2 Save Souls Records will hold its 2016 Family Reunion Gospel Music Conference Oct. 7-9, 2016, celebrating the 5th anniversary of 2 Save Souls Records! This conference is for all Gospel vocalists and groups who desire to take their music career to the next level. Speakers will focus on the business of Gospel music, with topics such as "How to Build a Stellar Career," focusing on marketing, branding, merchandising, promotions, sales and other business aspects that any artist needs to know. The conference will include a New Artist Showcase on Friday night; artists can sign up to compete for a recording contract with 2 Save Souls Records. On Saturday we'll offer a day of workshops. Saturday night will be our Black, Gold and White Ball, a semi-formal sit-down dinner featurning a well-known Gospel artist (TBD). On Sunday will be the annual 2 Save Souls Records concert featuring the 2SSR artists and special guests. Tickets for the ball and concert will be included with conference registration or can be purchased a la carte. Fri, Oct 7 at 7:00 PM, - Sunday, October 9, 2016 at 10:00 PM 2 Save Souls Records 2016 Family Reunion Gospel Music Conference Best Western Plus Towson Baltimore North Hotel & Suites - 1100 Cromwell Bridge Road, Towson, MD 21286
The last two blog posts are going to focus on two very powerful M’s: marketing and ministry. They are both at the heart of all we say and do as professionals in Christian entertainment.
Merch. “Merchandise, merchandise, merchandise!” Keith said. “This is what I keep saying to the artists. You’ve gotta have merch to sell – t-shirts, CDs.” And that Carman did. Although it was set up in a tiny vestibule, he had a robust merchandise table. New t-shirt designs included one with his tour name specifically, “100% SAVED,” offered in a variety of colors; as well as a neatly designed “Child of God” t-shirt that I might actually surprise Keith with for his birthday, contemporary and in one color – black – which appealed to the GenX and Boomer guys who dominated the audience. He had full CDs from years past as well as compilation “best of” CDs. All one price: $15. Easy! As a customer, you don’t have to keep asking the salesperson “How much is this?” From a business management perspective, it was easier to bring only one person on tour with you who can then rally a team of volunteers from the church to sell the products. They didn’t have to learn a price list or ask a bunch of questions. It was straightforward for the consumer as well as the rep. Lesson #4: Sell stuff! It’s Marketing 101, but be strategic about what you make up with your image or logo. Know your audience and select items that will appeal to your crowd. Choose only 2 or 3 items, don’t go overboard. And don’t overprice the merch. You want people to leave the concert with it, not you! Lesson #4a: Throw a sale! About 10 minutes before show started, Steve, the tour manager, came out to greet the crowd and go over house rules. And to throw a sale. All merchandise for the next 10 minutes would be $10. So you were rewarded for buying before you heard the singing. Now that’s faith! They know you’re a fan and you’re going to like anything he does anyhow, but you just needed a little nudge to get out there and buy. They also didn’t want to have a traffic jam at the merch table after the concert (now we know they were working on time constraints and wanted to pack up). Steve may check in with his guy or gal at the sales table to see how sales were doing and if the numbers weren’t so hot, he’d then hit the crowd with a sale. Another footnote. You want people to take a part of you home with them, not just download your single, so that needs to be a tangible product. Merchandise sells you, and it sprouts legs and travels, as people are showing off or sharing what they got at the concert. Also, take the time and the patience to sign merch for fans. It makes them feel special. Which leads to my next marketing tip. Lesson #5: Make it personal. The cheap tickets we bought weren’t the only ones available. He had three tiers, still simple, but the top two involved merch and touch points. The second tier, which I think was $50, included a merch bag. But the top tier, $100, gave you access to a Meet-and-Greet with Carman (as well as the merch bag). They had refreshments and a photographer to take your picture with Carman. The first three rows in the sanctuary were roped up for those who ponied up for the meet-and-greet. When a star comes to town, it’s worth mulling over whether you’ll pony up for the VIP ticket too. But people, especially Christians, like the personal touch. We serve a personal Jesus. My keywords are that you must be real, relevant and relatable. This is part of his marketing strategy, that he’s a big-name dude but he loves the people of the Lord, so he made it personal. The last two blog posts are going to focus on two very powerful M’s: marketing and ministry. They are both at the heart of all we say and do as professionals in Christian entertainment.
