Barbershopping: Online Marketing for Chapters and Quartets

by Dave Baker

• Pre-reading: How Search Engines Work
• Introduction
  
  • Why Market Online?
  • A Tale of Two Quartets
  • Thinking Like a Marketing Wonk, Part I
• 1. Creating Your Website
  
  • Simpler is better
  • Stay on task
  • When in doubt, emulate
  • Test, test, test
• 2. Optimizing Your Website
  
  • Optimizing content
  • Landing pages
  • Optimizing code
• 3. Generating Traffic
  
  • Thinking Like a Marketing Wonk, Part II
  • Getting Started with AdWords
  • Managing Your AdWords Campaign
  • Refining Even Further
• 4. Other Online Marketing
• 5. Web-centric Offline Strategy
  
  • Pass-along Cards
  • Chorus Shows
  • Quartet Gigs
• 6. Customer service
  
  • Easy Contact
  • Be Available
  • Pass the Baton
• Conclusion

All things are never equal, but all things being equal, online marketing is quickly becoming the most effective method of reaching a barbershop audience in a very targeted, cost-efficient way. Let's face it: few barbershop choruses or quartets have the ad dollars to really penetrate traditional marketing venues such as television, radio and newspapers. We can sometimes get freebie mentions in the "Happenings" or "Community Calendar" section of our local newspapers, but most of us don't have the means to command a full-time advertising presence in a local paper, or on television or radio.

The cost of print ads keep increasing in spite of the fact that newspaper readership is in decline. Broadcast and cable television are losing audience every year as many people turn to the Internet as a primary source of entertainment. That's not to say that we should give up on traditional media altogether. But with the Internet's continuing maturity and growth, choruses and quartets in the Barbershop Harmony Society can't afford not to exploit this critical medium.

There are plenty of reasons to market online. Just in case you need some convincing, here are just a few:

• It's highly targeted. You can't very well tell your local newspaper, "Will you please print my ad in the newspapers of just those people who are interested in barbershop music." With online advertising, you can target your advertising in this way.
• It's budget-friendly. You can't tell a radio station, "I want to just target people who like a cappella harmony, but I only want to spend two bucks a day." They'd laugh in your face. But with certain types of online marketing, two dollars a day can actually buy quite a lot.
• Little leads to big. The interconnectedness of the Internet gets you a good bang for your buck. On the radio, a 15-second spot leads to … the next 15-second spot. On the Internet, a cheap 3-line text ad can lead to your entire chorus or quartet website, complete with bios, performance schedules, full contact information, and so on.
• It's a much younger demographic. One of the often-repeated mantras in the society is that we need to get younger. The Internet is where the younger people are. A visit to the Westminster Chorus' shrine on myspace.com shows how effective a solid online presence can be in promoting a barbershop group to younger people. (That's not to say that there aren't plenty of 50ish and up guys online.)
• We got sights, we got sounds. If we want to help spread the word about barbershop harmony and preserve this style of music we love so much, what better venue than the Internet, where we can shower our audience with video and audio of people actually singing barbershop?

The purpose of this marketing tutorial is to help chorus and quartet personnel harness the power of the Internet to further their groups' marketing goals. Hang on tight—there's a lot to cover.

Quartet A, the Newsprint Ramblers, wants to promote its annual singing valentines fund-raiser, so the members decide to advertise in their local newspaper, the Hometown Times. This paper has a daily circulation of 250,000. They pay $150 for a newspaper ad that runs the week before Valentine's Day. During its one-week run, the ad generates 19 calls from readers, resulting in 15 gigs at $45 per valentine. (Note: $150 is a very conservative single-placement figure in many markets.) The Newsprint Ramblers generated a total of $675 in revenue for the quartet with a cost of $150 for the Hometown Times newspaper ad. More than 20% of their revenue went to pay for the ad, and it took more than three gigs just to break even on their advertising.

Quartet B, Sound Byte, advertises their singing valentines through an Internet search engine. So they set up an AdWords campaign on Google and sit back and wait. In the month up to and including Valentine's Day, their ads are displayed 2,400 times to people searching for terms like "singing telegrams," "singing valentines," "Valentine's Day gift ideas" and so on. Forty-five people in this quartet's home town click on these ads, and 15 end up ordering singing valentines, at $45 per valentine. Sound Byte also generated $675, but spent just $14.85 on their entire advertising campaign, which lasted over a month. The average cost for the 45 clicks was 33 cents per click. Their online advertising cost them just 2.2% of their total revenue, and they had more than paid for the ads before they hit the tag on their first time through "Heart of My Heart."

These examples are not just sample illustrations. In reality, Quartet B wasn't really called Sound Byte. It was actually my own quartet, Equinox. And the numbers weren't entirely accurate—in reality, we charged $50-60 per gig. Cha-ching!

