or MI. MI is quite possibly the reason you don’t sleep well – not because you have an abundance of it, but because you don’t have enough. If ever there was a way to use your time more effectively and increase your earnings, without actually having to use loads more resources, MI is it. We all get too much information these days, it comes at us in droves.
But not very much of it is useful. I know, for instance, that aeroplanes fly at 35,000 feet not because pilots are adrenaline junkies who likes heights, but because the atmosphere is that much HOW TO MAKE USE OF MANAGEMENT INFORMATION TO GROW YOUR DJ BUSINESS thinner, the amount of drag on the aeroplane is lessened and therefore the flight becomes more fuel efficient. If you didn’t know that before, I bet you’re glad you know it now! But is it useful?
Something potentially more useful that you are likely to ‘know’ is that the summer months are busy and that at Christmas you will never be able to do every gig you get offered, but February will be a hard month to get much action at all. But can you put numbers on this? Can you quantify it? Can you derive useful insights to help grow your business?
Indeed, can you put numbers to anything? How many events are you doing this year? Is it higher or lower than last year? Have you got more booked for next year at today’s date, than you had for this year at this exact point last year?
Wouldn’t it be great if you knew this information? That’s a lot of questions, and not an easy answer to provide, but if you make a start today, then over time you will build a good picture of how healthy your order book is, when and where your events are, who is doing them and, as a bonus, how you can maximise your earnings. WHERE TO START There are any number of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems out there, some By Peter Holding A full-time mobile DJ and wedding host since 2013, Peter Holding set up his business – All Parties and Events – with his wife Michelle in 2012.
Prior to that he spent close to 30 years working in Sales, Sales Management, and finally Corporate Communications, mostly within the banking sector. specifically aimed at our industry and many more easily shoehorned into what we do. But the vast majority of us have limited need for paying for these, and I’ve yet to see one which offers quick and easy MI solutions. Therefore I would suggest your starting point should be a simple spreadsheet. You don’t need to be a computer wizard to set one up and by all means get in touch if you’d like me to send one out to you that is ready setup.
Start by labelling columns for all the obvious pieces of information you need to record. I suggest that your date columns should include Date Of Enquiry, Date Of Event and at least two columns for planned Followup. Source Of Enquiry is possibly the most important piece of information to include, I’d also recommend: Location ( just the name of the venue rather than its full address), Type Of Event, a breakdown of Services Booked and, if you work with others, which DJ is doing the job.
Once you have a load of data, you can filter to common themes and learn stuff you never knew you needed to know! Over time, you will build a picture of where your business is coming from, how many bookings you have coming up, the percentage of each type of event you book – even how many times you have subbed out a dancefloor, or used your bubble machine. But why is this so important? Well, information is king.
It is often said: that which is not measured, does not get done. By recording all of your event data in one place you can filter it to provide useful insights to help with business direction and decision making. If you know that the summer is full of bookings for next year, then why spend money advertising for business in those months? If you know that you don’t have a single gig in February, then hit Google AdWords (other advertising outlets are available!) on 1st January with a winter offer – don’t just get to the 12th of February and realise you’re going to have to consider selling some kit to make ends meet!
If you work on 50 events a year and do 7 up-lighting jobs at these, what effect would doubling this number have on your income? (With minimal extra work/time commitment as you are already at these events.) Perhaps you should put energy into promoting your up-lighting service to existing customers? On the other hand, if you work on 50 events and 40 already have up-lighting booked, it’s not such a rich source of extra income in your business. This is an example of MI in action.
You rent out lighting, but you don’t know how often. If you know the numbers, you can easily work out where to focus your energy to generate the best possible results instead of just trying things blindly or based on a vague hunch. Very early on in our business we learned, through MI, that lighting was an area we could make a real difference to our profitability. We now have more than 100 different lights which earn a decent return and the numbers show us that we need to invest more!
But we don’t just buy lights because we think they look cool, we buy them based on the insights we receive from MI. By creating MI and putting it to use in your business you can sleep soundly knowing that you have removed the pea, that something at the back of your mind you couldn’t quite put your finger on. WHAT ABOUT MI FROM OTHER SOURCES? Creating your own MI is essential for success in any business, but occasionally you get the opportunity to use data produced by others in the form of statistics.
These stats tell us information, once you start to use it to influence the direction of your business, it becomes MI. Just some of the stats I have turned into MI come from The Office for National Statistics and Eventbrite. The information they provide (remarkably, free) helps us to make decisions on how we work and what our priorities should be. A great example is the ONS publication Marriages in England and Wales 2016, which was released on the 28th of March 2019.
During 2016 there were 249,793 marriages in England and Wales. Wow, that’s a lot of weddings – now do you need to worry so much about competitors? That’s a lot of work to go round! Of these, 7019 were same sex, which means that 97% of all weddings are opposite sex.
So, while we should all make allowances in our marketing and forms etc. to be inclusive of same sex couples, it’s a much smaller market than I personally imagined. Another interesting fact is that there was actually a slight increase in the number of weddings that took place compared with 2015 – which is good news for wedding suppliers. Yes, long term trends show a decline but this has evened out a bit over the last few years. The average age for those getting married is midto-late thirties, so music released in the late 90s / early 2000s should be a folder you have for weddings (people remember the music from their teens the most).
Religious ceremonies are at a record low, which means that civil ceremonies continue to grow in popularity. This is a HUGE opportunity for us to use our PA systems, technical expertise and music knowledge to provide services for this part of the wedding day. Why do people still not book us to channel ceremony music through proper PA speakers rather than the venue’s small beatbox or 20-watt installation speakers designed for background music? Well, perhaps we need to let them know how we can help through marketing!
The most popular date to get married? 30th July. Something to remember when quoting – don’t go out for a cheap deal at the end of July! So weddings are big business and that’s a reason we should all make sure we are tailoring our businesses towards the wedding market.
But brace yourself. What about the corporate market? As owners of PA systems, microphones, lighting and music – not to mention ourselves as experienced hosts who can make announcements, coordinate instructions and provide communication – are we missing a trick? I was never sure, but with the help of Eventbrite I am now.
Their stats show that there are 1.3m business events every year. That works out as 5098 per working day. And at the end of the day, that is a great big pea that keeps me awake! I’m currently working on how to tap into this huge market – and I’d recommend you do the same.
" WE DON’T JUST BUY LIGHTS BECAUSE WE THINK THEY LOOK COOL, WE BUY THEM BASED ON THE INSIGHTS WE RECEIVE FROM MI "
