advertising your business

DamagedTrax

anyone got any good advise on best places to advertise studio services?

PaulBrewer

DamagedTrax wrote: »

anyone got any good advise on best places to advertise studio services?

Google Ads can be a good way but is getting increasingly expensive to get results as it's popularity rises - however we're finding MySpace and word of mouth.

No one, in my experience, sees an ad and books a studio.

trackmixstudio

Your work is the only thing that makes any difference in my experience.
Advertising is a big waste of money.
Putting out high quality productions will get you lots of work.
Bands will absolutely show off their songs to other bands if they sound good.

I get GREAT value for (no) money with myspace.
Any time I record something good I put it on myspace (with the band's permission) and hit anywhere I can with it. Metalireland.com is great for me.
Replace your myspace player with a flash player that plays 192 mp3s. I use myflashfetish.com for the player with fileden.com hosting the mp3s.

I used to go to lots of gigs and grab the bands at the end and tell them I loved the show and would like to work with them and hand them a cd of my absolute best recordings and a card. The combination of ego massaging and promising quality results usually worked well. These days I don't need to do this as I have a very steady flow of customers but when I was starting out this was the best way of getting "bums on seats".

DON'T advertise unless you a prepared/want to record muppets singing to karaoke backing tracks. (Hi Dav:p)

PaulBrewer

[QUOTE=trackmixstudio;58216982
Replace your myspace player with a flash player that plays 192 mp3s. I use myflashfetish.com for the player with fileden.com hosting the mp3s.

[/QUOTE]

That's a very good idea - the ole MySpace player fairly tramples over the music ok ...

dav nagle

trackmixstudio wrote: »

Your work is the only thing that makes any difference in my experience.
Advertising is a big waste of money.
Putting out high quality productions will get you lots of work.
Bands will absolutely show off their songs to other bands if they sound good.

I get GREAT value for (no) money with myspace.
Any time I record something good I put it on myspace (with the band's permission) and hit anywhere I can with it. Metalireland.com is great for me.
Replace your myspace player with a flash player that plays 192 mp3s. I use myflashfetish.com for the player with fileden.com hosting the mp3s.

I used to go to lots of gigs and grab the bands at the end and tell them I loved the show and would like to work with them and hand them a cd of my absolute best recordings and a card. The combination of ego massaging and promising quality results usually worked well. These days I don't need to do this as I have a very steady flow of customers but when I was starting out this was the best way of getting "bums on seats".

DON'T advertise unless you a prepared/want to record muppets singing to karaoke backing tracks. (Hi Dav:p)

Haha at least I am leaving my mammies!:p:p



I will use google ads for backing tracks... if it works it works..
But yeah Myspace is a great tool and I will use that MP3 player, sounds good

Neurojazz

I do Google SEO design and optimisation for websites - ask Dav Nagle - he can vouch for my knowledge

If you do both adwords and get a good webmaster to check the SEO of your website then you'll be hitting number one in searches...

Also, i do radio/dj/press release type promotions, feel free to private message if you need more detials (unless mods think i should explain these services on boards as they are relevent to production/studios/bands?)

Miss B

Best and free form of advertising is to make it news worthy, write up a press release (include photos etc) and send it into all the press rooms (magazines) around. Regional local papers should pick it up.

PaulBrewer

Neurojazz wrote: »

unless mods think i should explain these services on boards as they are relevent to production/studios/bands?

Please do.

dav nagle

Miss B wrote: »

Best and free form of advertising is to make it news worthy, write up a press release (include photos etc) and send it into all the press rooms (magazines) around. Regional local papers should pick it up.

Couldn't agree more, there is nothing more powerful than the media for news to spread, good one. 2009 will see me working with Kiss magazine and IMRO, missed a chance to get on RTE as a young entrepreneur a few weeks back but there is always next year. Lucky for me Dublin Enterprise Board are looking after my PR relations very well.

frobisher

Neurojazz wrote: »

(unless mods think i should explain these services on boards as they are relevent to production/studios/bands?)