If you want to use the Internet to promote your chorus or quartet, you need more than a snazzy website—you need an online marketing plan. So just for a moment, put down your pitch pipe and disengage your conscience, because you need to think like a marketing person.

We like to spout platitudes about barbershop music as an art form, a uniquely American genre of music, a really cool hobby, or even a way of life. When we're planning our online marketing strategy, though, we have to think of barbershop as a product. There are consumers out there who want our product—whether they know it yet or not—and our job is to find these people (or help them find us) and "sell" them some barbershop.

We also have to think of ourselves and our "brand." Whether it's a quartet, a chorus, a division or district, or the society in general, marketing requires building and promoting a brand. Like it or not, that's what the society was trying to do in migrating from "SPEBSQSA" to the "Barbershop Harmony Society." (It's also one of the major reasons for pushing the much more memorable www.barbershop.org over the arcane www.spebsqsa.org.)

So one of the first things to do as you begin formulating your strategy is to think about your brand. Ask yourself questions like these:

• What is the name of the quartet or chorus, and what does that name suggest? Do you have a logo or logotype, icon or mascot that you use with your advertising?
• What is the "personality" of the group? Are you a very serious, very determined contest-bound chorus or an informal group that emphasizes friends and fun over perfection? Are you a comedy quartet or do you focus primarily on religious repertoire?
• Aside from your mothers, spouses, girlfriends and so on, has anyone ever heard of you? Are you an established group or a recent startup?
• Do you have any competition that you need to consider when marketing in your area? How will you position yourselves versus other choruses or quartets in your market? How about versus other non-barbershop groups?

Take some time to think about who you are and what you want to do with your group. If you think a name change is going to be necessary to better represent your group, now is the time to do it. Since we're talking about online marketing, now's probably a good time to see whether the domain you want ("YourNameHere.com") is available. Head over to NetworkSolutions (www.networksolutions.com) and use their "Find a domain" lookup tool to see whether GenericQuartet.com or GenericChorus.com is taken. (As of this writing, both are available!) Then try your own group's name and see if someone's already grabbed it. If so, you might consider a name change to accommodate the available domains.

Now that you know who you are, the next part of your online marketing plan is a statement of what you want to accomplish. Here are some possible goals:

• Increase visibility—garner more name recognition, or brand equity, in the community
• Grow membership—increase membership by X singers or Y percent in Z period of time
• Get gigs—increase distribution of your "product" through increased bookings
• Attract more to shows—another example of increased distribution of product, except that you don't go to the consumers; the consumers come to you

Once you have your goals in mind (or better yet, on paper), you need to come up with your online marketing plan. There are several major tasks to consider:

1. Creating Your Website
2. Optimizing Your Website
3. Generating Traffic
4. Other Online Marketing
5. Web-centric Offline Strategy
6. Customer service

We'll talk about each element in turn, giving tips and ideas for both planning and executing each.

A website doesn't have to be a big, expensive thing. You might decide to create it yourself, or to have it designed by a friend. It might make more sense for you to spend a couple hundred or even a couple thousand dollars to have a site created by a professional. Whatever the site ends up costing you, it will be worthless unless it accomplishes the goals you set forth for it. So careful planning is necessary.

There are a few things you'll need to get started:

1. A host. In order for other people to see your website, it has to be on a public web server (a computer running special software that "serves" your site to anyone who visits it). Since most people don't own their own web servers, they have to rent space on someone else's. If you don't know someone who can "host" your site, ask around to find someone local—chances are someone you know has had good results with a hosting company in the area.
2. A domain. We've touched on this already. This is YourQuartetName.com or YourChorusName.org or whatever you choose. Having your own domain is much preferable to "piggy-backing" on someone else's domain, where your website would require the dreaded slash, as in "www.SomeoneElsesSite.com/YourSite". You can get your own domain through a domain registrar such as godaddy.com or networksolutions.com. Keep your web hosting people on speed dial when you register your domain, because the registrar will need some information about the web server to complete the registration.
3. An e-mail account. One great thing about having your own domain is that you can arrange with your web hosting company to receive mail through that domain. So you can be "dave@equinoxquartet.com" instead of "davesingstenor_12345@hotmail.com" or something equally embarrassing. Remember—this is your brand.
4. Content. Before you begin developing your site, take stock of any "content" you might already have. This might include chorus or quartet logos, photos, promotional text, and even show or contest audio (though be careful about copyright laws).

Once you've got a web host, a domain name, an appropriate e-mail account, and all of your content as a starting point, you're ready to develop your site. This is not the place to learn how to create a website. If you don't know how to design and execute a site, you can either learn how to do it yourself or find someone else to do it. If you choose the first route, there are lots of online resources that will help you learn. (Just do a Google search on "how to create a website" and you'll see what I mean.) But whether you do the work yourself or have it done, please keep these things in mind:

Avoid lots of in-your-face graphics, animated GIFs, Java applets, distracting background images, and complex designs. Avoid frames and excessively segmented layouts. The more words you put on the site, the less likely it is that people will read them. And make sure the words you do use are very relevant to the topic at hand.

