Marketing tips?

[shookstar]

Hey DJTT,

I am seeking advice of how to market yourself as a DJ. I've done a few local gigs and am starting to get exposure, but I'd like to expand to my downtown area, and just get myself out there. So my question is, how do you market yourself, or how do you get yourself out there as a DJ..?

Thanks,

SS

[dope]

Ok, you got me started, here we go.

INTRODUCTION

"Marketing" is pretty vague itself. I studied it for a bit and I'm a DJ aswell so I'll try to give advice even though I didn't apply the following advice to my own case, since I don't DJ for a living and I don't really care about it at the moment.
Furthermore, if I remember well, a good article has been published here on the DJTT blog "recently", or at least during the last year about "maketing yourself".

Anyway, it seems i found motivation for a giant wall of text, let's go.

PART 1 : Who are you ? Who do you need to be ?

First of all, your strategy will depend on what kind of DJ you want to be :

1) Spinning what pays your bills/what you are asked
2) Be yourself, spinning music you love.

You might not be falling under any of the categories and just be a mix of both (you need to eat but you don't want to spin rihanna either), but it's up to you do define yourself and adapt my advice to your personnal case.

So that it's clear, i'll devide my advice in 2 parts, one for each "style". Of course, some tips will be redundants from one case to the other, but that only makes it even more important to follow.


• CASE 1
Spinning what pays your bills/what you are asked to
I'd say it's the "easy" side.

In the marketing process, you have to define your target.
Since your goal as "style 1" is to make money, choose the biggest category of people/the one that pays the most as a group.

Where can you find them ?
The biggest/most popular nightclub around, populated with people described above.
The biggest/most popular local radio ? Of course listened by the people described above.

Now you know where to go.

Now we go to another step of the marketing process, the needs.
What do these people need ?
In terms of :
- music : Genres ? Artists ? Pitbull, Rihanna, Avicii, Calvin Harris ? Or maybe something more specific (i.e. Berlin's love for techno, playing some Ritchie Hawtin should be better, etc..)
- style : dressing (hoodie, shirt ?), type of mixing (nice mixing needed ? or just slam the fader ? will you use the mic to yell "YOLO" ?), style on the scene (show off ? be discrete ?)

Now that you've answered these questions, you know what you need to become.
This may be an unpleasant and long process, it's the one that should give you really good results.



If you fall down in the second category, here we go :



• CASE 2
Spinning music you love

While in the first case we had to define who you needed to be, and who you should focus on, here you just have to find out who you are, and see if it fits your environnement.

It's a pretty delicate process, and i'll just try to help with bunch of question you should ask yourself.

What kind of music do you enjoy ? What are the clubs/bars around you like the most ? Are there any ? What are your friends like ? What's a good night for you ? Getting super high ? Super drunk ? Dancing ? All the 3 ? Chilling ?
Are you shy ? Does your personnality fits your taste in music ?

Now that you know a bit more about you, do you HONESTLY think there's a place for you around ? And here you really have to be honest with you, it will save you time, money, because I really doubt you can change the nightlife in your area on your own. Or at least if you think you can, I can't really give you advice on that.

If you think you can do something, go on to part 2.
If you don't think your area is a good place for your style, I'd say give up and move on. It's a bit harsh, but you wouldn't try to sell beef to an Indian or pork to a Jew or Muslim would you ? It's exactly the same here.

PART 2 : Getting known

Ok now that you figured out who you were, or who you need to be, how do you manage to be known ?
I'm brainstorming as I write this, so don't take seriously the order in which I write the key elements. And btw, it's late at night (6:00 AM) so I might forget some points.

Business cards/stickers
Depending on your target, you need business cards and/or stickers. People LOVE stickers, especially if they are under the age of 30. Don't go for a big and shiny sticker first, you need people to use them somewhere, so it must be stylish and discrete at the same time.

Demo CDs.
Record nice mixes and burn them on CDs. You should give a TON of them. To "party people" and to professionals like promoters and club owners.

If I were you I'd do different CDs. 1h mix for professionals, 30 mins mix for people. And remember that the mix should cover your whole style (or the style you decided to adopt above). The intro HAS to be SUPER catchy, otherwise people will skip. The cover aswell needs to be catchy, and in relation with your style, again.
Your name and contact method should be clearly on it. I'd go for a more professional look for the demos to professionals, whereas you can go fancier with the demos you give to people.

But where do I find these people ?

Club and bar owners : go to the places during the day, ask for the manager (no you don't want to deal with the the first person around, you need the owner, or if the place is really big, the guy in charge of hiring the DJs)
Random people : At parties, outside the clubs and bars at peak hours (beginning and end of the night).

You can also find these people on the internet, and use the same method : professional, well written emails for "executives" and "social" spamming for consumers.
Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google+, Mixlr, Soundcloud, Mixcloud.. you have to be everywhere on the web.


Step out

Depending on where you're from, there might be some competition with the other DJs around. You have to be different. Why would the promoter choose you over another dude ?
If you can't differentiate DJs with the music (if you are a Case 1 DJ for example), you have do to something more. And you better be creative.


Let's illustrate this with a real example : DJ BLEND. I don't know if you've heard of this guy.

It's only my opinion but I think the music he spins is crap, his name is uber crap, and his videos are super crap aswell. Still, dancing like a weirdo with a bizarre mask on made him "successful" in a way. He has millions of view, probably makes alot of money thanks to DJing, loads of people know him, he has bitches dancing next to him in his bedroom filled with CDJ 2000...

He gave people something different, and for some it was "fun". Now, he made it.

