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7:08 pm
June 9, 2011
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QuoteAlright, so this week I finally got the squeeze page up for a band I'm with. Then as luck would have it, we were asked to fill a spot for a gig this coming saturday.
Below is the promotional poster I'm hanging inside the club with an new strategy I'm using (based off of online results with a similar strategy) for pulling people back into our website.
Now some notes about this poster:
I ALWAYS print these on 11 X 17 tabloid paper (check printer options when you're at Kinko's or whoever).
I ALWAYS make white text on black posters. I've been doing this for years and every club promoter always tels me how my posters stand out above the others.
What's new and different about this one is the call to action with the hand-drawn arrows. I'm doing this because one of my online promotions improved from a 26% opt-in to a 37% opt- in with the arrows.
Also notice how the call to action takes up just about as much space as the show info (because to me, it's actually more important).
I'll be watching the results very carefully because I plan on doing a case study for MMIC for this particular squeeze page when I have enough data to share.
Please share your thoughts and suggestions 🙂
-Steve
2:36 pm
June 7, 2011
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That's awesome Steve. Let us know how it goes.
As I'm sure you've already thought about... Keep in mind that it's difficult to get people who are seeing something on a poster to take action and go online, with that said, it's exactly what I would do as well. It will be interesting if you see a spike as result.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
7:53 pm
June 9, 2011
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Thanks John,
The angle is to hopefully get some of the patrons to check out our music then come to the show.
This will be good for a case study because it's a brand new website. Nobody has the direct url so the only possible traffic without a referring website will be the poster.
I'll just have to separate those visits from the other visits to that page for scientific purposes.
So far, without any advertising and just a few messages on Facebook from myself and one other band mate, the squeeze page is holding it's own. Not running a split test yet. I will put up the split once I have some other traffic sources live.
I'll keep you posted.
(can you imagine the numbers if ALL of my band mates actually sent it over the wire? 
)
7:24 am
June 7, 2011
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Good stuff. I'm anxious to know how that performs.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
5:19 pm
June 10, 2011
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Hey Steve,
I have been doing something similar lately, and yesterday I added another tactic, and so far the results are far beyond what I expected!
Several weeks ago, I printed up some oversized business cards that I have available on my merch table. The card simply states that there is free music for anyone that joins my newsletter list, and shows the URL to my squeeze page. I have been having OK results, but nothing to get real excited about.
Yesterday I had a gig at a popular local market. I decided to play with the current news about the USA credit rating being lowered to AA+. I joked several times during the gig that I was doing my part to stimulate the economy, and that for today only, I was having a 50% off sale on my CD's. The only requirement was that to get the 50% off price, you had to sign up for my newsletter list. This info was displayed on a few posters by the stage and at my merch table.
The results blew me away! The gig started at 10:00am and lasted until 3:00pm (Yeah...long gig!) By 1:00 I was completly sold out of CD's, and the rest of the day I had many people asking where they could get a CD. I probably had about 50 of the oversize business cards, and about the same amount of my regular cards on my merch table, and by the end of the day they were all gone. Judging by the amount of cash in my tip jar, I'm guessing that most people that bought a CD at half price also gave me a $5 tip. Some "regulars" that I know already have my CD even bought another one!
Besides the oversized cards that direct people to my squeeze page that people can take with them, I also have a signup sheet where they can enter their info, and then I manually add them to my list later. I have never had so many sign ups in one gig before! Last night I checked my email, and there were several from Aweber about new signups, and this morning they are still coming in.
The bottom line is that by reducing the price of my CD's for one day, I came home with over $300, and so far about 20 new signups, with more coming in everytime I check my email. I'm definitely going to try this again!
What would a jam session with Gordon Lightfoot, Collective Soul, and Damien Rice sound like?
Check out Greg Parke and you’ll have a pretty good idea!
5:29 pm
June 10, 2011
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He,he....I just checked my email. In the time it took me to write the above post, more sign ups came in. And this is Monday morning, when most people are going to work!
I'm going to try your idea about the hand drawn arrows next Steve
What would a jam session with Gordon Lightfoot, Collective Soul, and Damien Rice sound like?
Check out Greg Parke and you’ll have a pretty good idea!
6:07 pm
June 9, 2011
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Awesome Greg!
I have the results of my test. I'm going to post them as soon as I get a minute.
11:15 pm
June 7, 2011
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That's great stuff Greg. Very cool to hear how well that worked for you. Well done.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
1:29 am
August 27, 2011
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Steve Rodgers said:
I ALWAYS print these on 11 X 17 tabloid paper (check printer options when you're at Kinko's or whoever).
I ALWAYS make white text on black posters. I've been doing this for years and every club promoter always tels me how my posters stand out above the others.-Steve
Hey Steve,
This is an awesome idea, thanks for sharing it.
11 x 17 is where it's at. If you really want to make them stand out you can take the extra few minutes to format the poster for both "portrait" and "landscape".
Here's another thing that helped our posters stand out - print the white text on black - but then use a different colour paper like golden yellow (which becomes yellow and black when you print them out). The coloured paper was maybe a few cents per copy more expensive. It helps to give the illusion of colour without paying for the colour ink.
The only drawback is white on black is even better if there are black lights in the venue - makes it 'glow' in the dark and draw attention.
3:46 am
June 9, 2011
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Thanks Mike,
Dude, I never even thought about printing landscape. So use to the "top-to-bottom" type of poster.
