Live Function Bands Musicians and the UK Recession
Last week I wrote about the UK recession and how it could affect the Live Bands and Musicians. Suprisingly I received the email below. This seems to be the answer. Marketing, Marketing, Marketing and Marketing on Google.
Hi
I am the manager of the function band, xxxxx.
You may have noticed that my band’s website www.xxxxxxxco.uk now appears in the top 10 (first page) of organic results on Google for most relevant search terms:
Search TermApprox. Google position
weddings band1
wedding bands3
soul band8
Soul bands wedding5
bands to hire3
live wedding bands9
motown bands4
bands for hire6
function bands8
We also appear in the first page of results for most searches with geographical qualifiers (e.g. “wedding bands in London” (4th), “function bands in Essex (4th)”) etc. Our ranking with Google is increasing every month and we expect to be in the No.1 position for most of these terms within the next 6 months.
As I am sure you will appreciate, being in such a strong position in Google’s organic (not paid) listings results in a considerable number of quality booking enquiries from all over the UK. As a result of our strong Google ranking and word-of-mouth recommendations, we are now fully booked for 2008 and for many dates in 2009.
Although a fabulous problem to have, this is generating far more business than we can personally handle as one band. As a result, we are not looking to take on any more work via agencies, nor are we (at this stage) considering forming our own agency.
When told that we are not available, many of these clients are asking us if we can recommend another band or agency. These are serious leads, ready to book and eager to be recommended by us to a reputable agency.
We are generating approximately 25-150 leads per week (according to season) over and above those required for our own bookings. I am writing to see if you would be interested in having these leads recommended to your agency in return for a small fee for each referral.
I have contacted you as an established and reputable agency to whom we would be happy to refer our clients and trust that you are able to recognise the potential of this offer. If you are currently paying to advertise with Google, this opportunity would give you access to quality leads from one of the top ranking sites in this market. All of these leads have already demonstrated that they are ready and eager to make a firm booking.
If you would like to discuss this offer with me in more detail, please do not hesitate to email me or telephone xxxxxxxx
Kind regards
xxxxx
The sender of the letter implies its a new site. Its very obvious that their SEO has found new ways of ranking it up very quickly using various black hat SEO systems. The only problem with this is, there is a high potential the site will be dropped completely from the slurps at some point when Google catches a wind of it. However good luck to them, since we have all tried some form of black hat SEO on out sites at some point.
There does not seem to be an affect on the number of enquiries at the moment. However at Music For London we have found that clients are taking longer or not making the final commitment to book the bands.
Thus we are seeing almost a 50% drop in actual bookings in March. I beleive its the fear of recession that is making people hold back the bookings and those who want to book are looking ar cheaper options. Hopefully there will be more bookings soon. This trend basically means we are only going to see Saturday bookings for the popular acts.
I spoke to a friend who works at a hedge fund today. He said business is down 10%. This is certainly a worrying trend. Lets hope spending becomes normal after summer and we can look ahead towards a busy corporate booking seasson