Where in the world am I today?: Oklahoma City in the morning/North Vancouver in the Evening
I just finished up with performances at the Oklahoma City Festival of the Arts. Started doing shows last Tuesday and it was one of those three shows a day sort of gigs which can at times feel like a bit of a grind. I’m pleased to report that this time around it was more fun than it was a grind except for the last two days when something I ate decided to make my stomach do summersaults. Thankfully I didn’t miss a show though I was feeling a bit wobbly at times. Apart from the wobbliness it was a nice run with lots of shows. I always find my show gets much sharper after doing it multiple times a day over a multi-day event.
So what’s this got to do with Marketing… Mondays are supposed to be about Marketing… Well it’s like this. Not only did the exercise of doing my show a lot help me polish up my performance a bit, it also exposed me to a lot more people than had I been brought in to do just a single show. I’d never performed in Oklahoma before and I was amazed by the fact that when I arrived no one knew who I was, but over the course of the week, my audiences grew and grew. This might have also had something to do with the fact that the crowd sizes grew as we moved towards the weekend, but I had lots of people come up to me saying that they’d either heard the show was good and wanted to check it out, or had come back to see the show again.
All of this goes back to the very best type of advertising you could ever hope for – Word of Mouth. If you can create a buzz about your show, people will search you out and make a point of coming to see you. Every time you step on stage, be it on a cruise ship, at a festival or on a street corner, you’ve got a chance to leave a great first impression, so take advantage of that. The more great first impressions you make the greater the chance will be that you’ll have the opportunity to leave another be it the second, third, fourth, etc.
You never know who might be watching the show. One show might be populated with preschoolers, but one of their guardians might be connected to a community group who could bring you in for another job, or might have friends who are looking for just the right sort of entertainer for their next corporate event. There’s no excuse for just dialing it in. You owe it not only to the audience, but also to yourself to give your very best when you walk out on stage because it might just lead to your next pay cheque.
Be awesome and more work will come your way guaranteed!