Merch. “Merchandise, merchandise, merchandise!” Keith said. “This is what I keep saying to the artists. You’ve gotta have merch to sell – t-shirts, CDs.” And that Carman did. Although it was set up in a tiny vestibule, he had a robust merchandise table. New t-shirt designs included one with his tour name specifically, “100% SAVED,” offered in a variety of colors; as well as a neatly designed “Child of God” t-shirt that I might actually surprise Keith with for his birthday, contemporary and in one color – black – which appealed to the GenX and Boomer guys who dominated the audience. He had full CDs from years past as well as compilation “best of” CDs. All one price: $15. Easy! As a customer, you don’t have to keep asking the salesperson “How much is this?” From a business management perspective, it was easier to bring only one person on tour with you who can then rally a team of volunteers from the church to sell the products. They didn’t have to learn a price list or ask a bunch of questions. It was straightforward for the consumer as well as the rep. Lesson #4: Sell stuff! It’s Marketing 101, but be strategic about what you make up with your image or logo. Know your audience and select items that will appeal to your crowd. Choose only 2 or 3 items, don’t go overboard. And don’t overprice the merch. You want people to leave the concert with it, not you! Lesson #4a: Throw a sale! About 10 minutes before show started, Steve, the tour manager, came out to greet the crowd and go over house rules. And to throw a sale. All merchandise for the next 10 minutes would be $10. So you were rewarded for buying before you heard the singing. Now that’s faith! They know you’re a fan and you’re going to like anything he does anyhow, but you just needed a little nudge to get out there and buy. They also didn’t want to have a traffic jam at the merch table after the concert (now we know they were working on time constraints and wanted to pack up). Steve may check in with his guy or gal at the sales table to see how sales were doing and if the numbers weren’t so hot, he’d then hit the crowd with a sale. Another footnote. You want people to take a part of you home with them, not just download your single, so that needs to be a tangible product. Merchandise sells you, and it sprouts legs and travels, as people are showing off or sharing what they got at the concert. Also, take the time and the patience to sign merch for fans. It makes them feel special. Which leads to my next marketing tip. Lesson #5: Make it personal. The cheap tickets we bought weren’t the only ones available. He had three tiers, still simple, but the top two involved merch and touch points. The second tier, which I think was $50, included a merch bag. But the top tier, $100, gave you access to a Meet-and-Greet with Carman (as well as the merch bag). They had refreshments and a photographer to take your picture with Carman. The first three rows in the sanctuary were roped up for those who ponied up for the meet-and-greet. When a star comes to town, it’s worth mulling over whether you’ll pony up for the VIP ticket too. But people, especially Christians, like the personal touch. We serve a personal Jesus. My keywords are that you must be real, relevant and relatable. This is part of his marketing strategy, that he’s a big-name dude but he loves the people of the Lord, so he made it personal. Here is more on the Carman tour, I sure hope this helping someone. This is installment number three #3 I need to circle back to one of our lessons in our continuing discussion of Carman’s tour. In Lesson #2, we talked about a basic business rule, “Keep It Simple, Stupid (K.I.S.S.),” and how Carman implemented in his tour. But he also used the K.I.S.S. model in developing his tour. I want the artists of 2 Save Souls Records to pay particular attention to this, because in case you didn’t figure it out, this is how we are developing our upcoming summer tour. The “100% SAVED” tour is comprised of clusters of stops are along major arteries, all reachable within a day or two of his home by motorcoach, The areas he chose are all smaller communities near larger cities, with major highway access. So for example, when he came to Baltimore, he came to a smaller, established neighborhood in the county area surrounding the city, about 10 miles out. Actually, he made two local stops in the Baltimore area on a three-day weekend. The next night, he went 40 miles up the road to another lovely town, and the day after that, he hopped over the border to a similar town in Delaware for a third