Each week, we seek expert advice to help a small or medium-sized business overcome a key issue.
First came the decline of print media, and then the fall of message-board culture. By 2011, quality concert listings were hard to come by in Toronto and other cities. Most existing sites listed only handpicked shows or used automatic Web-scraping programs.
For a trio of entrepreneurs with a stake in local music, this was an opportunity. Toronto promoter Mark Pesci, musician Chris Slorach and computer whiz Greg Sullivan launched the concert listings site Just Shows that fall.
Within months, the site became the go-to source for listings in Toronto, and soon after that, cities across Canada. The three punk-influenced business partners see their undertaking as more community tool than cash cow, but could it be more than that?
After booking punk shows in Toronto for more than five years, in 2011 Mr. Pesci was more than familiar with Mr. Slorach, a scene stalwart who played bass in the now-critically acclaimed band METZ. In February of that year the two lamented the recent loss of music-community message board Stillepost. “We realized that if we wanted the same thing, there were probably others that did as well. And somebody had to do it,” Mr. Pesci says now.
Their long-time friend Mr. Sullivan came aboard soon after, and JustShows.com launched that September. Word got around, and visitors doubled every few months. Concert promotion is an industry built on contacts, and as the partners reached out to colleagues around the country, the opportunity to grow became apparent. It expanded to new cities – Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver, Halifax and more – and visitors kept streaming in. Traffic, Mr. Sullivan says, levelled off around the spring of 2014.
The team isn’t worried about competitors. Most, they say, are single-city services, bogged down with site-slowing features. Or they contain poorly curated information gathered by Web-scraping tools. And they consider big American competition such as Oh My Rockness as friends who won’t encroach on their territory.
Today, the site is a lightly ad-supported national hub where fans can find everything from arena-rock bonanzas to do-it-yourself house shows.
But keeping it updated is a pest. With a mix of self-sold ads and Google AdWords, the founders make enough money to occasionally pay someone to add shows. But lately, Mr. Slorach has been updating the site from the road, and it’s becoming a grind. “I love that the site exists, but I’m sick of the manual entry,” he says.
Each of the partners work related full-time jobs: Mr. Pesci books shows at Toronto’s Adelaide Hall, Mr. Slorach both plays and promotes concerts, and Mr. Sullivan is a Web designer in Vancouver. They want Just Shows to remain hand-curated, but they need money to flow in to reduce the workload.
They’ve considered making it easier for promoters to submit their own listings, or trying to partner with affiliates such as Amazon or iTunes so users can easily hear artists’ music. But they also don’t want to slow down the site. “In order to further expand, and to see any reward out of the site we put a lot of work into, we need to be able to monetize,” Mr. Pesci says.
The Challenge: How can Just Shows make enough money to better sustain itself?
THE EXPERTS WEIGH IN
Larry Plummer, assistant professor of entrepreneurship, Ivey Business School, University of Western Ontario, London, Ont.
You do a good job of connecting fans with music; now, maybe the link can go both ways. While Taylor Swift doesn’t need help connecting with fans, younger and newer acts do. This is especially true in this age of label-less Internet sensations. One suggestion is to generate targeted lists of fans by genre and then allow bands to use these lists for a reasonable fee. You’re halfway there by allowing users to subscribe to weekly e-mail listings.
Maybe give music fans the option to subscribe to specific lists, like classical, punk, ska and country, and ask them, “Would you like to receive updates on upcoming acts in this category?” Then you can tell bands, “We’ll help you connect to the people that want to hear you.” As long as you focus on your passion for music, respect fans’ privacy and don’t overcharge the bands for access, this could generate some modest new revenue.
Bob Nunn, owner of the Marketing Garage, a digital-focused marketing consultancy, Aurora, Ont.
Here are four quick wins to boost performance. First, they can boost conversion by adding big, bold buttons to the home page and the shows page to make the action they want visitors to take more obvious, similar to Oh My Rockness. More pages viewed equals more money from advertisers. Then they can make their site stickier by emphasizing the e-mail subscription button, making it more compelling to sign up. Not only is this another channel to sell to advertisers, but it will stimulate return visits.
They can also make the site more addictive. Add a review system where people can rate concerts they’ve been to, show how many bands they’ve supported – maybe they can earn “rock stars” – and tag people they went to the show with. “Gamifying” the site will increase return visits and spread fame. Finally, they can nurture fans. They’re posting regularly on Twitter but ignoring more than 1,000 fans on Facebook. Tools like Hootsuite allow you to simultaneously post to multiple social sites and schedule your posts ahead of time so that Chris can do it on the road between gigs.
Marc Lafrance, director of product management and member services, Canadian Real Estate Association, which runs REALTOR.ca, Ottawa
One of our greatest successes came from developing national data standards, simplifying and standardizing how our partners electronically send their listings to REALTOR.ca. For you to grow the site and make more money to help take care of the heavy lifting, I suggest you start by looking at the back end of your technology.
Develop it to accept data feeds from other concert listing services and make it easy for artists, promoters or venues to input the data themselves. Once you have this process running smoothly, you may be able to redistribute the listings for a fee, for example, populating a local tourism board’s website, or the Facebook pages of various venues.
Another suggestion is to invest in analytics to help determine who visits your site, and see what they’re looking at and what they like or dislike. Look at optimizing results via seach-engine optimization. You’ll need that data when you start looking for strategic partners who can add interesting content. Finally, in addition to Google advertising, you might consider premium placement. That is, placing a sponsored banner or other content for a fee, in a preferred area.
Also, build relationships with partners, such as promoters or artist management firms, and get them on board by offering a service that fills their needs. For example if your service allows a band to input its tour dates, and that feeds the venues websites, the band and the venue’s Facebook pages, you may have a winner on your hands.
THREE THINGS THE COMPANY COULD DO NOW
Create genre-focused e-mail lists
Give bands the chance to pay to reach Just Shows’s lucrative user base.
Be bolder
Adjust the site’s visual features to compel visitors to stick around.
Partner up
Find partners to whom they can distribute their listings to for a fee.
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Interviews have been edited and condensed.