Thread: marketing strategies for gigs

I know many dancers have worked very hard over the years to promote themselves and their dance. Most professions tend to guard their marketing strategies-and understandably so.

However, if any of you are willing to share some marketing strategies for those of us who have no idea where to start, I for one, would be eternally grateful! Think Bellydance Marketing for Dummies!

There are the obvious: Facebook, Twitter, fliers, etc.
Any other imaginative ideas?

PM'ing you!

I think networking goes a long way.
Get to know the wedding and event planners in your area. Work in the clubs where people will see you and then hire your for parties. If you have much of an Arabic community it might pay to advertise in their newspaper. If there is a good agency, consider working with them, too. Be friendly with local dancers since work gets passed around that way.
Have nice business cards and a good website, but they can't do all your work for you. Although you should always have a good demo video available on youtube and your site.
I don't think fliers will do too much except if it is targeted specifically at the people who might hire you.
And, of course, do your best when you dance in public so that people start talking about you!

Originally Posted by jamielynn

I know many dancers have worked very hard over the years to promote themselves and their dance. Most professions tend to guard their marketing strategies-and understandably so.

However, if any of you are willing to share some marketing strategies for those of us who have no idea where to start, I for one, would be eternally grateful! Think Bellydance Marketing for Dummies!

There are the obvious: Facebook, Twitter, fliers, etc.
Any other imaginative ideas?

http://www.copyblogger.com/belly-dan...onal-branding/

Thought this was interesting.

There's an interesting article by Keti Sharif about this:

http://www.ketisharif.com/article-business.html

Last year i finally started making an effort of performing at every event i heard about and oh my....what an awesome thing happened....I started getting calls from other dancer, teachers, event staff asking me to teach workshops or perform at their cousins wedding. For 2011 I am really going to make an even bigger point of getting myself out there. For years I relied solely on my word of mouth at restaurant gigs but this is working so much better. Maybe this could work for you:)

Wow! I need to know more too! I was looking for books on this very subject. Found none yet.

Originally Posted by jamielynn

I know many dancers have worked very hard over the years to promote themselves and their dance. Most professions tend to guard their marketing strategies-and understandably so.

However, if any of you are willing to share some marketing strategies for those of us who have no idea where to start, I for one, would be eternally grateful! Think Bellydance Marketing for Dummies!

There are the obvious: Facebook, Twitter, fliers, etc.
Any other imaginative ideas?

Start by reading some basic marketing books. Actually I have heard that the 'marketing for dummies' is quite good.

Pretty much the first and most important thing you need to consider when constructing a marketing plan is who your customer is, you need to target your efforts. So look up information relating to target marketing.

Just 'getting it out there' can potentially be a waste of resources and counter-productive. Please also remember that it is easy to misuse social media avenues when promoting.

I noticed that Satin pm'd you, that should get you some good info.

Thanks for the suggestions ladies.
I agree too that fliers can be a waste of effort, i've done them a few times and got small results, only a couple of small workshops, at least got the cost of the fliers back and a bit more but not much.

Let's make 2011 the year Bellydancing goes mainstream!!
We need to put food on the table after all.

http://maryraks.com/ offers Business School for Bellydancers. She's teaching a seminar at this year's Cairo Caravan. Rumor has it, she's writing a book on the subject too!

Have you read this article on my web site?

http://www.shira.net/marketing.htm

Originally Posted by *Shira*

Have you read this article on my web site?

Marketing Yourself As A Dancer

Not yet, on my way there

My friend Nadira Jamal (the creator of the improvisational toolkit) swears by the bellydance business academy. Of course she doesn't share everything she learns with me but I can see by the results she is having that it's working!

If I had the bandwidth to really pursue dancing as a serious side-career, I would probably check it out as well.

Originally Posted by fitzrobbi

Assist Marketing has become the backbone to the success of our onsite activations. Without them, our sampling efforts would not have been effective.

Reported as spam.

Originally Posted by Nepenthe

My friend Nadira Jamal (the creator of the improvisational toolkit) swears by the bellydance business academy. Of course she doesn't share everything she learns with me but I can see by the results she is having that it's working!

If I had the bandwidth to really pursue dancing as a serious side-career, I would probably check it out as well.

Julie Eason is the owner of the Belly Dance Business Academy, and she's awesome! She's always had some really great marketing ideas for me as an event producer as well.

Belly Dance Business Academy | Belly Dance Teacher Training and Certification

I will agree with the networking, when I lived and danced in the bay area a lot of us dancers knew each other and referred out gigs and restaurant openings :)

Originally Posted by Samira_dncr

Julie Eason is the owner of the Belly Dance Business Academy, and she's awesome! She's always had some really great marketing ideas for me as an event producer as well.

Belly Dance Business Academy | Belly Dance Teacher Training and Certification

I'm thisclose to graduating with my bachelor's in Journalism, and used to be a promoter for several high-end nightclubs in my area, so most of Julie's advice is nothing new for me, but I agree that it's very valuable information for marketing newbies. I especially like how she saves newbies considerable time by listing the most up-to-date and relevant essentials for social media marketing that are specifically useful for belly dancers. However, I take exception with whoever said that fliers are a waste of time or money (too lazy to verify, lol). When I was promoting, I had to spend 20 hours a week dropping off fliers at specific local businesses that were popular with our demographic. Part of this was because we were developing real partnerships with these places and wanted to be personable, the other was because print advertising is extremely powerful. I did an interview last year with a local blog and got a decent amount of website traffic, but none of it compared to when I did an interview in September with a local weekly alternative publication that has a circulation of about 400,000 readers and is available in 2-3 surrounding counties (I think). Print media is still extremely powerful and influential - the trick is getting one of the free weeklies in your major metro area to hit you up for an interview, which requires getting a reporter to pitch profiling you as a story idea to their editor and, more important, persuading said editor to agree to put it on the budget.

Sometimes overlooked...volunteering a show or class for a large non-profit event.
You can help your favorite charity it is tax deductible and often there are several potential clients there:)

I totally agree that print is very effective. I pay for a lot of advertising. I do both print and web, but I feel that print just seems to get the message across in a much stronger way. Something about it being tangible and in your hand seems to sink deeper into your potential client's psyche.