concert. Remember, he lives in Jersey. All three stops were on the same highway, a couple of hours from his home. Looking ahead to his tour dates, he’s repeating a similar strategy in Michigan and other parts of the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest and South. He came to a church that held about 500 people, another great move. Now you would say, but he’s played in football stadiums that seat 70,000. But Carman would remind you that was a long time ago and he wasn’t sure how his fans would respond. Again, you gotta get rid of the big head, as I call it. It’s better to pack out a small church than to stand in front of a sparsely populated venue. Bigger churches also come with bigger rental fees, a host of demands and a list of extras. This church was happy to have him, and their volunteers, from the women’s ministry to the deacons, stepped into action. It was a boost to their congregation and drew new people like my husband and I to a wonderful little church off the beaten path that we’d never would have found otherwise. We made friends there and intend to fellowship with them often. Carman accomplished his goal and the church accomplished theirs. So let’s recap. Chose cities of 100,000 or less, along major highways, near larger cities, at churches with 500-1,000 seats. Make a comparable ratio: if the town population is 50,000, the church size should be 500. String the tour stops together in clusters of two or three that can be knocked out in a three-day weekend. Make it within a day or two drive of home. And there is your blueprint for a tour. It’s doable, even for those of us who still have day jobs. . Carman 2nd installmentI know you’re wondering. How did he do all of this? Well, Carman confided to the crowd that he was wondering how he was going to do it, too. After 13 years, fancy sponsors and big record labels were long gone. When you’ve been out of the limelight that long, it’s hard to get backing; couple that with his health history and he was practically uninsurable by any record label (although 2 Save Souls Records would love to have him join our family!). And no promoter would take the risk of putting a guy who’s been really sick out on the road. “Sometimes, you have to have faith for yourself when no one else will,” Carman said. “YOU have to believe God for yourself.” Again, he turned to technology and started a gofundme.com fundraiser, where his team came up with several innovative marketing packages to get you to invest in sponsoring both the production of his new CD and his tour. Yes, he had to raise the money himself to produce his new CD. He didn’t wait for some record label exec to come riding in on a white horse and fund the whole venture. Carman learned that in 2016, there are more innovative ways to take ownership of your project and get it done. He also got connected to a non-profit, Christian organization called Child Life. They agreed, to his amazement and mine, to sponsor his tour. Sounds contradictory that a non-profit that’s trying to raise money would spend money on a singer who wants tour around the country. But it is one of the wisest marketing moves I’ve witnessed in my 25-year career! Just think: as he tours, he takes their message around with him, introducing their organization to people who may not have otherwise heard about it. But also, he vouches for the charity, which legitimizes their cause. His audience, Christians, is their target audience. He’s just given their org legs that they wouldn’t have otherwise had. They would have to develop their own marketing plan, hire employees and spend an awful lot to have their own team going around the country to all of these churches. Instead, they just pay him to do it. As with the merch table, he has someone on his crew (may be the same person who organizes the merch table), help set up the Child Life display and donor table beside the merch table. Volunteers from the church ran that table, too. But then, in the middle of the program where you’d raise an offering, he instead raised donors for Child Life. He introduced the concept, shared his personal feelings, then took a break offstage while we watched a video that his team prepared (not just a stock commercial). His tour manager Steve then came back up and shared his personal experience. It wasn’t hard for Carman to take a few minutes out of each concert to talk about something he believes in, and that they’re paying him to do it wasn’t something that they hit you over the head with. And here’s where our lessons on tours and marketing intersect. They ask you to sponsor