By Alan Chitlik
I often think about what my business is. It is not DJing weddings. My job is to market a DJ company. Because if I don’t do that, I won’t have any weddings to DJ.
So I try to keep up with marketing techniques as much as I can. Each investment can be hit or miss, but I at least try to learn from it. I try to keep up my relationship with fellow wedding professionals.
I created a Facebook group of wedding vendors in this area that’s more than 1,300 members. And, at weddings, I try to be a good team player, so venues and caterers and photographers are a good source of referrals.
Of course, there are my couples and people who have seen me at a wedding. I love getting calls from siblings of my clients.
The best piece of business advice I ever got was not to try to be all things to all clients. Instead, try to understand who is your ideal client and create your marketing to attract them. I know that the current state-of-the-art advice with millennials and marketing is that you should keep things super-brief with as little text as possible (one-page websites with mostly photos).
The best piece of business advice I ever got was not to try to be all things to all clients.
One defining characteristic of my couples, though, is that they take the decision of selecting the right DJ seriously. They start with the premise that it’s an important element of the wedding they want to have. So my website is designed to give them lots of information about me and who I am and lots of quotes from couples about what was the impact of working with me on their wedding. The amount of information might be a turnoff to some people but the people who stick around can learn a lot.
Most of my leads come through my contact form on my website. My goal is to answer that inquiry as soon as I can. In that initial interaction, I’m hoping to get them to agree to a phone call or video chat. In that case, if it goes well, I’ll suggest grabbing coffee for a more in-depth discussion.
I will answer the price question directly whenever they ask it or whenever it comes up. My couples have told me pretty consistently that I’m offering good value for the impact that I have on weddings, so I don’t shy away from it or make couples go through a lot of hoops to get a price.
Alan Chitlik is the owner of Puget Sound DJ in Seattle. Stay tuned for a full profile on him and his company in the next print issue of DJ Times.
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