And one more thing—every website on the planet is continually under construction. Please don't state the obvious with a big yellow-and-black "Under Construction" banner. That's just so 1996.

This dovetails with the simplicity mantra. Keep in mind your goals in mind, and design your pages specifically to accomplish those goals. Make sure that someone who stumbles across your site can understand in less than 5 seconds what it is all about. If your main goal is to attract new chorus members, make sure your rehearsal time and location are front and center. If you're merely trying to get gigs for your quartet, make sure people don't have to hunt around to find your contact information. A big "Book Us Now" button might be appropriate.

One of the best ways to design a website is to make a list of the sites you like and the sites you don't like. Figure out what elements of the "good sites" appeal to you, and what elements of the "bad sites" turn you off. It might be the navigation scheme, the visual layout, the color scheme, or the use of screen real estate. Note that these don't have to barbershop sites. Any site can be fodder for good design ideas. Alternatively, you can just buy a template from a site like www.templatemonster.com, or download one for free from www.oswd.org.

Remember that you're not the only person who will be viewing your website, so make sure you test on a variety of platforms and browsers to make sure everything looks correct. At the very least, test on Internet Explorer and Firefox on Windows, and Safari and Internet Explorer on the Mac. Test with your monitor set at 800x600 pixels as well as at higher resolutions, and test with different color levels (8-bit "256 colors", 16-bit "high color", 32-bit "true color").

If you don't already understand the inner workings of Internet search engines, read the companion piece, "How Search Engines Work". It will help you better understand why optimization is so important, and why you should tweak your site's content to make it more "attractive" to search engines. The more optimized your content is, the greater the likelihood that your site will rank well in search results. This increases your chances of being found when someone goes looking.

A website is just a collection of text files, graphics files, and other media files (like audio, video, Flash, and so on) that are combined together by a visitor's web browser program (like Internet Explorer, Safari or Firefox) and displayed in a window. The graphics and other "rich media" in your site have very little effect on your search engine rankings. This means you need to focus on content and code, both of which are in the HTML files in your site. The content is the text that is actually displayed on the screen (that people can see). The code is the "invisible stuff" that tells your visitor's web browser how to display everything.

There are lots of things that you (or your web developer) can do to both the content and code of your site to help increase your rankings. Note that this is just the basics. Search engine optimization (SEO) has grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry as companies and organizations battle for the lucrative top slots in the major search engines. But even though we're selling barbershop here, it can't hurt us to think like a big-time web developer.

It's time for some market research. The challenge: go back to your goals and revisit the whole purpose of your site. Then put yourself in your customer's shoes and reverse engineer the process of searching for the site you are building.

Example 1:

If your site's main goal is to increase membership for your chorus, the Main Street Minstrels (formerly known as the Corn Country Cavalcade) in the town of Spitwater, Indiana. Let's brainstorm a bit about your customer and jot a few assumptions:

1. The customer is a man who likes to sing (or friend or family member of a man who likes to sing).
2. The customer may or may not know about barbershop music.
3. The customer may or may not know about the Main Street Minstrels.
4. The customer is looking for information about your chorus specifically, about barbershop choruses in general, and/or about men's choruses or other performing groups in the greater Spitwater metropolitan area.

While it looks like we don't know anything about our customer, we actually know a lot. We just have to tailor the text of our pages to address the different variables so that the search engines will pick up on what our product is and what we have to offer. To address the assumptions above, we can brainstorm some keywords and key phrases that would help set our site apart from the others:

1. man, men, male, guy, guys, singing, performing, vocal, harmony, harmonize, harmonizing, entertaining, entertainment
2. barbershop, barbershop music, barbershopping, close harmony, four-part harmony, a cappella, quartet, barbershop quartet, Barbershop Harmony Society, SPEBSQSA
3. Main Street Minstrels, Corn Country Cavalcade, Spitwater, Indiana
4. barbershop chorus, men's chorus, a cappella singing group

Now comes the fun part: writing the content of your pages to maximize the keyword density. The secret is to "pack in" the keywords to the point where the search engine will associate them together and recognize your site's relevance in relation to these keywords that are important to you. We might create sentences like the following:

1. "Are you a guy who likes to sing? The Main Street Minstrels are the premiere men's singing group in Spitwater and the surrounding region. We sing four-part barbershop harmony and have a great time performing around town."
2. "Formerly known as the Corn Country Cavalcade, the Main Street Minstrels comprise the Spitwater chapter of the Barbershop Harmony Society (SPEBSQSA). We focus on vocal development, quality singing, and close harmony as we develop talents and friendships."
3. "More than just a men's chorus or a cappella singing group, the Main Street Minstrels are a brotherhood of barbershop singers dedicated to entertaining the Spitwater community."