a child. The table was filled with info packets, each with info on a particular child somewhere around the world. If you agreed to sponsor a child ($33 a month), you received that same bag that I told you about with the golden Carman VIP ticket on the front that granted you access to the meet-and-greet after the concert. Well, needless to say, Keith and I looked at each other and he said, “Let’s do it!” I considered it the payment plan of the VIP ticket; he considered it sowing in expectation of reaping blessings for our business. We sponsored a child from Mozambique and got the golden ticket goodie bag with a Carman compilation CD. We didn’t have the access to portion of the meet-and-greet where the $100 ticket holders got to eat, but we weren’t there for the food anyway and we accomplished our goal of getting a picture with Carman. Lesson #6: Look for unconventional ways of sponsoring your project and tour. Get out there and hustle, if you really want it. On a recent Friday night, Keith and I were blessed to see multi Grammy and Dove Award winner Carman in concert at a local church here in Baltimore. WOW. We went to enjoy a longtime favorite singer of ours and to hopefully get a selfie with him. What we got out of the experience was so much more than we could’ve imagined. As an emerging Christian record label, it was like sitting at the feet of the master for a couple of hours. We learned so much! The takeaways extend far beyond the “100% SAVED” t-shirt that he threw into the audience and I caught. So, in the next few blog posts, I’m going to share “Lessons We Learned From Carman.” Hopefully, these tips of the trade will help up-and-coming recording artists and related music professionals, not just the technical details of pulling off a tour but how to minister effectively from the stage. First of all, this is a recording artist who hasn’t recorded in 13 years and hasn’t toured since his last recording! The generations have changed, the music has changed, the music industry has changed and the world has definitely changed. Goodness, we didn’t even have social media in 2003! How do you make an artist relevant? Carman said himself that he wondered if people still wanted to hear his music. (Of course we do! You’re CARMAN!) For him, it was almost like starting from scratch, in that he had to first create music, then a musical tour, that brought him into 2016. But his decades of music industry savvy were well on display. Lesson #1: Do good work! Some things don’t change. You can’t put a price on quality, certainly not on decades of experience and definitely not on Grammys or Doves. Carman got on stage by himself – no background singers, no musicians or dancers. Just him, in an understated but obviously tailored Italian black suit (no tie), and a microphone stand. At this show, we got Carman and only Carman, and that was all we needed. The quality of his body of work, his showmanship and his ministry were at such a high level that anything else would have been an irritating distraction. But if you produce good work, it can stand on its own. The Bible says, “They will know me by my works.” That is also true for believers. They will know us, too, by our works. Then, offer people a good time at a good price. General admission was 10 bucks. Yes, we got to see a Grammy winning singer on tour for ten dollars!
So the question is , what has Easter / Resurrection Sunday represented to you, since childhood. This was the Min. Tracy Tolota response, and rightly so... And then there is a note from artist Deborah Denise, and a comment from The Voice's Michelle Brooks-Thompson. Well, what say you ? How come in America today is more about egg and bunny instead of the RESURRECTION OF OUR LORD JESUS , I grew up in NIGERIA to celebrate EASTER as a RESSURECTION SUNDAY no bunnies no eggs ! Have a blessed EASTER SAINTS 😀HE IS RISEN!CELEBRATE!😆🙌🏽 " Min. Tracy Tolota" " Deborah Denise Says " Jesus died as the lambs for the Passover meal were being slain. Not a bone was to be broken in these sacrificial lambs (Exodus 12:46; Numbers 9:12). Jesus, the Lamb of God, was the perfect sacrifice for the sins of the world (1 Corinthians 5:7). Happy Easter! 💯 He got up with all power in His hands!!! Death was defeated! We have the victory!! HAPPY RESURRECTION SUNDAY!! Don't you dare eat Easter dinner without taking ...time to thank God for sacrificing His life for you! 😊 Come join us in Christ today! Let's celebrate the risen King and exalt his name together! " Exclaims Michelle Brooks-Thompson" |
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