Re: pardon the spam: request for info on advertising to you guys: Redstone speaker cabs and acoustic image amps and combos

Well, obviously I have made a bad impression.

Don't worry about it. We periodically will see marketing spam here, and a lot of the time it really is a come-on for pure junk or an outright scam. You've shown your sincerity. You're OK!

I seriously am interested in knowing what the best (most cost
effective) advertising media is to reach bass players. We are just
getting started and have a limited advertising budget.

I wonder if "reach" is the equivalent of "sell a lot of gear to." Sure, the magazines reach bass players, but that's really not what you're interested in. You want to sell. Time after time after time, people will come on this newsgroup and ask, "What kind of cabinet should I buy?" And the answer, invariably, is "Go out and listen to them yourself, only you know what you'll be happy with." This newsgroup may not be a perfect representative slice of the market, but you've got to pay some attention to that.

I gather you're not trying to take on the big names, and that you won't have celebrity endorsers in your ads. Bass Player magazine is targeted at young players into rock and roll. It has an overall adolescent tone that makes me think it wouldn't be the right place to advertise something aimed at jazz players. You know, come to think of it, Jazz Times magazine reviews equipment, and runs a separate section for bass gear. Maybe you try to get one of your cabs into their hands.

I think newsgroups and on-line forums can be an effective marketing tool, but you've got to create an internal buzz to make it work. You can't just advertise to them, you've got to get the participants talking about your product.

We had a regular member here who went into the bass-building business a couple of years ago. He generated some buzz for his product here, and got nothing but positive feedback from his customers, who then gave him good word-of-mouth. I wonder, now that he's got the benefit of a couple of years of hindsight, how Bud LeCompte would rate the value of newsgroups and forums as a marketing medium?

Anyway, good luck with it.
.

Relevant Pages