The only caveat is that the copy should be written with the keywords packed in as tightly as possible, but should still be readable and feel more or less like natural English. (That is, as far as "marketingese" can be considered both "natural" and "English.")

Example 2

If your site's main goal is to get gigs for your quartet, the TestosterTones (from Mud Lick, Kentucky), you'll be targeting an entirely different customer. Here are a few assumptions:

1. The customer has an event (large or small) for which he or she wants entertainment, in or near Mud Lick, Kentucky, and the surrounding area.
2. The event might be large or small, formal or casual; it might be for a special occasion.
3. The customer may or may not be aware of barbershop music, the society, or the TestosterTones.

Based on those assumptions, here are some keywords we might suggest (and there would probably be more):

1. performing, performance, event, entertainment, entertain, audience, Mud Lick, Kentucky, book, booking, gig
2. concert, show, birthday greetings, birthday party, anniversary party, wedding entertainment, serenade, singing valentine, singing telegram, corporate events
3. TestosterTones, TestosterTones quartet, barbershop quartet, harmony, close harmony, a cappella, Barbershop Harmony Society, SPEBSQSA

So in the content of our quartet's site, we would include phrases like the following:

1. "The TestosterTones is a highly acclaimed quartet specializing in close a cappella harmony, singing songs in a variety of styles such as barbershop, doo-wop, pop and gospel. We are affiliated with the Barbershop Harmony Society (SPEBSQSA) and are the current novice quartet champs in the Mud Lick division."
2. "We are available to perform at a variety of events and concerts, and have serenaded crowds at birthday parties, anniversary parties, wedding receptions, corporate events and special Christmas programs."
3. "The TestosterTones quartet can be booked for special command performances such as singing telegrams, wedding proposals and birthday greetings. Please call for rates and repertoire suggestions."

The overall goal of search engine optimization is to make your site more attractive to search engines than other similar sites, thereby increasing your rankings in the search results. One trick for improving both organic and sponsored search results is to create pages optimized specifically for certain words or phrases.

If your group does singing valentines, you'll definitely want a special page about the service. It makes sense, then, to make sure that your singing valentines page has lots of singing-valentines-related keywords densely packed into the text, to help potential customers find you when they need you. In addition, it also makes sense to send traffic to your singing valentines page (as opposed to your "front page") when running a pay-per-click search engine campaign for singing valentines. See below for more information about this.

The content of your page is critical to SEO, but the code can be just as important. If someone else is developing your site, or if you're using a visual development program (like Microsoft FrontPage or Macromedia DreamWeaver or any of the other website development software tools), you may not know how to access the code underlying your web pages. It's a good idea to find out how, so you can use known techniques to improve your search engine rankings. Here are some code issues that you should pay attention to:

1. Avoid frames. While frames might seem like a good design shortcut, they can confuse search engines. Plus, you can do almost everything frames can do by using include files (server-side includes or SSI files) and cascading stylesheets (CSS).
2. Include redundant navigation. If your page-to-page navigation relies fancy-schmancy technology like imagemaps or javascript or Flash, make sure to include your navigation options somewhere else (like at the bottom of the page) in a basic text format. Search engine crawlers can't figure out these technologies, so they won't index anything that doesn't have a direct link.
3. Use a descriptive title. Make sure you have a title entry in within the head of your page. The title should be 50-80 characters long, and should accurately describe your page. Don't forget to include some of the keywords you already identified above, including the name of your group and a descriptive like "barbershop chorus" or "barbershop quartet."
4. Include "meta" content. Also in the head of your page, include both "description" and "keyword" entries. Experts recommend that you limit your description meta tag to under 250 characters, and your keywords meta tag to under 1024 characters. And don't attempt to "cheat" by including keywords that don't have anything to do with your site—some search engines penalize sites that do this.
5. Include "alt" content with images. For each image that isn't purely window dressing, include a brief description of the image in an "alt" element within the image's "img" tag. For example, if you have a photo of your chorus singing at a district competition, you might have something like <img src="chorusphoto.jpg" width="550" height="325" alt="The Great Southwestern Chorus of the Northeast competing at the 2006 NSE District competition">.
6. Use keywords in hyperlinks. Try to avoid the "click here" phenomenon. For example, if you have a link to contest scores, make sure the phrase "contest scores" is part of the link. Good: Here are the <a href="scores.html">2006 contest scores</a>. Also good: <a href="scores.html">Here are the 2006 contest scores</a>. Not good: For the 2006 contest scores, <a href="scores.html">click here</a>.
7. Use heading tags. Sometimes it seems easier just to apply styles to regular paragraph text, using font tags to change the color and size of the text to create headings. However, there is good evidence that using actual heading tags (<h1></h1>, <h2></h2>, <h3></h3>, and so on) can bring benefits in search engine rankings. Therefore, it's not just important to provide headings—make sure they contain your important keywords, so you can get full credit for them.

