While we don’t have a long list of flashy features to recap this year, there’s a good reason for that. In 2024, we focused on critical back-end work and laid the foundation for something truly transformative: a massive redesign of GigSalad launching in 2025. We’ll share more on that toward the end of this post, but first, let’s look back at some of the work we’ve done this year.
Elevating Lead Quality
We know the quality of leads you receive is essential to your success. That’s why we’ve continued to refine how leads are delivered to ensure they’re more relevant, actionable, and secure.
🚗 Smarter Travel Preferences
In early 2024, we enhanced the way you customize travel preferences. You can now set your coverage area based on actual driving routes rather than the straight-line “as the crow flies” distance. For added flexibility, you can also apply different travel preferences by category. For instance, if you’re willing to travel farther for weddings but prefer to stay closer for birthday parties, we’ve got you covered.
🚫 Automated Protection with Auto-banning
We implemented an auto-banning process to keep your leads secure and your inbox free of questionable requests. This feature scans messages for flagged emails, phone numbers, and suspicious key phrases, automatically removing questionable event planners before they can cause issues. It’s one more way we provide reliability and build trust on GigSalad.
📄 Lead Details That Matter
We’re always looking for ways to ensure the leads you receive through GigSalad have all the essential details and helpful information you need to turn them into successful bookings. We concluded two A/B tests in 2024 that showed better booking metrics for our members.
Direct lead indicator – We added a helpful new feature to your inbox that shows when a lead came directly from a planner who viewed your profile and reached out to you specifically. These leads should be your top priority since they indicate a planner’s genuine interest in your services.
Quote request form questions – We adjusted the placement of service-specific questions when planners request quotes, moving them earlier in the process. By prompting planners to provide pertinent details up front we’ve seen better booking rates.
Amplifying Marketing and SEO
We put more focus on our marketing efforts in 2024 and SEO always remains a priority for us. A primary goal is to ensure GigSalad always stays at the top of mind (and at the top of search results) when planners and talent need us.
📱 Social Media Fun
We’ve upped our social media game with fresh, unique content on Facebook and Instagram. From behind-the-scenes looks at our team to the “Mark Learns How” series featuring our CEO, Mark Steiner, trying out popular GigSalad services, we’ve been finding creative ways to connect with our audience.
🔗 Link up with us! Make sure you’re following GigSalad so you don’t miss any of the action! We’d also love to interact with you, so please like, comment, and tag us in your GigSalad-related posts so we can share your successes!
▶️ Advertising With Impact
Video ads have been a big focus for us this year. We’ve been showing commercials across various channels to get the word out about GigSalad. Have you spotted one? We also filmed a brand-new commercial to add to our advertising tools.
🔎 SEO Improvements
We’ve been partnering with SEO experts to help audit our site and get recommendations on improving our placement in search results. In 2024, we optimized sitemaps, removed unnecessary pages, added strategic internal links, and fine-tuned copy across the site. These ongoing efforts help GigSalad maintain strong rankings across all our categories and allow us to make necessary adjustments as search engine algorithms evolve.
Preparing for a Better GigSalad
The biggest things we’ve been working on in 2024 haven’t been visible to the members. At least not yet! Our engineering team has been working hard to lay the groundwork for faster development and exciting changes for the future.
💻 Laravel Migration
Over the past year and a half, we have rebuilt most of our platform using a modern PHP framework called Laravel. While it’s a lot of heavy lifting, we’re hopeful it will be a game-changer for future development work. This upgrade means we can roll out our new brand in the coming year.
👀 A New Look
We mentioned in our update last year that we had a new GigSalad design to unveil, and we intended to have it done by the end of 2024. As such things often go, we didn’t quite hit the mark. However, we’re getting close! The last several months of 2024 have been dedicated to perfecting our new look-and-feel across key GigSalad pages.
We’ll let you in on a little secret, too. We’ve actually given users a sneak peek at a few of the new colors and design elements in our marketing emails over the last few months. 🤫
Looking Ahead to 2025
We have a feeling that 2025 will be one of our most significant years yet! Much of what you’ve read above will continue into the new year and help us become a bigger and better GigSalad.
🔃 Full Rebrand
It’s been eight years since our last redesign, so this rebrand is a big moment for us. Once live, you’ll see a fully modernized platform that’s easier to navigate and more visually engaging. New colors, exciting graphics, fresh fonts, and a brand-new logo — every aspect of GigSalad is getting a facelift. We hope to launch everything by April. We’ll keep you updated!
📈 Marketplace Evolution
After the rebrand, we hope to begin work on core marketplace improvements. These updates will allow us to refine our business model, ensure members receive the best bookings possible, improve gig lead matching, and so much more. We’ll continue to test and iterate with our platform so that GigSalad remains the best place for anybody to book a gig.
As we reflect on our progress in 2024, we’re more excited than ever about the future. The changes we’ve been working on will set the stage for a stronger, more innovative GigSalad in 2025 and beyond. Thank you for being part of our journey — we can’t wait to show you what’s coming next!
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Heather is the Content Manager and a GigSalad veteran of 15+ years. She loves helping event planners create unforgettable celebrations and talent make a living doing what they love. When not at work, she enjoys reading romance and fantasy books, bingeing TV shows, playing board games, and spending time with friends.