How To Sell More CDs At Every Gig!
by Jeff Kartak
Summary
Point-of-purchase (POP) product display, placement and advertising is a time tested and highly effective sales method for selling consumer goods, including CDs. Take advantage of new POP CD displays tools and realize an immediate and significant increase in your CD sales. The CD Seller is the professional musician’s best choice for a POP display and sales tool to increase CD sales at gigs. Put more of your music in the hands of the public and earn money doing it with The CD Seller
The Article
Think back to your last visit to the quik-market. What did you see and do as you approached the cashier? You probably walked between a coffee dispenser with cups, cream and sugar laid out for you to help yourself, displays filled with just about every product imaginable from fresh donuts to in a case, a rack full of packaged snacks, a soda fountain with self-serve pop dispensers, cups, ice, lids etc.. When you reached the counter there were boxes of candy and gum within reach to your left and magazines full of used car and RV listings on your right. All placed conveniently within reach and most with large, full color banner ads. All those metal racks and stands, those cardboard and plastic product holders and sign holders and self-serve dispensers are what is called Point-of Purchase (POP) displays in the consumer product sales industry.
The reason they are there, right where you are standing, with large, brightly colored advertising banners and within your easy grasp is to stimulate a strong impulse to purchase a product and make it as easy as pie for you to translate that impulse into a completed sales transaction. Every company that sells consumer goods in a store competes for the best location for their POP display. Advertising and marketing companies are constantly improving, enhancing and testing new POP devices to increase the urge to buy, make it easier to pick up and buy products while the potential customers are within their field of influence. Think of the tens of millions of dollars spent creating and locating those POP displays! Why? BECAUSE IT SELLS PRODUCTS!
If you are an artist selling CDs at your shows you have no doubt invested a great deal of time, energy, soul, and money to make those CDs and get those gigs. Doesn’t it make sense to do everything possible to maximize your return on those investments? Of course it does! Unfortunately many artists believe that after they have written and recorded the music and landed those precious gigs their work is done; that sales will just happen. They have worked very hard and are so close to success. Yet most artists fail to take the last step and do what every other business with a retail product knows they must do; get their product noticed, in the hands of the customer and sold. In other words, market aggressively and effectively at the point-of-purchase when their customers are within their field of influence. What a shame!
It doesn’t have to be that way anymore! Many POP sales tools are available for the performing artist to market their CDs. There are a variety of countertop CD displays made of cardboard, wood, acrylic, or molded plastic. They range from single CD cardboard displays to fancy multi-tiered acrylic units that hold several copies of different titles for artists with more than one CD in their catalog.
All of these displays have their unique advantages but unfortunately most of them share a major disadvantage as well; they aren’t really POP displays. Remember the example of the store? Did you have to hunt and look down to find the soda dispensers, ice and cups thigh high on some table way over in the corner or way off to the side someplace? Did you have to wait for a clerk to come over to you at the coffee bar to pour you a cup of coffee, add the cream, put the top on and hand it to you. Did you have to ask the clerk to hand you a pack of gum. Of course not.
So why keep your CDs on stage, hawk them between songs with annoying “ads” and try to be a clerk, handling CDs and money during live performances? Why invest in folding tables, countertop displays and even hire help to sell your CDs off in some corner or off to the side at your performances? Probably because you didn’t know there was any better alternative. But now there is! It’s a point-of-purchase CD display and sales tool called “The CD Seller”. The CD Seller holds up to 12 CDs, has a locking cashbox with a slot to accept cash and checks, a large sign holder that holds custom banner ads and a fitting so it mounts to any standard microphone stand. It is road rugged, professionally attractive and makes your CDs highly visible to all.
The CD Seller does what all those other POP product displays in the stores do. By prominently, visually displaying and advertising your CDs where your customers are, right by the performance area, The CD Seller stimulates the impulse to purchase and converts those impulses into completed sales by making it easy for your fans to purchase your CDs before, during and after every show. No more “hawking” and fumbling with CDs and cash during performances, no more waiting for customers to find you or a low merchandising table after the show when the impulse to buy may have been interrupted or faded. No more missed sales because your customers didn’t want to wait to find you personally after the show (when you are probably busy with a million other things to do).
So won’t people just walk off without paying? It’s possible. But that’s the risk we take when selling products in a retail environment. Could you have stolen that large cup of Coke or coffee or that package of 9 volt batteries on the rack? That tank of gas? Sure, but you probably didn’t. Our entire retail marketing system is an honor system. Why does it work? Because most folks are honest and because you will lose less than $2.00 if a fan steals a CD; but if you sell even one more CD because you market the same effective way every other product maker does, you earn $8.00, $10.00 or more. An artist with CDs in a prominent display by a stage actually has much more product security than a clerk in a store full of CDs.
 The CD Seller is the professional musician’s best choice for a POP display to increase CD sales gigs. Put more of your music in the hands of the public and earn money doing it with The CD Seller
Jeff Kartak, a working musician who sells CDs from stage. He is the creator, developer and sole market source for The CD Seller. |
