been identified you’ll need to figure out where they are online and what they’re into that will allow you to reach them. If you’re marketing to 30-50 year old women you may be looking into parenting forums, working woman websites and mom savings blogs as this group seems to spend a great deal of their time online in these arenas. Hire people to blog and post on these sites to start discussions and talk about your products. This will give you an unbiased look at what the average view of your product is and how you can improve the brand or further strengthen its presence online. These online portals are also where you’ll later be advertising and pushing the brand identity later on so it’s nice to establish a presence early on even if it’s an invisible one that you simply use as a reference.
3. Create some demos
Make a couple examples of your brand identity items including an online logo, slogan, overall look and marketing campaign. You need to have more than one option so that if one proves to be unsuccessful in the beginning you have another to turn to later on. Or you can give consumers the option of choosing what they like in a poll, competition or survey of some sort.
4. Ask customers
Once you have a potential online brand strategy in place you can have a test run with your target consumers. This can be done a number of ways; through a survey, a free trial, incentive and reward programs or even a competition. Have a consumers come up with your brand identity for you through the guise of a competition in which the winner gets a cash prize or other large prize. Surveys can track what consumers think of your current brand identity and provide helpful feedback on what works or doesn’t work with your current design. This can be a voluntary survey however those with rewards or incentives yield higher numbers of people filling them out and giving more detailed answers.
5. Track results
Once you have a brand strategy in place you need to track the results to see if it’s working at whatever the goal of the strategy was. If the brand is new then the strategy is likely to increase awareness among the public and interest amongst the target demographic base. If the brand is more established the goal might be to increase the earnings by a specific percentage over a designated length of time. Watch the number of hits you get on ads, on your website, polls and so on. See if one market does better than another and after finding out why decide how to rearrange your marketing campaign funds and adjust your brand strategy accordingly.
If you have any questions about online branding, visit my blog and use the contact form to ask.
Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak before a group of small business owners who wanted to know how they could market their businesses online through a website.
While a lot of questions were posed, one topic that kept popping up and which lead to an interesting discussion from different participants is Twitter.. if it is really worth considering as a marketing channel. One participant quoted a drop off rate of about 60%.
So is Twitter really worth the time and effort? Here are key points that came up and I wish to underscore for you.
- Twitter is not a magic bullet solution for improving an online business, it is just another networking opportunity just like any other, a venue for you to meet new people.. whether those relationships become significant.. turn into business opportunities or personal relationships, is up to you and who it is you meet
- Just like any venue or opportunity to network, results may vary and that would depend largely on the people who are at that venue, or on that channel, and if they would be interested in YOU, who you are and what you have
- It is about YOU, when you get on a social networking site, people see and get to know you and what you do, if you interest them then good, if they don’t fancy you then no harm no foul, move on… again think of Twitter as simply a virtual version of real life meet ups, mixers and such
- Since Twitter is a medium to network and build relationships, then leverage on that opportunity, the chance to establish, build and maintain relationships that CAN lead to business opportunities, establish your authority and earn trust.
A lot of people have this misconception about Twitter and I think it is primarily the fault of Internet Marketers who sell information products and software that are to do with Twitter, a key part of their marketing focuses on huge income generated from Twitter. So that people are then lead to believe that Twitter is the ultimate solution to improving a business on the internet.
So, should you Twitter?
My honest answer would be, it depends on your results.. Like any marketing activity you undertake, you need to have some sort of way to gauge results of your actions, so if you are on Twitter your metrics may be things like traffic sent from Twitter, click through rate on your links, number of people following you, number of mentions of your name or number of ReTweets other people give you.. and maybe ultimately number of sales generated from people as a result of your correspondence or contact with them on Twitter
Image Source: http://roystonrobertson.blogspot.com/2009/04/twitter-cartoon.html
Brand identity is extremely important for a company’s survival, growth and overall longevity. Customers want to shop from or use the services of a company they can trust due to the satisfaction they have shown and their track record. Consumer confidence is key. Once you have established a brand identity and have a complete concept of how you are perceived by the public your work still isn’t done. In fact, it’s never done. To remain competitive online you have to continue to strengthen your brand identity so you won’t be forgotten or outsold and overshadowed by another retailer or service provider.
Connect on Social Networks
Social networking isn’t just for personal contacts and relationships anymore, millions are using these networks for work as well. Businesses can create pages which people can then become “fans” of. This gives a brand a forum to reach potential customers on a personal level. They can have a unique experience with the brand online and turn to it whenever they please. These networks allow a brand to experiment with new concepts, ask for feedback from consumers and of course, promote their product or service. Creating individual pages and networks for each brand allows consumers to show off their lifestyle to others as well. By displaying pages you’re a fan of other people can see what you’re into, the products you use and what you like to do as brand identity can translate into personal identity as well. Then personal referrals turn into business sales for you because one person tells their friend and they tell someone and so on.
Offer Incentives and Rewards
The power of personal referrals is incredible. Offer an incentive that customers get a percentage of sales back in the form of credit, points or free gifts and hundreds upon thousands of people will be motivated enough to send the information to their friends and family in hopes of earning enough points, credits or other rewards to get free items. Discounts, promotions and incentives are great selling points to get new customers in to try your product. Rewards programs keep the customers you have from trying something else when your competitors offer new discounts and freebies. The better your incentives and rewards programs the more customers you’ll be able to secure for the long run and the stronger your brand identity will become because you’ll have gained credibility from your following.
Google Ads
Advertising will always help strengthen your online brand identity because it will remind consumers first that you exist, second that you’re a trustworthy and viable company and third that you’re the best. The more that your brand name is seen the more people will begin to associate it with being the best. Using Google Ads is easy and the most reliable and popular form of advertising online. Your ads will be displayed on various websites which you can target based on your product demographics base. The more you want your ads seen the more ads you pay to have shown, simple and easy.
If you have any questions about online branding, visit my blog and use the contact form to ask a question.
A lot of Verizon subscribers have been waiting for the Google Nexus One, but it seems it would be in both Verizon and Google’s interests to delay.. for Verizon it gives them time to get rid of some of their 3g smart phones Palm Pre Plus and Pixi whose prices they have slashed down to $49.99 and $29.99. While Google, well, best not go head to head with the currently launching iPad from Apple which is making waves this weekend.
Apple’s new iPad hit stores just this morning and here in San Francisco, people in the hundreds have been lining up… some had been there all night, other had arrived early that morning.
I am guessing they will wait about a week or two, so the iPad launch will come to pass, and Verizon users who had gotten iPads or have an interest in them won’t be distracted and will give their undivided attention to the Nexus One Verizon version, when it is finally made available.
Apple Store on Stockton Street, San Francisco at 7am Saturday
Image Source: http://news.cnet.com/2300-31324_3-10003023.html
Recommended Services
