Here’s a very odd sort of video that has nothing to do with guitar
and nothing to do with performance on instruments.
So why am I sharing this with you?
Well for starters, it is Christmas and I figured some of you may get a laugh out of this “North Jersey” Christmas Video that I wrote and produced along with vocalist Lucy Clark entitled “Jersey Bada Bing Christmas” back in 2007.
Think Sopranos Christmas…
Secondly, guitarists with YouTube videos should be very interested in the marketing of this product…
Back in 2007, I had this chord progression and melody that I would always warm up on before a gig. My singing partner Lucy Clark (who sang and got her start in music with Les Paul) suggested we put some words to it. Now, the great part about Christmas is, if you have a song, it keeps coming back every year., and this is something to think about for all you guitarists out there that are looking to make a video that actually has some impact and longstanding evergreen view counts. But there’s more to this than view counts, so hang with me here.
Now the fact is, this Jersey Bada Bing Christmas video was not posted by me, and there are about 4 or 5 other video channels that transferred this from our DVD that we had for sale along with a Christmas Album.. Here’s what the packaging looked like…
Inside, we had the DVD available and a CD of standard Christmas songs (CD looked like a pizza).
So the various YouTube postings of the video came well after the fact of selling nearly 9,000 of these mini pizza boxes from radio spots, newspaper, mail order and then Barnes & Noble. 9 thousand sales doesn’t sound like a lot, but we sold these at $19.98… so do the math..
Our big break was getting this to Big Jay Sorenson who was the talk show host at WNBC New York for years.. His daily show aired right after Howard Stern. After years at NBC and then various radio stations including NJ 101.5), Jay made his way to a station down in South Jersey (WJRZ) which had a large listening audience of transplanted Italians that migrated from North Jersey to the Toms River area… Jay of course knew this and took great liberties at the time to break and promote the song on the station and even a WJRZ Christmas Concert.
The first week of airing, we ran out of Pizza boxes and had to reorder. For the next month my job really became sitting by the phone, taking and fulfilling orders. In retrospect, we should have hired someone to help, but who knew? Now if that wasn’t enough, the NJ Star Ledger (New Jersey’s largest newspaper) picked up on Big Jay and and the Jersey Bada Bing Christmas and ran a feature article. So, another large order was placed for more Pizza boxes… Finally, after all the sales, we approached Barnes & Noble to handle it all. They we’re more than happy to take it over, based on the sales. People we’re buying this things as gifts, some people ordering 15 at a clip. It was insane.
Guitarists…. think outside the Pizza Box!
Many of you that are subscribers to the Acoustic Guitar Videos Newsletter do so because you play guitar, make videos and want to keep up with what’s going on in the world of acoustic guitar. And I see a lot of you getting a good amount of views on your videos. But how is this translating into what your goals are?
Starting in January, I’m going to be doing another Newsletter that is geared towards the performing guitarist. In that Newsletter I’m going to be sharing tips and tricks to get more views and make money,… yes money. Plus we’ll go into more detail about releasing a successful holiday/seasonal guitar video campaign. Here’s some of the topics we’re going to cover:
1. How to get a steady stream of YouTube views to your video
2. How to choose “relevant” keywords for positioning your video in the recommended list
3. How to get page 1 ranking on Google for your video with search terms that people are looking for.
4. How to get people to click on your links in the description area
5. How to get relevant backlinks to add juice to your videos
6. How to add multiple keywords for even more views
7. How to target your audience
8 Learn why sharing your videos on Facebook is detrimental to your career
9. Learn where the “buyers” are for your music
10. How to create an internet “Sales Funnel” for your merchandise
+ more
Author: Robert Harris