Let it all hang out!

dav nagle

Neurojazz wrote: »

I do Google SEO design and optimisation for websites - ask Dav Nagle - he can vouch for my knowledge

If you do both adwords and get a good webmaster to check the SEO of your website then you'll be hitting number one in searches...

Also, i do radio/dj/press release type promotions, feel free to private message if you need more detials (unless mods think i should explain these services on boards as they are relevent to production/studios/bands?)

Web designers develop and design your web page but they are not web masters. I need a web master to push my 2 (.coms) to the top of the google search engine. Apparently flash websites are more tricky because google doesn't digest flash info well. Take it from there Neurorocketmaster...

Neurojazz

Ok,

A short informative post.

I've basically setup a label/management/promotion company - I did have numerous contacts from over the years in the biz and decided to face my demons and do it.

Initially, setup a management company - 'what does the artist need'
Focus, deadlines, releases, revenue collection.

The the promotions side, Physical magazines, Radio, DJ FTP sites (yet to get involved or find gig promoters) - can get worldwide promotions for press releases etc.. no major tv or billboards yet

The release portals (digital distribution), I sorted a digital distribution network (300+ mp3 sales sites worldwide including iTunes and Beatport)

The final step was a publisher, this guy handles the collection of revenue from airplays, performances etc...

That was the label sorted for the basic operations, now the website stuff.

Google needs to see you website properly.
You need a competant webmaster to do the next stages. The META infor mation looks something like this :-

<meta name="Description" content="Spiralking - Artists Management - A&R - Production - Remixing" />
<meta name="keywords" content="arthur taylor, jeremy rosier, cally,rob hammond, spiralking, matt laws music,matt laws,binary finary,music production, remixes,remixing,, trance, matthew laws, 1998, cloudkillers, music mastering, shiny toy guns, when the storm begins, management, music manager, producer, music producer" />

The content on the page must mirror this... why?, because google scans the webpage and looks at the meta information and how it connects/relates to the page content. Easy so far.

Google looks at the <H1> tags for titles - so i'd have 'Spiralking' in a <h1> tag and in the meta information - 1 brownie point with google to get my rankings up.

Also <p> tags would contain the meta keywords to reinforce this message...

This information must reflect what your site does, so stay focused! - the more focused your content is, the more likely to googlebot will know that it's found something that you want it to see - there is nothing random about the google bots - logic wins.

So, if your'e an aspiring studio you'd need to add your facility and services in the meta and on the page - but make sure that are different - google won't like copy/paste information.

The most important information like 'Studio' would be in a H1 tag also - with a description of service beneath it in a <p> tag, back this up with occasional keywords (but not all) in bold - like 'Vocal Booth' etc..

The means that once the webmaster submits your page to google you get a better chance of appearing if your page is designed to please google and not just your eye.

Now, how to get that number 1 listing?

You have to do several things:-

Adwords targetted to sites with similiar content (which reinforces the content of your site from the content of the site the visitor is coming from by association)

These help drive traffic to your site, but take a long time to tune and ban crap sites you don't want your ad to appear on.

Next is forum posts that talk about your business, but not just copy & paste adverts - you need each one to be unique. (Google compares caches of pages and information related to your site - if you spam duplicates your rankings drop)

How do i know this stuff? - I'm a webmaster and run *huge* adword campaigns and design sites to appease googlebots

These search engine rules will help bands/studios/whoever, but if the content on the page is rubbish the user will bounce back out of the page and google knows.

Lots of random stuff here, feel free to message me with queries.

ICN

Neurojazz wrote: »

Ok,

A short informative post..

Wow - Very interesting! :cool:

darklow

i run a music shop in cork (opus 2) and we put up signs and advertising free so if you want to send posters or business cards i can tell anybody who asks about it, a few do occasionally.
i never get time to do any composing coz of work the whole time but i may as well abuse my position of power for the good of other musicians!