Thinking Outside the Box

Friday, August 4, 2006 at 11:34am by Angela Gilltrap in Marketing

As entrepreneurs starting out, we have one very big asset that many overlook – no assets. Initially, we don’t have the bank balance of a multi-national corporation to set our ideas in motion. This in turn forces us to think outside the square to get results from non-traditional marketing avenues - ones that cost very little but garner great results. It’s a wonderful training ground and arms us with experience that let’s face it, had we not have been desperate we wouldn’t have accumulated. Desperation, otherwise known as having to survive on enthusiasm, causes brilliance when you learn to think outside the square.

A friend of mine Jill Kelly, a true marketing genius, showed me exactly what thinking outside the square was. Working on a single release for an independent artist, a sector in the market (music) which is almost impossible to penetrate without major financial backing, she achieved enormous success, elevating the band to number one overnight on the independent charts; filling a 200 seater venue; paying all the band and achieving a profit - another thing almost unheard of in the music world.

How? She thought outside the square. As part as the steep $15 entry fee each guest received a copy of the single. Thus, technically speaking, selling 200 singles in one night while providing a marketing strategy to lure patrons who saw the offer as ‘something for nothing’. Why don’t record companies think of this? They don’t have too. They have enough money to buy air time for their artists and to promote them using traditional marketing avenues.

But for the new wave of entrepreneurial musicians this type of thinking can be very rewarding both artistically and financially. Without the record company taking 80% of your profits, if successful, independent artists only have to sell 500 000 CD’s to make over 1 million dollars in profit, compared to signed artists having to sell more than 5 million to make any money. Actually I know of artists that have had twelve years of successful albums and have never yet, seen a cent from any of the recordings.

Now, if Jill Kelly or any independent entrepreneur can have this sort of success on little to no budget simply by thinking outside the square, imagine the success they can have backed by a major corporation. Consequently, our little marketing genius has been head hunted several times proving a little bit of out-of-the-box thinking can go along way.

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