Oct
15
Clown Marketing for Beginners: Websites
Filed Under Business
In this three part series you will learn the ins and outs of clown marketing which will allow you to more effectively market yourself. The most important thing you can learn is that a well marketed clown is a hired clown. Without a well thought out and executed marketing plan chances are you will sit at home while some other entertainer gets the job.
Building a clown website is a daunting task for a lot of clowns. Part of this is because most clowns spend their time developing their clown skills and their money on props. This leaves very little money or time left to build a good website.Today you will learn why it is important to either spend the money or the time to build a good website and a few helpful hints on designing your website.
In the high tech world that we currently live in people expect everyone, especially entertainers, to have a website. Having a good website is like having the ultimate business card. A business card that can be seen by thousands of people a day at no additional cost to you. A website is a great place to put all of the information you think that people need to know about you that wouldn’t fit on a business card. This includes pictures, videos and a price list.
When building a website you need to make the conscience choice to make your website at least as professional looking as yourself when you are in your full clown make up. This is because when viewing your website people will be subconsciously judging you and your abilities based on what they see online. If your site looks like you paid a twelve year old elephant $12 to build, people will assume that you are not a professional and move on to another entertainer.
A lot of clowns get so excited about having an online presence that they want it to do everything. When your website does everything it can overwhelm your customer and make them look elsewhere. This means that your site should have information about yourself(as a clown, not about your pets or children), pictures of yourself as a clown and information about the types of parties you do. You will notice that sound effects and music where intentionally left off the list.
Adding background music or sound effects to your site is a great way to get people to pick another entertainer. The reason is that parents who are going to be hiring you for a birthday probably both work. Lets pretend the dad works at XYZ Bank, he sits in a cubicle all day long and his one job for the party is to find a clown. So he does a search and comes across Dylan the Clowns website. He click on the link to visit his site.
Suddenly calliope music bursts forth from the speakers on his computer. He panics and tries to stop the music but the damage has already been done, his boss comes to his desk and yells at him for disrupting the whole office with the noise. Plus there is a good chance that he was using his computer to cruse the Internet for personal use during work hours. After getting yelled at and potentially written up all he can think is “Darn that Dylan the Clown, I’ll never hire him.”
While that exact situation may not actually occur, it is important to make sure that something like that never happens to any of your customers. Your site should never disrupt someone’s day or cause them any sort of distress. Remember you need your site to look at least as professional as you do in full clown make up.
The first step to building your website is to decide what kind of information you want to include in your website. This means writing out all of the information in a word processor, doing spell check and proof reading to make sure that it looks good. Being a clown does not give you license to be stupid and having words misspelled will make you look stupid. You will also want to get together any pictures you want to put online and make sure that they look professional. Once you have all of the information compiled it is time for the fun stuff, designing your website.
We will start off with a few simple rules:
- Do’s
- Use easy to read fonts and colors
- Make your site easy to navigate
- Resize your pictures to make them faster to download
- Do not’s
- Use multicolored background patterns or images
- change your font color frequently
- use already made templates
Since you followed these steps in order to have a wonderfully designed business card. Well never fear all of that hard work you did to make that card can be reused on your website.
You want to make your website reflect your card as much as possible. Use similar colors for background and text . Use your logo on your site to further peoples association of you with that logo. Don’t worry about making your website an exact copy of your card just try to make them compliment each other.
If you are having a hard time figuring out exactly what you want your site to look like, cruse the Internet looking at other entertainers sites. This will give you an idea as to what is out there as well as giving you ideas that you can modify to use on your own site. Also go to non entertainer sites and see what they look like. Make detailed notes of what you like and don’t like.
Armed with these notes, go back to working on your site. Go through your list and see what you like about another site and see if that will apply to your site. If it does, include it; if it doesn’t don’t include it.
Once you have a design all put together and all your information has been proof read it is time to hunt down a nerd to help you get it online. You will need to realize that getting a website of your own and having it hosted is going to cost you some money every month, but you will find that it is money well spent.
Next week we will explore all of the other ways of marketing your self. So have fun building your website and I will see you next week.
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[…] SuppliesShops Clown Marketing for Beginners: Print Published on November 5, 2007 by The Usable Clown In this three part series you will learn the ins and outs of clown marketing which will allow you to more effectively market yourself. The most important thing you can learn is that a well marketed clown is a hired clown. Without a well thought out and executed marketing plan chances are you will sit at home while some other entertainer gets the job. Be sure to check out parts One and Two. […]
Thank you so very much. I had some loud music on my site and I thought of what you said and stopped it.
I would like some info on clown workshops and clown alleys. I have noticed that in the North Georgia area there is not alot to offer as far as continued training.
I appreciate you very much