I recently received a letter from a chain of hotels giving details of their wedding fairs (or fayres) for this year. The cost of attending with a stall was between £200 & £300 depending on the hotel.

Personally I only attend the ones where they don't charge and I do receive the odd booking from them but I wouldn't consider paying out the equivalent of a gig to stand around on a sunday afternoon in the hope that I might get another one out of it.

Has anyone else tried this method of promotion & what were the results?

Paul S

This sort of direct marketing is now becoming the norm for these sorts of Events, they often start the letter with "You have been recommended to us", or "As a professional Entertainer we would like you to attend", all this is corporate B/S for "We've got your details from a directory", so don't be flattered, or feel obligated to attend .

I have attended many of these over the years, but I've never paid more than £40, and that was for a 2 day event at a local hotel. I would NEVER pay £200 - £300 to attend.

On average I get around 8 - 10 enquiries from each event, around the same as I get per fortnight from my website!, which puts it all into prospective - especially if you are considering paying hundred's of pounds for the privilidge!.

What you may like to ask the organisers, is whether you are the only disco in attendance, if you are 1 of 10 roadshows attending, (and it is highly unlikely that you are the only one sent that letter!), then you are not even getting sole service representation for your money which makes the chance of getting booked even slimmer!.

I've also found when I've attended the event, that they automatically assume that I will allow them the use of my P.A for announcements and music for the Fashion show . I always agree - providing that they pay the hire fee, which by some strange coincidence is also the same as the attendance fee.

I have attended wedding fares in the past (at htels who reccomend me for a lot of work), and never paid. I offer my PA for them to use.

my record for one day was 25 confirmed bookings.

the hotel were i do a lot of business expects me to do there 2 wedding fairs a year for free. and guess what i do. only because the amount of work i get from the is good but any bookings i get on the day are direct to me so i can normally get my rate and not the hotels imposed fee.

so for me 8 hours a year is worth it.

Wedding Exhibitions or 'Fares / Fairs' are probably priced different all over the Kingdom - same as DJ 'rates'!

At one venue, a former agent was charged over £300 for the day - not bad if you're getting the work (he had 4 DJ's on the stand by the way).

This year, I'm sharing a DJ stand at a cost of £140 each. If it works - great, but like any good business knows - you take gambles - at a risk. So you either take a risk and are prepared to 'throw' the money, or you 'win' it back with a booking!!! :)

Professional Wedding DJ Entertainment for Essex, Kent and London areas.

If you have £300 to invest in advertising your business, there are far more effective ways of using it, than a Wedding Fayre.

Many people think that local radio advertising is prohibitively expensive, but in fact its not . I once paid £210+vat for an advertising slot on the local commercial station, it ran for a few days, and was surprisingly good value for money.

I was lucky, in that I already had contacts in the radio industry so I avoided the com-prod charges of voicing the ad which reduced the fee by quite a bit!. However there are radio presenters on this forum, who may be willing to voice you an Ad - for a suitable fee .

In my own opinion £200 to attend a Wedding Fayre is bordering on rip off city. The best form of advertising is to introduce yourself to the local manager/ess of the pubs / function rooms in your area, and sell your business, work will not automatically come to you! - why do you think that companies employ salespeople? - to go visting customers!, the same applies to your business.

You'll be surprised at how many people have tried this and found new regular bookings (see other threads!), its a common fact that most people find it more difficult to fob you off when you visit them face to face, so you are more likely to get work, by visting potential clients, than to rely on phoning them or sending them a letter. £200, buys a hell of a lot of drinks as you go around promoting your business.

Chris, You need to move down south my boy.
The last wedding fayre I did in 1992, yes 1992 cost me £240, I hate to think what thecost now.

Our local ILR station, when I enquired back in 98', their starting price was £600+vat+production costs.

Now tell me i'm over priced, I actually think I'm the poor relation down here. Blow it, next year £400 a night.

on a local station here in Lancashire i was quoted from £11 per 20 second slot in the evening 6 till 12

.... having been established for a very long time, I find I dont need to advertise in any way, shape or form - my clients and guests attending functions do this for me. OK, For those who have only been established for a couple of years it is a foot in the door to do a wedding fair - but if you already resident for a hotel, and you have a good relationship with them, I am sure that they will politely tell the organisers of these fairs that the hotels resident DJ will already have his equipment set up and of course it will be available for the DJ to make announcements during the fair - this should work!
Personally, I would never consider paying to advertise but perhaps I am lucky in that I dont have to.

QUOTE (tonyj @ May 12 2003, 10:29 PM)

on a local station here in Lancashire i was quoted from £11 per 20 second slot in the evening 6 till 12

Yep and its well worth the money. £200 will get you almost 20 ad's on a local station in Lancashire - thats going to reach far more people than a Wedding Fayre!. I got about 8 Ad's for my money and I thought I was doing well!. It did pay for the ad three times over though .