If you subscribe to the Field of Dreams school of web marketing—that "if you build it, they will come"—you'll need to disabuse yourself of that notion right now and forever. The truth is, if you build it and then don't do diddly, nobody will ever come, period.

So if you have a goal for your website (and you should) and accomplishing that goal requires people to actually visit the site (which it will), you'll have to find a way to get people to do just that. There are lots of things you can do to get traffic to your chorus or quartet website. Some efforts—such as increasing organic search engine traffic—take time and are mostly out of your control. Others, like pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, give you complete control and are nearly instantaneous. The downside of pay-per-click advertising is the "pay" part. The upside is that you determine how much you pay, both for the clicks themselves and for the campaign you're running.

In sales, it's the sale (exchanging money for a product) that is the ultimate goal of … well, of everything. In marketing, sales are still important, but the conversion is primary. The conversion is the event where a potential "customer" raises his hand and says, Here I am, guys—puh-leeeze let me…

• …come and audition for your chorus, pay money to join your chapter and the society, and help your chorus kick the individual butts of all 237 members (I'm rounding up here) of the Masters of Harmony at the next International competition.
• …hire your quartet to attempt to drown out the sound of clinking forks during the dessert course at my company's Christmas party.
• …give you my personal information so you can send me poorly crafted e-mails about all of your chorus' future performances, in perpetuity.

You can only measure the effectiveness of your website against how well it accomplishes its main task of conversion. If you're going to pay to increase traffic to your site, you have to decide how much each conversion is worth to your group. How much is a new member (especially a tenor or baritone) worth to your chorus? $20? $40? How much is a potential audience member worth to your chorus? $5? $10? How about a corporate Christmas gig? $10? Only by setting your tolerance for cost per conversion can you determine whether your online marketing is worth it.

Going back to the example mentioned at the top of this piece, Sound Byte's campaign cost $14.85 to generate 45 paid clicks (people who clicked on the ads in their Google search results). The 45 clicks resulted in 15 gigs, which comes to an overall cost of 99 cents per conversion for the campaign. That's definitely a tolerable cost per conversion.

For the purposes of this tutorial, we're going to talk about pay-per-click advertising through Google AdWords. Google commands a growing percentage of the search engine advertising space (at least 50% at the time of this writing, and probably even more as you read this). So it makes sense start with the search engine that can get you greatest exposure.

Besides a working website, the only other prerequisite to setting up a pay-per-click campaign is a credit card. You also have to be prepared to cover the charges that your campaign will incur. Reporting the charges is easy, so you'll be able to print a report showing the exact expenses so you can get reimbursed out of chapter or quartet funds.

Setting up an account with Google's AdWords is a little more involved than, say, buying a barbershop CD online, but a little less involved than doing your taxes. Here's how to get your account and campaign up and running:

1. Get started. Start by going to adwords.google.com. Click on the "Click to begin" button that appears under "Sign Up Now."
2. Pick the solution that's right for you. Google has recently added a "Starter Edition" of the AdWords service, but go ahead and choose the "Standard Edition" and click "Continue."
3. Target customers by language. If you're in the U.S. and Canada, select English. Otherwise, choose the language you want to use.
4. Target customers by location. One of the great features of AdWords is that it allows you to be very specific about who sees your ads. If you're a nationally known quartet and want to market to the entire United States, hooray for you!—choose "Countries and territories." In this example, we'll assume you're still fighting the good fight on a regional level and want to target a single metropolitan area and the surrounding vicinity. Click "Regions and cities" and then "Continue." (Have no fear: you can set up separate campaigns later that target different regions.)
5. Target customers by regions/cities. Now it's time to choose your cities. If your area appears on the list of "Available areas," just select the city/state from the list on the left and click the "Add" button to put it on the list on the right. If you're in a market not represented on the "Available areas" list, type both the city/cities and state, separated by a comma. You can add as many as you want. Click "Continue" when you're ready to go on.
6. Create an ad. Now it's time to actually create your first ad. Don't get overly concerned about getting the absolute perfect ad copy written here—you'll have plenty of opportunities to edit the ad later. But give it a good effort. The fields automatically enforce the character limit, so you'll probably have to work at it a little to get the counts just right. Note also the difference between the "Display URL" and the destination URL. The Display URL is the web address that is actually displayed below the ad. The Destination URL can differ from the main web address, and is usually a specific page (see "Landing Pages," above) optimized for accomplishing your goal. Click "Continue" to go to the next page.
7. Choose keywords. Remember the keywords you came up with when you optimized your site? Get them out again, because you'll need them. On this page, you enter the specific words and phrases you want to target in your ad. Put yourself in your customers' shoes for a minute and try to anticipate the specific words that they'll be searching for. You can even stray a bit off the beaten path, too. For example, if you sing at a lot of weddings, you might bid on "wedding bands" even though you're not a band. Someone searching for "wedding bands" would see your ad, and have the option to consider your quartet in lieu of the guy with the bad hair playing the electric piano. Get as creative as you want here—it's easy to turn keywords and phrases on and off later.
8. Choose a currency. US Dollars is the default, but adjust as needed.
9. What is the most you would like to spend, on average, per day? This does not lock you into a commitment, it just gets you started. It also does not guarantee that you'll spend this much. If you want to spend about $10 a week, start with about $1.50 per day. You'll be able to adjust it later on.
10. What is the maximum you are willing to pay each time someone clicks on your ad? This sets the starting cost per click (CPC), and once again it's just a starting point. Start with $0.05 or $0.10 per click as a starting point, then click "Continue."
11. Review your selections. This screen just summarizes everything you've done up to this point.You'll probably want to un-check the box that tells Google to send you announcements (unless you want to actually read them). Select an appropriate response to the "How did you first hear about Google AdWords" question, and click "Continue to Sign Up."

