This is one for all you studio owners out there. Where do you find your customers? This is something i've been mulling over the past few days. When Sonny and me set up Pinna we went the traditional route of website, print ads, web ads and flyers. The print ads had absolutely no impact at all, and neither did the web ads. None. Nada. Zilch. The website was getting some hits from Google but it was always low double figures at most.
Then we started to think - where is our customer base? We are not a shop front where people casually wonder past and pop in for quick bit of recording time. People do not browse through a music magazine and suddenly decide to record because of an advert. Putting an ad in a music tech magazine just advertises your services to other studios and engineers. We do not sell a particular item. We sell a niche service.
So I cast my mind back to my days as a musician and how we used to find studios then. The internet wasn't as big a part of peoples live as it is now so that didn't have as much relevance. We used the Yellow pages. So Pinna signed up with Yell.com and sure enough enquiries started to come in. The other way we used to look for studios to record in was simple word of mouth. Now that's not quite as easy in a town like London, there are so many scenes going on and so many musicians it's hard keep track of. How to put the word out then? Well like I said we placed fliers all over Camden, Denmark Street, Central London and loads of venues and rehearsal rooms. We had a few hits from this but again not loads.
So how to contact a hugely disparate demographic? The internet is the obvious answer hence a lot of our time is spent optimizing our website, twittering and rambling on our blogs. This is pretty good fun, but still - is it enough. Web 2.0 doesn't work if people aren't looking for you in the first place!
Pinna is now at a stage where word of mouth has kicked in and most of our clients are either regulars or we've been recommended to them by one of our regulars but we are still keen to kick things up a gear.
We want to make great records for great artists, and we want to let everyone know! So how to do it??????
Answers on a postcard.
Or just comment below:)
Then we started to think - where is our customer base? We are not a shop front where people casually wonder past and pop in for quick bit of recording time. People do not browse through a music magazine and suddenly decide to record because of an advert. Putting an ad in a music tech magazine just advertises your services to other studios and engineers. We do not sell a particular item. We sell a niche service.
So I cast my mind back to my days as a musician and how we used to find studios then. The internet wasn't as big a part of peoples live as it is now so that didn't have as much relevance. We used the Yellow pages. So Pinna signed up with Yell.com and sure enough enquiries started to come in. The other way we used to look for studios to record in was simple word of mouth. Now that's not quite as easy in a town like London, there are so many scenes going on and so many musicians it's hard keep track of. How to put the word out then? Well like I said we placed fliers all over Camden, Denmark Street, Central London and loads of venues and rehearsal rooms. We had a few hits from this but again not loads.
So how to contact a hugely disparate demographic? The internet is the obvious answer hence a lot of our time is spent optimizing our website, twittering and rambling on our blogs. This is pretty good fun, but still - is it enough. Web 2.0 doesn't work if people aren't looking for you in the first place!
Pinna is now at a stage where word of mouth has kicked in and most of our clients are either regulars or we've been recommended to them by one of our regulars but we are still keen to kick things up a gear.
We want to make great records for great artists, and we want to let everyone know! So how to do it??????
Answers on a postcard.
Or just comment below:)
I acquire my gigs, mainly recording live concerts, by researching artists that might be interested in my services, contacting them via eMail & telephone, staying on it until there is a result. It's the personal touch :-)
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that it's the personal touch that counts!
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