by Stacy Zemon
It wasn’t long ago that most DJs finally realized that they must use the web to supplement their marketing efforts and create other channels for marketing messages.
Mobile entertainment services now must evolve that thinking radically again or face extinction. The onslaught of social media use didn’t simply create another set of marketing tactics, it signaled, to those viewing it strategically, a shift in the marketing landscape that has become preposterously evident.
The Web and digital interactivity now represents the center of the marketing universe. Most marketing decisions must start and end there.
As a savvy business owner, you must view your marketing strategies and tactics with an eye on growing the online center and radiating beyond with spokes that facilitate most of your in-person, Skype and telephone sales.
Here’s what I mean:
- While advertising was used primarily to create a sale or enhance an image it must now be used to create awareness about web content
- While SEO was primarily a function of optimizing a website it must now be a function of optimizing brand assets across social media
- While lead generation used to consist of broadcasting messages it must now rely heavily on being found in the right place at the right time
- While lead conversion often consisted of multiple sales calls to supply information it must now supplement web information gathering with value delivery
- While referrals used to be a simple matter of passing a name they now rely heavily on an organization’s online reputation, ratings and reviews
- While business location has always mattered, online location for the local business has become critical
If you are still looking at your marketing efforts in a linear way – with online tactics falling somewhere in line – it’s essential that you change the way you view this model entirely. You must build from the center first and only then can you create the strong foundation that will carry your marketing into the next decade.
Use Online to Drive Offline
Widely referred businesses are very good at fusing online and offline in a high tech, high touch sort of way. It’s one of the primary strategies that every DJ business needs to adopt as an intentional overarching marketing strategy.
It’s not a matter of looking at the Internet and social tools with an eye on sales. It’s a matter of tuning your entire marketing process in a way that fits how offline buyers now make their decisions and grabbing that piece of business.
The primary way to do this is to become an online warrior for creating awareness for your DJ services, brand, content and expertise when a prospect turns to a search engine, and then drive that surfer offline for the total package.
Creating customers offline will, in my opinion, always (OK, for the next few years) be the most profitable way for a DJ to build long term high profit revenue, but those revenues will never appear if you don’t master the online information space first.
The online to offline mindset involves a healthy dose of what many would refer to as SEO, but its success actually hinges on how you intend to engage online visitors once you’ve got them.
There are three phases to the development of your fused approach:
Discovery – In this phase you lay the groundwork for understanding what your local prospects are looking for and how you can use this data to create awareness for the products and services you offer. As an offline business you have the distinct advantage of asking your customers, but you must also take clues from your successfully placed online competitors.
Content – Content is a very large and growing concept online, but here take it to mean educational content creation aimed squarely at answering the kinds of things your prospects want to know more about. It also encompasses the liberal use of outposts for your content in places like local directories, social networks, and bookmarking sites that lead paths back to your primary web hub.
Engagement – Once you win eyeballs and prime real estate in local directories such as Google Maps, your strategy of engagement needs to kick in. This is your intentional tactical approach to driving those eyeballs into office – offline. This is where you get the opportunity to tangibly demonstrate your value, experience, trustworthiness and expertise in ways that no amount of online participation ever will.
The Internet is quickly becoming the power tool locally. Use this tool properly and you can drive an unstoppable flow of prospective business into your offline lead conversion machine.
In what ways have you successfully mastered the digital universe?
Publisher & Chief Scribe
Stacy Zemon is a self-described serial entrepreneur (Equal parts creativity and business). She is widely considered an authority on the DJ business, and has become a distinguished industry leader over the course of her illustrious 30+ year career. Stacy is a veteran DJ entertainer, publisher and chief scribe of ProMobileDJ.com, longtime writer for DJ Times magazine, and author of the world’s best-selling DJ books: The Mobile DJ Handbook, The DJ Sales & Marketing Handbook and The Mobile DJ MBA. From her efforts, Stacy has spawned more professional disc jockey business owners than any other person in the mobile DJ industry. For the longer version of Stacy’s story, click here. To learn about Stacy’s business consulting services, click here.