At this point, get yourself a cup of coffee and a doughnut. You've earned it. When you're done, wash your hands and continue:

1. Set Up Account. If you have a Gmail account, click the top option (under "Which best describes you?"). If not, click the bottom option and it'll prompt you to create a new account with an e-mail address and a password. Follow the onscreen directions to get through this page. One way or another, Google will send you an e-mail containing a link.
2. Verify E-mail. Check your e-mail and click on the link provided. You should get a "New E-mail Address Verified" screen. Below this you'll see a link to "Google AdWords." this will take you to your account. You can always get to your account by going to adwords.google.com and entering your account login (e-mail address and password) in the fields on the right.
3. Campaign Management. Once you're logged into your new account, you'll get a message saying that "Your account hasn't been activated." Click on the "Billing Preferences" link in that message box, or click the "My Account" tab and then the "Billing Preferences" link.
4. Account Setup: Select location. Choose your billing country and click "Continue."
5. Account Setup: Choose form of payment. Under "Post-pay Billing," click the "Credit Card" radio button, then click "Continue."
6. Account Setup: Agree to terms. Thoroughly read the copious "Google Inc. Advertising Program Terms," then click the radio button labeled "Yes, I agree to the above terms and conditions," then click "Continue." (Or ignore all of the legalese and just click the buttons—that works, too.)
7. Account Setup: Provide billing details. Enter your credit card information, your billing address, and the other information requested. Click "Save and Activate." Google now has a "license to bill"—and you now have an online advertising campaign!

Whew! That was quite a process, but at least you'll only have to do it once. Now comes the fun part: managing the campaign.

Managing a pay-per-click campaign requires attention to detail. The good news is, Google provides you with lots of information about what is happening with your account. The bad news is, you'll actually have to pay attention to this information to make the campaign work effectively.

When you look at the "Campaign Management" screen, you'll notice that you have a single campaign (called "Campaign #1") that is marked as "Active." You can rename your campaign by checking its box and clicking the "Edit Settings" button. If you do this, you'll see that you can also make changes to all of the other parameters you set in the initial setup of your account.

Google lets you run multiple campaigns, each of which can contain multiple ad groups, each of which can contain dozens or even hundreds of keywords and keyphrases, bids, and ads. For now, let's just work with one campaign, and one ad group. Click on "Campaign #1." This takes you to a page that shows you the various ad groups within your campaign. You'll have just one, called "Ad Group #1." Click on that and you'll see the ad group detail page.

First, let's scrutinize the major areas of the screen:

• Tools
  
  • Filter Keywords: lets you control which specific keywords and key phrases are displayed in the keyword detail grid below.
  • Add Keywords: exactly as you'd expect, you can add new keywords to your ad group here.
  • Edit Keywords: this feature lets you deal with the entire list of keywords at once, rather than as individual entries.
  • Keyword Tool: helps you get creating by suggesting keywords you've overlooked.
• Ad Area
  
  • Example Ad: if you currently only have a single ad, it will be displayed here. If you're running more than one ad, you'll have to scroll down to the bottom to see them all.
  • Create New Ad: lets you add an additional ad that will be displayed when someone searches for one of your keywords or phrases. This lets you test out different ads to see which ones are most effective. You can tell AdWords to display the most popular ads more (as measured by how often they're clicked), which should increase your campaign's effectiveness.
• Date Range Selection
  
  • Pre-determined periods: you can choose a pre-determined time period to display ("yesterday," the "last 7 days," or "all time," for example).
  • Create New Ad: alternatively, you can specify a starting and ending date. To refresh the Keyword area, click the "Go" button.
• Keyword Area
  
  • Keyword: the keyword in question.
  • Status: whether the keyword is active or inactive. Google will tell you whether a particular bid minimum needs to be reached to activate the keyword.
  • Current Bid: how much you're currently "bidding" for a click on your ad.
  • Hide Settings: allows you to track the cost-effectiveness of individual keywords.
  • Clicks: how many times a Google user has clicked on an ad linked to this particular keyword, within the date range specified.
  • Impr. (Impressions): how many times a Google user has displayed an ad linked to this particular keyword, within the date range specified.
  • CTR (Clickthrough Rate: the ratio of impressions to clicks.
  • Avg. CPC (Average Cost per Click): The average amount you're paying per click on an ad for this keyword, within this date range. Note that the cost can be less than your bid, but won't go over your bid amount.
  • Cost: the total amount spent on ads linked to this particular keyword, within the date range specified.
  • Avg. Pos. (average position): the average order in which your ad is being displayed for this keyword—1 would be the top position, 2 would be the next one down and so on.

