Getting more leads is crucial to those who are hustling in the gig economy. Your profile is the gateway to showing potential clients why you’re the best one for the job! We have 6 easy ways to optimize your profile and improve your booking practices to make sure you have the best shot at getting as many leads as you can with our platform.
1. Add more relevant categories
Let’s start with the basics! Selecting the right categories for your profile is essential for getting not only more leads but also the right leads. This is how clients find you and how GigSalad determines which leads to send you. Take your time going through all of your category options to find the ones that fit your profile best. For example, if you are a DJ, you might also add Wedding DJ, Prom DJ, and Karaoke DJ.
With a Featured membership on GigSalad, you can select up to 20 total categories to be listed in. If you have a Pro membership, it’s 15 total categories and only 2 categories for free or expired memberships. The key to remember is to only add relevant categories. Do not add services you don’t actually provide just to fill out the number of allowed categories – this will only cause confusion and frustration for both you and your future clients.
2. Upload high-quality media
One of the three things every client looks for when browsing profiles online is media. Start with a really great profile photo and then add high-quality photos and videos. This will give clients an idea of what you do and how you’d fit with their event. Your media gallery should be diverse and fully representative of what you offer. For example, if you are a musician, include a mix of posed promo shots and live performances.
When choosing your media, go for quality over quantity. Adding too much can overwhelm the client causing them to click away too quickly without seeing everything. We recommend 5-10 really great photos and 2-3 quality videos to showcase your skills. You can also add audio samples if that applies to your act. We recommend 10-15 sound clips to provide a good sampling of your range.
? Helpful resource: You can achieve pro-level photos and videos without breaking the bank. Check out these 5 (almost) free ways to improve your media.
3. Request reviews
In today’s world, we don’t buy anything without reading reviews first. And booking a performer or event service provider is no different! To get more leads and close bookings, you must have feedback and references from past clients on your profile. Make it a habit to always follow up one or two times after an event to solicit a review.
You can get reviews on GigSalad in a couple of ways:
- Book through GigSalad. When you book through our platform, we’ll handle the follow-up for you. We send a series of emails in the days/weeks following your event prompting the client to leave you a review.
- Request reviews via email. We make it super easy to request a review from the Reviews page in your control panel. Just fill in the client’s name and email address, and we’ll send them an email for you with a link to your review page.
- Share your review link. If you’d rather handle outreach on your own, a direct link to your review page is provided in your control panel (also under Reviews) which you can share in your own emails or on social media.
⭐ Make ’em verified! The reviews from gigs booked through GigSalad will be verified! Verified reviews are especially valuable because they carry a higher weight in your overall rating and have more influence over potential clients.
4. Update your details
After your profile photo, and sometimes even before any other media, your overview is the first thing clients will read. Keep it fairly short, but be detailed. Highlight your main services, what you do that’s different than your competition, and what types of events you normally do. The first 15-25 words may be featured on your profile in search results, so make sure your overview starts out strong.
Go into more detail with your biography and description of what to expect at one of your performances. You can also add your influences, setlists, and other details to paint a full picture of what it’s like to hire you. Once everything is written, be sure to do a quick once-over and fix any grammar mistakes and typos. Also, avoid typing in ALL CAPS and using multiple exclamation marks!!!! You may feel like this helps your profile stand out, but instead, it just looks like you’re yelling at your potential clients.
? Writing help: As with anything, becoming skilled at writing simply takes a bit of knowledge and some practice. See our tips for becoming a better writer for your business.
5. Get more verified bookings
In our user research, we’ve found potential clients are often immediately drawn to vendors that appear to be the most experienced. Reviews play a part in that, but so does your booking history. Your GigSalad profile will display your verified booking count right in the search results. Increasing this count will make you look like a seasoned professional which will attract more clients.
There are three ways to get more verified bookings:
- Book through our platform. Send your clients quotes through our platform and encourage them to confirm the booking and pay you using GigSalad.
- Mark leads as booked. If a client decides to book you directly, you can pay the service fees to mark it as booked. This can only be done on leads you’ve received through GigSalad or imported.
- Import outside leads. If you get a lead outside of GigSalad and want to either book it through the platform or mark it as booked, you can import that lead using our outside booking tool.
? More bookings = more leads! Not only does your profile look great with a higher verified booking count, but having more bookings also means receiving more leads from GigSalad. When a client asks us to forward their event details, our algorithm takes a vendor’s bookings into account when choosing who gets the lead.
6. Check your settings
Your settings and preferences behind the scenes are equally as important as your front-facing profile. You want to be sure the profile you’ve worked so hard on is being shown to the right people and that you’re getting the most appropriate leads for your service.
Here are a few things to review and stay on top of:
✔ Location and travel distance: Choose a city and travel distance that puts you into a competitive market and also covers the entire area you service. You can set your travel preferences by drive time or driving distance. Make these adjustments in the lead preferences section of your control panel.
