Were you active in your marketing after the price change or did you just coast, letting the new price tier clients find you? I bumped my price about 50% this year and it just went to crickets. I was too scared to leave it and backed off.
Many more potential brides and grooms are using Thumbtack than ever before. The pricing is much lower for obtaining a DJ on there than any where else when it comes to weddings.
I just checked my insights on Thumbtack. ...I have not booked anything on there, and been using the service for about 2 months now. They now have a "Instant Match" Service where you use present prices, and prospects go on there, and get instant price quotes. Up to 15 of them it looks like! It seems to be anywhere from 6 to 15 different quotes per prospect.
I can check my insights into each quote. They don't give you exact prices others are quoting, but the insight let's you know which DJ had the highest price, and who had the lowest. It also let's you know which DJs the prospect contacted, IF ANY.
I noticed that the very lowest priced DJ is often NOT contacted by the prospect. There must be poor profiles, or something turning prospects off from going with the very lowest price quote most of the time. The highest price quote is also almost NEVER contacted.
It seems the DJs who get contacted are usually the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th lowest. ...Sometimes it seems the 2nd highest price is contacted by the prospect.
I am learning that my price is WAY HIGHER than most other DJs in my market on there.
My average quote on 450 quotes was $1,127. That includes low priced parties. If it only had wedding quotes factored in on there, my average would be higher.
Other DJs average a quote of $577. ...I am pretty much double the average DJ price on there. ...I'm also often the highest price quote.
They have a bar graph showing other quotes in relation to your own. I recently quoted $1,850 on a 7 hour long wedding on there. There was one quote about 1/4 the price of mine for a 7 hour wedding. One quote was about 4/5 the price of mine. Every other quote was a little less than half of my price quote.
In 2 months zero bookings on there. ...Sure many of the leads are bogus. Others are just looky loos and have no intention of booking a DJ on there. But some are real as well. Probably 30% to 40% of the leads on Thumbtack are going to be legit potential leads.
...My point is that Working Internet Leads is not going to fair well for you now that you raised your price a good bit.
You need to have referrals from wedding planners, previous clients who speak highly of you to their friends looking for a DJ, or Venue managers.
The higher your price point, the fewer prospects you will get directly from the internet.
My Sept. 15th wedding came from a wedding wire search. They procrastinated on booking a DJ, and I was lucky enough to get it booked just over 30 days out ...The Sept. 8th wedding came as a referral from the venue, and I don't think that couple shopped around much. They were an older couple in their 50s. Sept. 1st and Sept 2nd both came as referrals from Wedding Planners directly to their couples they were working with, and both of those were nice paying weddings for me.
My September 29th wedding came as a suggestion from another bride to the groom. They had 3 DJ companies suggested to them by different people. They ended up booking me, and it's through another company that got the referral from a previous client. (My name was not suggested, the other company's name was suggested, and I was the DJ that ended up getting suggested for a phone call with the client because their current DJs were all booked already. Had a great conversation with the groom, and he was comfortable booking me!)
There are now so many DJs competing for business on the Internet that you will notice your bookings decline due to that from here on out. You need referrals. If you are relying on the Internet to generate business for you, then you will realize your prices have to come down in order to get back to booking more of those internet generated prospects.
I am not going back on my prices which is why I am going back to networking a lot more, and establishing working relationships with planners once again.[/QUOTE]