I don't expect you, reader, to become BLEND 2.0, but at least bring something unique to the game, that should land some gigs. Not to mention people will remember you, so it's good for your "professional" image as much as it is for your "public" image.
And don't forget that they may not be related for the moment, but in a near future, your image as a DJ for the crowd will have an impact on you getting gigs or not, because DJing or not, passion for music or not, at the end of the day it's about money and how many people are willing on a saturday night, with a girlfriend/boyfriend in the couch with some pop corn and a nice DVD, to leave they houses, to pay to go to a busy place with overpriced drinks to see YOU play.

CONCLUSION

I'm not going to hide it any longer, I'm tired and this post had to come to an end.

As I said in the introduction, marketing is vague, and when I scroll through my post it's vague aswell.
No advice on what-font-to-choose-for-your-super-business-card here, because first of all I don't have a single clue, and also because I though giving you directions and overall ideas to follow was a good starting point before going in depth into specific points.

I really suggest you look for the DJTT blog post about marketing (i'm 90% sure one has been made on this topic), and another great idea is to read "DJing for dummies" . This is a really nice book full of tips, and between 2 technical/music related chapters, there is good advice on promoting and marketing yourself.



I hope this wall of text was readable and useful.


I'm going to bed.

[botstein]

DAMN. That is quite a post, dope.

[DJKyleHughes]

DAMN. That is quite a post, dope.

Number 2 on the list of things I thought I'd never hear you say.

1. I was a Trouble maker
and now...
2. Dope.

LOL never mind didn't even realize the person who posted that's name is dope

[dope]

Ahah, I gotta talk to tekki or another administrator to get that nickname changed, it's really cheesy/weird.

[Luconia]

Wow Dope, i should use your essay for my decision making topic paper next time :P

[tokenasianguy]

Dope posted some really good info.

I would say secondary to all that, analysis and observation are also important. It's pointless to keep spending money on flyers and business cards unless you know that they're working for you. There are things you can do to track that, like using a different phone number for specific flyers, this might be costly, but if you have both a home phone, and a cell, you might be able to to find a way to make it work. A simpler solution is to use free web-based email addresses.

One IMPORTANT factor in ANY marketing is setting objectives and being able to measure against those objectives...Because you don't know if you've reached your goal unless you can track it. One of the habits of highly effective people is "goal-setting"? Is your goal to get more gigs, to get more inquiries, or just get people talking about you? Getting gigs or inquiries are easily tracked, but getting people talking is not.

I would say a website is KEY. In this day and age nothing is achieved without a website. If you give out a card or a flyer, where is it going to direct them to? Your website.

Where can you market yourself? Anywhere. I've been surprised at the ways I've found to market myself since I've been out of work. I do mobile DJ'ing so maybe it's different for you. The other day I had to get my cell phone serviced, while I was at the store, the girl who was helping me had an engagement ring, so I asked "are you engaged?" And we started talking...I told her I was a DJ, and that I'm married (just in case she thought I was a creeper), she gave me her email and I sent her my pitch. Facebook has also implemented a sort of milestone status feature, where not only do you get updated on peoples birthdays, but on their engagements and marriages.

One of the KEYS of any business is innovation. Your marketing efforts are always going to change and need to be progressive in following new technologies and new mediums. I once got a DJ gig from trolling twitter doing a search for "Looking for DJ" or "Need a DJ". It was a Charity gig which I offered to do for free, because they paid for a sound system, but one of the women who organized that event was an experienced corporate event planner who booked me for a corporate gig and paid me $900 for it a year later. So don't be afraid to do a free gig, especially if you get publicity for it (logo on their site, flyer, etc. or a high profile client like the telecom I DJ'd for earlier this year).

If you have a site, search engine optimization is HUGE! There are ways to organically gain traction to your site like frequently updating content, making sure your headers and content contain popular search results, keyword strategy, etc.

I've done a lot of reading on this and spent 7 years in corporate marketing. I love talking about any and all things marketing related so feel free to PM me anytime if you have questions or even if you want to shoot the shit.

[dope]

@ tokenasianguy : Another marketing guy is in the house ahah. It looks you've been doing this longer than me, I totally forgot to mention the part about feedback.


A last point we seem to have forgot is to use both "traditional" marketing and something I've been taught to call "direct marketing".

Dafuq is that ?

It's the concept to adapt your action to the person you're communicating with. I've already talked a bit about that with stickers and stuff in my previous post, and tokenasianguy kinda approached the topic when he wrote about the discussion he had with a women.
But when I think direct marketing, I think deeper than just adapting the media.

I mean, adapting every flyer to the person you give it to. Adapting the demo CD with a personal note. Adapting your messages on facebook...
Of course, you can't waste time doing that for everyone, so you have to choose your preys wisely. But trust me, a truely personnal message, even as small as a name on a flyer or a jingle dropped at the very beginning of your promo mix, is really effective.

It's quite paradoxical because in the end you DJ for a crowd, a gathering of people, but promoting yourself to them, to the promoters, the club owners etc. , one by one, gives you something special, an edge over the competition.

That's pretty much it, unless I think about a point we missed, and then I'll write another novel here.
As tokenasianguy, I'd glad to help if you have any question.

[DJKyleHughes]

dopety dope dope.

[Luconia]

now this:

If you don't think your area is a good place for your style, I'd say give up and move on.

after investing tons of money on gear & music i wont give up, yeah the chances to play outside of the bedroom is almost nil (apart from odd house parties, wedding & such...that does not count)...makes me a bit sad...

it's like there's tons of guitarist who never make their way into a band & actually performing for a crowd apart from the odd jam sessions in their house with friends & family ...