✔ Lead preferences: In addition to location details, you will want to set your preferences for performance length and advance lead notice. These tell us how long or short of a gig you’re willing to accept and how far out or short notice the gig can be.
✔ Calendar settings: We use your GigSalad calendar to avoid sending leads for dates you’re unavailable, so make sure to keep it up to date. You can add dates to the calendar manually, sync with your Google or iCloud calendar, and/or set your general availability.
Bonus tip: Become a Top Performer
Top Performer is a status you can earn monthly on GigSalad by booking through the site, maintaining a 4.5-star rating or higher, and responding to 80% of your leads within 24 hours. Since we already covered two of those above, we just wanted to add this bonus tip as a reminder to stay on top of those things and keep an eye on your response rate.
The best way to ensure you have a good response rate is by opting in to receive text messages so you never miss a notification and creating saved messages and quotes so you can respond to your leads with one click. When creating your saved replies, be sure to encourage your clients to review your profile. Depending on how that lead was sent to you, the client may not have seen it yet. And even if they have, it’s still good to introduce yourself and show them some media samples to sell your talent.
Ready to improve your profile? There’s no time like the present.
Megan is the Director of Customer Experience at GigSalad and has gained 9+ years of insight on what makes a great event on both sides of the booking process. Her favorite things include books, true crime podcasts, coffee, hiking, puns, and making people laugh.
I have all the right information. People just don’t want to pay any money. Or as little as they can. You get what you pay for. My fees are very reasonable. The people either want cheap or free.
I agree!!!
So true. I totally agree, and have the same issues.
I feel that we’re getting a lot of “tire kickers” who have no idea what to expect when they request a quote.
So true.. little do they realize it’s take years to learn your instrument, $ to advertise and even more prep to customize a gig. People don’t know what the performing arts entails
I do get a few bookings per year through GigSalad, however, I get a lot of inquiries that don’t follow through also. Sometimes I feel like people get on GigSalad to inquire – looking for free or just getting ideas but don’t really have intentions of booking. But, overall, as long as I’m getting a few bookings per year through GigSalad it’s worth it. I’ll be updating my profile soon to see if this helps. But, I feel that most of the time I’m not the only one who gets the lead and the person inquiring never looked at my profile – just sent out a blanket inquiry. Not sure how that works?!?
Hi Deborah, sometimes people aren’t ready to book and may just be looking. Just imagine if you were a store – you’d have people wandering in and out, some who buy, some who don’t. But it’s important to greet and treat each one as if they ARE ready to buy. To answer your other question, yes, others are likely getting the same lead. Many people simply fill out a “quick quote” form and let us know the category, and choose if they want 5 or 10 responses. Then we send the lead to the qualified vendors in the area. They likely haven’t viewed your profile first so you can/should include media with your messaging. If you need more help, please email us at help@gigsalad.com or call us at 417-889-9909. Thank you!
People never even responded to quotes. My prices were half of what we get from agents. I suspect most people do not know what top notch acts charge and get. We’ll see but it doesn’t look good for renewal. It was worth a try though.
Same here :) I am concerned people will lower their prices and it will be a race to the bottom for everyone and that is catastrophic. So keep up the quality and let’s show them why we are worth it!
It would be really helpful if Gig Salad did some research about what the general range of professional minimum rates are for each region in each category of entertainment and posted them for both prospective clients and newbie vendors/acts to see. Undercutting is a major issue on this platform!
We’ve actually tested a couple of different ways to get pricing averages (based on location) in front of clients, but they’ve not produced positive results so far. This is something we’ll continue exploring in the future though. Thanks for your feedback!
It’s true that people don’t really have an idea of what music costs or even what they want. I try to never give a quote right off the bat. It doesn’t always work, but if I can get them to answer some questions I find I have a better chance of sealing the deal. (It does scare off some folk… Crickets!) But since January I’ve booked eight gigs. They have been from weddings/funerals, singing telegrams to original comic videos. But while performance venues are still closed, it helps.
I have been booking caricature events for years via Gigsalad and I can’t complain. I have a public profile, get leads I might not have had otherwise and get to do what I love to do. Nothing wrong with that!
We love hearing this, Marlene! Thank you for sharing!
I book about 1 in 5 or about 20% of the quotes I send…I have heard from others that is a higher conversation rate…As a one-man band, I think my price has a lot to do with my higher conversion rate.
Since May of 2021 I have booked 16 shows through GigSalad, for a total of around $6K.
The only thing I will say is that I have my travel distance set to 120 miles. Problem is, that gets me quite a few requests for quote from Michigan, which to say the least is a huge distance to travel from Milwaukee, WI.
Thank you for sharing, Bill! We’re hoping to optimize our travel radius feature soon so that you can filter by drive time versus a radius. Hopefully, this helps you optimize your lead preferences even more, and close more bookings! :)