Let's be clear on what we're aiming for. Your goal here is to generate the most targeted traffic possible for the least amount of money. There are a few universal truths. Pay attention, because this is what it's all about:

1. The more you bid, the higher your ad is displayed. This is called "bidding your way to the top," and it works. If someone else is bidding on the same keyword, and you offer Google more for a click, they're intrinsicly motivated to display your ad higher, because …
2. The ads at the top get more clicks than the ads lower down. The distribution of clicks on #1 ads vs. #2 ads, #3 ads and so on depends on who you ask, but you'll definitely see lots more clicks if you are in a higher position.
3. Google "hedges its bets" by displaying more relevant ads over less relevant ones. Does that mean you might actually outrank (in terms of placement) someone who outbids you? Believe it or not, yes. Google wants to make money, and it makes more money if the ads are actually relevant.

So the strategy is simple. Begin with a minimum default bid amount, like five or ten cents to start, for your entire list of keywords. Then sit back and watch. You'll notice, after a couple of days, that some keywords are much more popular, and have higher impression volumes (this means the ads are being displayed more often). You can actually sort your keyword list by impression by clicking on the "Impr." header at the top of the keyword grid. If, after a day or so, you have hundreds or even thousands of impressions on a particular keyword or group of keywords, you know what folks are searching for. That's a good thing.

Now it's time to work on your positioning. Check back a couple of times a day at first, then daily after that. Pay attention to the average position of your AdWords ads. If you're happy with a 26.3 average ranking—fine. You'll never get much in the way of clicks, though. If you'd rather be in the top 10, or top five, or actually at the top, increase your bids for specific keywords by checking the box next to the keywords and clicking on "Edit Keyword Settings." Enter you new Search Bid(s), click "Save Changes," then sit back and watch for another day or two.

Keep in mind during all this that your campaign is constrained by the budget you specified. If you're bidding 25 cents per click, and have set your spend to a dollar a day, expect to get about 4 clicks a day before Google stops showing your ad. If you're bidding $1.50 a click and your budget is $1.00 a day, expect to get … not much.

As you work to "dial in" your bids, you can be doing other things, too. One thing the pros do is create multiple ads with slightly different (or even very different) ad copy. Then pay attention to the ones that get clicked the most. AdWords will automatically display the more popular ads more often. This way you can find just the right stimulus that creates the best response.

Getting your campaign working well for you takes some time and dedication, but if you work at it diligently, you can make your AdWords campaign the most effective dollars you spend on promoting your chorus or quartet. Feel free to try things out, such setting up additional campaigns or ad groups, targeting neighboring regions, testing new ad language and adding additional keywords. Here are a few other tips and strategies you might want to try:

• Think "outside the box" with other potential sources of impressions and clicks. If you suspect that people looking for information about the local symphony orchestra might also be interested in your chorus (It's possible!), set up a separate ad group with symphony-related terms, with ads targeted toward symphony-goers.
• Don't forget about the competition. You can't use a "competing" group's name in your ad copy, but you can certainly bid on the group's name (or target their core audience) to run your own targeted ads. (Remember to consider both barbershop and non-barbershop competition!)
• Low-cost clicks are cheaper than high-cost clicks. This seems obvious, but if you're spending a buck a click on a single general term with high click volumes, and you can get the same amount of clicks with a hundred low-volume, highly targeted, and relatively inexpensive terms, do that instead. If you have the budget, do both!
• Re-optimize your site as you go. If you find that one particular search phrase produces massive impression volumes, consider going back to your website content and reworking the text to include that term more often. However, do not just list that term over and over, in white-on-white text, in tiny type at the bottom of your pages. Pasting Britney Spears 200 times in your page footer will actually hurt your rankings in search engines. Plus, it's sleasy and stupid.
• Do not "set it and forget it." Your ad campaign is not a Ronco Rotisserie. Even after you've spent a couple of months honing your campaign settings to a keen Ginsu-like edge, you'll want to check in a couple of times a week and see how it's going.

Above all, make sure to monitor the calls and e-mails you're getting to determine how effective the campaign is at accomplishing your goals. If you're attracting new chorus members, ask each new guest how he found out about your chorus, and make a note of those who said, "on the Internet." If you're getting a new member a month from your AdWords campaign, look at your monthly spend and see whether the cost per new member is in a tolerable range. If it is, consider spending more and see if you can improve on those results!