I'll try to work something out. Thanks for the idea!
-Steve
7:32 pm
June 10, 2011
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The problem I have with 11"x17" though is mailing them to the venue. I scaled back to 8.5" x 11" because
it was easier to put them in a mailing envelope and send it off rather than use a more expensive photo mailer,
or a small poster tube. Do you guys have any tricks/suggestions for that?
12:08 am
June 9, 2011
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Yeah, I don't know...
Sounds like it's a stream team job. Send the file to a team member (or some other contact) near that club, pay for the prints and have them hang em. (?)
Another problem you guys might run into is the black poster itself.
One print might totally wipe out your ink. That's why I go to the local print shop. Kinkos makes it easy with the prepay cards. Just head over to a work station with your poster file, set up the print options for 11 X 17 paper and let er rip.
Takes literally 3 minutes.
2:15 am
June 10, 2011
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You are right on about the ink issue Steve. Several years ago I did a lot of research comparing buying all the equipment needed to produce my CD's "in house" vs having them done by an outside company. The cost of the ink wound up being the biggest expense in the long run. I think HP and many of the other printer companies sell printers at a loss knowing that they can make ridiculous profits on the ink cartridges. Other companies came along with equipment that could refill cartidges, but I have found that the quality and consistency of the color really varies a lot. With my next CD, I am looking into using an outside company for duplication, and saving my in house equipment for small runs of CD's and DVD's that go out to my fan club. Who knows, I might even farm out some of my smaller stuff to Kinkos as well!
What would a jam session with Gordon Lightfoot, Collective Soul, and Damien Rice sound like?
Check out Greg Parke and you’ll have a pretty good idea!
12:51 pm
August 27, 2011
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Yeah, I printed my posters at "Mailboxes Etc" (now the UPS store) in Canada. We have Kinkos as well in some of the larger cities. Even a mom&pop printer could work, the thing is to get the best deal you can cost wise and make sure that they're easy to deal with. I was able to just email a copy of the poster and then just show up to pick up the posters (and bump up my credit when necessary).
I didn't have the mailing problem since most of my gigs were local and I ended up hanging a lot of them myself - but I could see this being a problem if you have a tour or a long distance gig.
9:05 pm
June 9, 2011
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Greg Parke said:
I think HP and many of the other printer companies sell printers at a loss knowing that they can make ridiculous profits on the ink cartridges.
Oooooooh! Greg you just stumbled upon a powerful business principle:
Funded Proposals - It's something I talk about in my materials and it's a great way to generate cashflow.
McDonalds i a great example (and over-used, but that's because they are great example).
The most expensive thing you buy at a McDonalds is a sandwich, but they make all of their profit from soda and french fries. They sodas sell for $1.70+ a pop, but it only costs them 1 cent for every 5 drinks or so.
That's shitload of profit for every beverage served!
They can literally afford to give you the sandwich for free because of huge relative mark-up on a cup of carbonated sugar water.
At any rate, the money you profit SHOULD be dumped back into advertising first because once you get an optimized sales funnel in place, you may start to see yourself profiting per lead (instead of just per sale).
The difference between McDs and the HP ink example is that HP is built on more of a continuity model (like a membership site) and McDs is more of a "Come in for this cheap thing and we will sell you more on the back end today PLUS... a few hundred(?) times over your lifetime."
The point being is that if you can sell something that doesn't make you a profit, just to sell a few things that do on the backend, you'll make money in just about any industry.
10:05 pm
June 7, 2011
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Steve Rodgers said:
The point being is that if you can sell something that doesn't make you a profit, just to sell a few things that do on the backend, you'll make money in just about any industry.
Absolutely. Most of the really successful guys I know in the online world advertise for products that they break even on, or even lose a little, so that they can get a ton of people into their funnel and profit off of the second tier sales and upsells.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
6:37 am
July 21, 2011
OfflineOK, guys, reading about all of this running to Kinkos stuff is making me dizzy. I have 1000 11x17 posters printed professionally, one time. The design allows for an empty space where a large 3 x4 sticker will go with the particular venue's info. You print them on your own printer at home, stick them on the empty space and you're done.
3:34 pm
June 10, 2011
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Hi Donna
Welcome to the forum!
What would a jam session with Gordon Lightfoot, Collective Soul, and Damien Rice sound like?
Check out Greg Parke and you’ll have a pretty good idea!
4:43 pm
June 9, 2011
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Donna Gibson said:
OK, guys, reading about all of this running to Kinkos stuff is making me dizzy. I have 1000 11x17 posters printed professionally, one time. The design allows for an empty space where a large 3 x4 sticker will go with the particular venue's info. You print them on your own printer at home, stick them on the empty space and you're done.
Hey Donna!
Yeah ya know, I am familiar with the format you're talking about. My only issue is having 1000 of anything lying about. Especially when you consider that these calls to action are subject to testing and change.
Running to kinkos is def an inconvenience, but I also don't want to stumble upon a more effective call to action and not use it because I still have 997 posters to use up first.
I remember getting a crap load of those poster when we printed our last cd at discmakers. At the time they were the coolest thing ever, but that's only if you don't plan on changing anything but the venue info. Nowadays though, the venue info runs second to the call to action, in my opinion because the posters are being hung in the venue itself.
It's the call to action that I'm really focusing on with these from now on.
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