Data Analysis, Graphic Design, Marketing, Photography, Videography, Web Development
Introduction
With my experience in web development and marketing as well as being the drummer in Popgun. It was my duty to ensure we created a website that captured the essence of what the band stood for, creativity, over-the-topness, and most importantly the 80s.
To better understand how the site should be designed I took a lot of inspiration from retro graphics, an art style that has seen a lot of popularity in today’s age whilst still staying true to its 80s roots. With that in mind, I felt the correct path was to create a site that incorporates both old and new to keep all demographics visually pleased
Marketing the band was the next challenge I faced, with no money for paid advertising my only option was to rely on social media and SEO marketing to reach an online audience. By doing extensive keyword research I managed to find opportunities in ready to buy keywords such as “80s tribute band” and “80s cover band”.
The content was then tailored around these keywords before approaching blog sites to try and find guest blogging opportunities.
Link acquisition also played a huge role in my campaign, by looking at our competitor’s backlink profile we managed to offer these sites updated content to link to on our site which achieved two things, our competitors losing a backlink and us gaining one.
Over time bookings increased from 20 private functions the previous year to 70 private functions the following year, on average revenue increased 22% each year.
Popgun saw me play some incredible shows all over the globe and taught me a lot from a marketing perspective. My greatest achievement to date is that my marketing approach to Popgun was used as an example at the Essex University of how to market a band.
Web Development
The website was built in Visual Studio using ASP.net MVC C# framework. The reason we opted for this approach and not WordPress was for the following reasons.
Needed bespoke backend
Automated contract, invoicing and event details sent to band members
Full access to data
Custom PDF contract generator
Eliminate unessersary plugins and code you typically get with wordpress to increase site speed
Use this as an opportunity to up my development game
Developing this website taught me a lot both front end and back end, this site was the first I integrated APIs into, as well as using PDF sharp to create contracts and invoices. Looking back there is a lot now I would have changed in terms of the workflows but at the time this site did more than was needed at the time.
Graphic Design
Our poster designs really helped promote our public shows, we opted to use old movie posters from the 80s for two main reasons, one; its eye catching and really strikes a chord with consumers at a nostalgia level, and two by using nothing but movie posters for our public show advertising we essentially branded the movie poster, meaning, consumers scrolling through their news feed seeing a 80s movie poster instantly knew that was a popgun show being advertised. The posters worked great and we would often secure private bookings off the back of the public shows.
Videography
Video became one of our most important marketing assets, in the days of Myspace audio would have been enough for a potential client to book you, we soon realised that this would not be enough. YouTube is the second largest search engine after google which is why video is so important to any marketing campaign. Video can help showcase your product, tell a story, or explain a service, in an easy to understand digestible way that content just cant match.
Our music videos required a lot of planning including, scouting locations, organising videographers, storyboards etc. We stuck to a tight schedule to ensure deadlines were met and didn’t interfere with the key part of our business, performing.