From booking a band or a disc jockey to a magician or motivational speaker, GigSalad is all about connecting entertainers with event planners.
Through search-engine optimization and word of mouth, the entertainment management company has done its job well.
“We’re on the first page of just about any search like that,” says Mark Steiner, co-founder and CEO, noting GigSalad.com has over 580 categories of musical acts, entertainers and speakers.
The company boasts around 60,000 entertainers – a list that grows by 2,100 per month – and 700,000 event planners, which grows by 44,000 a month, he says.
“We’ll be at a million before the end of the summer,” Steiner says of the latter figure.
GigSalad co-founder Steve Tetrault, who also serves as vice president of products, says the key is a service that keeps people talking.
“We get a lot of performers who tell their friends about GigSalad because it’s a product that really works for them. We have a lot of event hosts who do the same thing,” says Tetrault, who works out of the company’s second office in Wilmington, N.C. “What we’ve focused on is building a great product – really something that’s useful.”
GigSalad has assisted an impressive slate of clients. Its homepage has a scrolling bar chock full of logos and referrals, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., McDonald’s Corp. and Microsoft Corp. Last year, GigSalad connected organizers of NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” television show with magician Mat Franco, who was voted winner of the 2014 contest and awarded a grand prize of $1 million.
“‘America’s Got Talent’ uses us every year,” Tetrault says. “They use us as a trusted resource for finding all types of performers.”
Next up for GigSalad, according to its co-founders, is a push toward more traditional advertising as the company faces competitors that didn’t exist when it got its start in 2005 and officially launched in 2007.
“When we started GigSalad, this model wasn’t really a model that people talked about,” Tetrault says.
Revenue is generated through tiered memberships for entertainers, giving them more features for each level, as well as a deposit system where planners can make a deposit on an event, with GigSalad taking a cut.
While the model quadrupled revenue last year, bringing in $2.5 million, Steiner says that means moving past relying solely on word of mouth and search engines.
“Since 2012, we’ve started to really proactively go after clients,” he says. “We want to be the national brand that people know, not the one that they have to search for.”
That effort has included hiring a public relations firm – Bloomington, Ind.-based Rock Paper Scissors Inc. – and adding a complementary contracting system to the site in addition to paid listings and other featured benefits. Under the system, planners and entertainers can contract with each other via GigSalad, with the Springfield company taking a cut. It’s a system Steiner says could surpass its membership revenue.
“Free members are required to use the contract system. Paid members have a choice,” he says.[[In-content Ad]]