Mikeee, I'm not surprised you pay that much for your Radio Ad's!, everything is more expensive in the South!. I don't know how much your Local paper charge, but I can run a series of business card sized ad's in the local paper which covers 3 towns, for £38 + Vat. for 4 ads (1 Month).

and tell me how much you pay for a pint again

Look ere! Our beer may be more expensive down here but least we don't have to feed t whippets or rubbish like that!

Before I moved to Essex, I was working for an agent covering the South East Area.
The work started to drop off so I decided to 'go it alone' and go back to being independant.

It was very, very hard at first - venues knew the agent - but hadn't heard of me, and, not wanting to be accused of trying to pinch clients (I'm a bit of a good sport) decided to advertise in Yellow Pages to generate enquiries.

I have no complaints about the 'gamble' I took, as the work received over the year has been justified for my circumstances. But it was a gamble.
Also, I do not advertise locally to where I live (Essex) but instead in the London / Kent area which I previously covered and was used too.
Yellow Pages is not cheap at all, but can work out cheaper long term, say, as opposed to advertising in the local rag every week in the South East area.

The only gripe I have with YP is that they give you an introductory offer, but after that there's no incentives or deals really offered.

(In fact - their new sales 'offer' is nothing short of rubbish really!!)

Why is everything so darn expensive in the South East? No one has any money left and are mortgaged up to the hilt!!!

Chris you wanted to know about my favourite subject, BEER.

In the CIU / WMC / BL it's about £1.80 a pint, in the pubs, £2.40 a pint, I don't know about Lager, as I don't drink continental P water.

Remember, the price you pay for radio advertising is relative to it's location and coverage area. If you want to advertise on Capital FM expect to pay top dollar, if you want to advertise on 2BR in Burnley expect to pay a lot less, pick an RSL somewhere and you'll pay 50 quid or whatever.

Have any of you thought about advertising on hospital radio? Hundreds of attentive ears listen to hospital radio, sponser them, advertise on their roadshow trailer or whatever. You be surprised what you get back out of it. I was

QUOTE

Have any of you thought about advertising on hospital radio?

Hmm, I worked on HR for almost 8 years...I think the entire presenters got 2 phoned in requests in that period . Even with ward request runners, each show only got around 20 listeners. It all depends on the size of the hospital and the quality of the distribution system.

Most H.R still rely on hard wired 100v line distribution systems, which are total C*ap (Most of my time there was spent servicing them!). Very few people are going to put up with Mono, Low quality output radio, when they can dig out their personal MP3 Player, or even watch satellite TV in some Hospitals!..

I'm not rubbishing HR, if you have a system which uses inductive loop, AM or FM low power broadcast systems then you may be in with a chance. However having worked on HR in Presenter / Engineer / Committee positions, I would not pay to advertise on one.

OB (Outside Broadcasts) are another matter entirely, advertising on these are worthwhile. Some H.R do require the donation, or sponsorship of Disco / P.A equipment in order to cover these events. It is very worthwhile to "lend" your P.A equipment, CD Players etc to an H.R in return for some advertising on their stage / vehicle since many local events are well attended by the general public.

If there was an OB in Essex - someone would probably nick the wheels of the trailor and jack it up on Bricks!!!

Seriously, I think as more of the newer hospitals are built with fancy radio connectors above the bed and remotes, etc...I believe the HR radio days are sadly numbered.

Before I worked for a IRS in Kent, I did a 2 year stint on HR - and then the blo*dy hospital was to be pulled down! Short BC life indeed!

But to a main point, I agree with Chris, HR advertising is probably a waste of cash (in some area's)

QUOTE (discodirect @ May 16 2003, 02:06 AM)

If there was an OB in Essex - someone would probably nick the wheels of the trailor and jack it up on Bricks!!!

A few years a go I compared a touring show for the Daily Mirror, we attended about 60 county shows promoting the paper and their car racing team. it was me and two dancers 6 shows a day.

we had a winbago with a stage in front and a PA system all powered by generators. other companies had similar set ups.

when we were at the St Helens town show, Cellnet were performing next to us, half way through their show all the power died, we looked behind their rig to see an old escort van being driven away at high speed £5,000 generator in the back cables trailing behind

LOL - The old Essex Motor rides off into the sunset!!!

Have just been quoted £180 + VAT for a spot at a wedding fair in September, usual no of stands 45- no indication of if I am the only mobile there, price includes a business card size advert in the local paper promoting the fayre.

Is it worth it ...................

Cris

NO!

I am doing the Soutrh West's largest wedding fayre, in Exeter, at a cost of £465 for a 2m x 1m set. Appartently one of the best in the country, will let you know how it went in October
!,