Marketing Yourself As A Dancer

By Shira

Whether you are a seasoned pro, a student aspiring to launch your dance career, or starting out as a vendor, marketing yourself effectively can play a major role in how successful you are. Here are some suggestions on how to package yourself the way a marketing professional would.

Start by understanding the basics of marketing. Professionals in the field refer to the "Four P’s":

Product
Price
Place
Promotion.

Product refers to you and the teaching / performing / merchandise that you offer. Price, of course, refers to what you charge for your services. Place refers to how visible you are to prospective customers. Promotion refers to how you advertise your availability. Taken together, these factors will give you an edge over others when marketing yourself.

Product

Make sure you understand the Product you are offering. If you’re not selling what people want to buy, then all the time and energy you spend on promotion will be wasted. Think in terms of what people are willing to pay money for, not in terms of what you want them to pay money for. For example, if you are most comfortable dancing in a ragged cotton dress that has food stains on the front, you may find joy in dancing, but there aren’t likely to be many people who would pay you money to do a show for them dressed like that.

Ask yourself these questions. Be honest:

What makes your classes, your performances, or your merchandise unique? If you have trouble answering this, then you need to develop that uniqueness. In marketing language, that is known as "differentiating your product".
Is the quality of what you have to offer truly good enough to stand up that offered by your competitors? If not, then why would you expect people to come to you when they could get a better teacher, performer, or merchandise by going to someone else?
What, exactly, is your product? As a teacher, do you want to promote your local classes, your services as a workshop instructor on the national circuit, your services as a workshop instructor on the worldwide circuit, or an instructional video? Be realistic here—look at what you have the practical means to accomplish, not what you wish might be the case. In the business world, one key criterion that analysts apply to businesses when evaluating their likelihood of success is "ability to execute". That means it doesn’t matter how grand your dream is, if you don’t have the practical skills to turn it into reality. Simply saying you are "famous", "talented", or "exciting" doesn’t make it so. Keep yourself well-rooted in what you can realistically achieve, and focus your marketing efforts on that.

Price

Price is an important thing to consider in promoting yourself. How much do you charge? This is a tricky question—if you charge too much, people will hire your competitors. If you charge too little, the market will see you as a "cheap" dancer and make assumptions about your skill (or lack of it) accordingly. First, compare yourself to the competition. Start by identifying what kind of competition is relevant. If you'll be marketing the classes you teach locally, find out what local ballet and tap dance teachers as well as other local belly dancers charge. If you're selling merchandise via mail-order, find out what other mail-order vendors charge for similar products. And so on.

Once you have identified who your competition is, find out:

What do other teachers charge for group classes paid by the month, group classes paid on a drop-in basis, and private lessons?
What is the standard fee paid to dancers by the various restaurants in your community?
What do most singing telegram companies charge for the "bellygrams" they sell? What do other dancers charge for the private parties that want a show that’s longer and more polished than the typical bellygram?
If you sell merchandise, what do other people charge for comparable items—not just vendors who sell to belly dancers, but also those who sell to the general public? For example, if you’re going to sell mugs with an adorable cartoon of a snake on them, find out the price of novelty mugs at gift shops in your local mall, as well as what other belly dance vendors charge for similar items.

Next, compare yourself to the skill level of the other dancers who are working in your community. Are you better than them, about the same, or not as good? If you are significantly better than them, you may be able to get away with charging more than they do. If you’re about the same, then you’ll certainly want to charge the same.

If you are not as good as other dancers your community, maybe it’s best if you initially stick to doing only free public service shows: community events, nursing homes, etc. Whatever you do, don’t fall into the trap of saying, "Since I’m not as good, I’ll charge less than everyone else." That is a Bad Thing! Undercutting the fees of other dancers will make you an outcast in your dance community, pull the pricing scale down for everybody, and further reduce the respect that employers have for dancers. Don’t do it! It’s much better to get your performing experience in the free venues, and then later start charging the same amount as other seasoned dancers once you reach a comparable skill level!

Place

Make yourself visible! That's what Place is all about. In the retail industry, companies who sell toilet paper and computer software pay the stores thousands of dollars to put their products in a prominent display called an "end cap" at the end of a row or place them at eye level. Book publishers pay stores a large amount to place their books flat on the shelf so that the full cover shows instead of just the spine. This merchandising works! To be successful, you have to be seen by the people you hope will send money your way.

So how do you place yourself for optimal success?

Dancing regularly in a restaurant is one way to do it. People who see you there may think of you later when they want to hire a dancer. Try to get the owner of the restaurant to let you place tent cards or flyers on the tables with promotional information about you. After you’ve performed, put on a caftan and stop briefly by each table to say hello to the diners and thank them for coming to see your show—this provides an opportunity for them to ask for your card.

If you teach, instead of renting studio space on your own and advertising, think about teaching under the auspices of a local adult education program. Admittedly, you’ll have less control over your pay and your schedule, but they will advertise your classes for you to an audience that would otherwise be harder for you to reach.

If you aspire to offering your product on a regional, national, or worldwide level, write articles regularly for the belly dance magazines that circulate to that wide audience. Put up a web site that has information people will enjoy reading so much that they tell their friends about it. Travel to belly dance festivals that are in other parts of your country to perform or sell your merchandise.

Promotion

Most people think of advertising when they think of Promotion. Although advertising is one aspect of promotion, there’s much more to it than that. In the consumer products world of selling pet food and laundry detergent, promotion may involve putting a coupon into the local advertising circular that offers a small discount on the purchase price of the product. Another promotional activity, frequently used by shampoo manufacturers, could be distributing free samples.

Think about how you can translate those ideas into promoting your own product. For example, you might offer to do a free show at a fundraiser for your local battered women’s shelter in hopes that the people who see you there may want to hire you at your standard price for other shows. Instead of just putting an ad with your picture and phone number in your local belly dance newsletter, you might include a coupon for $5 off a class with you. Some teachers have a policy of offering the first class for free to prospective students. The idea is to make it easy for people to get a taste of what you have to offer, in hopes that they will then become a regular customer.

In Summary

There is much more to being a "professional" than dancing well and proclaiming yourself to be one. Think of your teaching, performing, or vending as an overall "product", and let that lead you into thinking about how you can apply the methods used for selling toilet paper, computer software, fast food, and other items to the "general public". Since very few dancers think in these terms when they decide to pursue a professional career, you'll give yourself an edge by looking at things from this business perspective.

Shira has a master’s degree in business administration, and has worked as a marketing professional in the high-tech industry for 7 years. She enjoys looking for ways to apply her professional business background to dancing.