Though search engines—and both sponsored links and organic results—will probably be your largest source of "customers," there are other things you can do to drive more visitors to your site. Many of the other kinds of paid online advertising are just not feasible for a barbershop chorus or quartet. (Most choruses don't have $10,000 to drop on a million-impression Flash banner ad campaign. Plus, they rarely work anyway.)

With pay-per-click advertising being the notable exception, sometimes the old adage is true: the best things in life (especially online) are free. Here are a few additional things you can do to get more visitors to your site:

• Add your chapter's or quartet's website address to your entry on the Barbershop Harmony Society's website, www.barbershop.org. You'll need access privileges to do this. If you don't have access, ask a chapter officer to do it.
• Add your chapter's or quartet's website address to the appropriate location on the Barbershop Wiki at www.barbershopwiki.org. Full disclosure: I'm the wikimaster of this particular site, and host it on my own server.
• Cross-link like crazy. If you're a quartet, make sure to get quartet information and linkage on your chorus' website. If you're a chorus, make sure each of your chapter quartets links to your chorus site from their individual quartet pages (if they have them), and make sure you have updated links on both district and division pages as well. Remember—the more sites link to you, the more popular you appear to search engines.
• Announce major additions and revisions on the Harmonet, but be careful not to overdo it.

Now that you've gone this far, you might as well commit all the way and make sure you use your website in all of your marketing. You've spent considerable time (and perhaps money) designing and optimizing a website—why wouldn't you make it a central part of your general marketing activities?

Here's the rule: include your web address in everything you publish. Include a general e-mail address in all of your correspondence. As Internet use continues to grow and become more and more a part of everyday media consumption, your website will only become more important. Here are a few additional ideas to consider:

Most choruses produce "pass-along cards" for their members to give out to guys who might be interested in singing with the group. Make sure your cards include your web address, and make certain that information about rehearsal times and locations is easy to find and print. Also, it's critical to provide a valid e-mail address for someone in the group who checks and answers e-mail frequently. (Someone who can write a coherent, polite e-mail message with minimal misspelled words is also a plus.)

If your chorus gives annual or seasonal shows, make sure you include your web address when you submit an entry for the "community calendar" section of your local paper. Create a special landing page with all of the concert details and post a prominent link on the front page of your site. (Posting a link on the Harmonet and the Barbershop Wiki is also a good idea.)

When you actually hold your concert, make sure to give your web address a prominent place on the program. If you provide cards allowing audience members to be notified about upcoming concerts and other events, make sure you ask for your audience members' e-mail addresses. Collect these addresses and send out several e-mails (one month before, two weeks before, the week of, the day before) notifying and reminding your "subscribers" about the event and inviting them to attend.

If you do this, it's very important that you include a method for people to get off your mailing list. It also follows that you should make sure to actually do remove them. Ticking off potential ticket buyers is never a good thing, and word of mouth can work both ways.

Oh—and be sure to remove the concert information from your site when the concert is over. It's just tacky to have stuff on your site that's way past its expiration date. Better yet, change the content to reflect the fact that the concert actually happened, and put some photos and audience comments to help get people excited about the next concert.

When your quartet performs—whether for a church function, a corporate event, or a charity concert—make sure to take along your own pass-along cards. Include your quartet web address and a valid e-mail address and give them out liberally to anyone who wants one. If there is a program, ask that the quartet web and e-mail addresses be included along with your quartet blurb.

Cell phones are great as contact numbers because they can be answered even when the contact person is on vacation. If the person charged with answering e-mails from the website has to be out of contact for more than a day or so, the messages from the site should be forwarded to a backup person. Remember that an e-mail that goes unanswered or a voice mail that goes unreturned can easily lead to the loss of a "customer"—which may be a prospective chorus member, a potential quartet gig, and so on.

The better you close the loop on customer communication, the better you'll close the "sale" and reap the rewards of all of your marketing work.

If this sounds like a lot of work, that's because it is. Online marketing takes elements from traditional marketing and adds a healthy dose of technology to create a potentially daunting effort. But if you break it down and take it in steps, it's doable and—most importantly—profitable.

With its global reach, its immediacy, and its emphasis on rich media, the Internet seems tailor-made as a tool for preserving barbershop harmony. This is where marketing is moving, and we as a society have to learn right now how to make online media work for us.

David Baker (me@bakerdavid.com) is the national Internet marketing manager for a large auto finance company, overseeing more than a million dollars in annual online advertising expenditures. He also consults with businesses and other organizations (including choruses and quartets) to help them meet their online marketing needs. He sings tenor with Equinox quartet and the Spirit of Phoenix chorus.

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If you don't know me, or don't know me well, you can get a pretty good picture of who I am and what I do from snooping around in this site.

How I pay the bills:
DriveTime
Eclectic Interactive

What I do for fun:
Equinox
Spirit of Phoenix