On starting out
Waxed Music launched in October 2012, but it wasn't until early 2013 when we launched our website that we really gave things a great big push. Having a product on show to the whole world changes the way that you approach everything. We knew that we had to produce relevant content to keep engaging with our audience. It was around May 2013 when we knew our idea was on the right track, as we were fortunate enough to be booked to play at Outlook Festival in Croatia.
Before we founded Waxed Music, I was a struggling graduate who was self-employed. I was running a DJ agency booking artists to play shows around the world. Just before Waxed Music, I got a job working in sales for a technology company and I still work for them. We aren't full-time at Waxed Music yet, but we might as well be. I work 9am-6pm every day and then in the evenings I work on the business.
My business partner Sam also works full-time and dedicates most of his evenings to the brand as well. We want to gain as much experience and knowledge as we can and continue to grow our business for years to come. It's busy but these are the challenges you face as a small business starting out.
What started off as an idea in a small village in Leicestershire among friends is becoming a recognised brand within the UK. We host parties in London, Nottingham and Manchester and help promote new and emerging music via our website.
On winning a year's free Twitter advertising
In December 2013 we entered a Twitter and O2 Social Insights competition and won a year's worth of advertising to help us develop our business.
In the last five months we've experienced dramatic growth in our online presence. We've utilised the advertising budget to grow on Twitter but have also been keen to increase the amount of content we share to build our website traffic.
Having an advertising budget as large as this has enabled us to trial each aspect of Twitter's advertising system to work out the best way for us to engage with our target demographic. We've found that promoted tweets have the best engagement and conversion rates with our current and new audiences.
It's quite funny - we didn't realise we'd won until five hours after the winners were announced. I called up Sam and explained what was happening as I live in Manchester and he lives in the Midlands. It was a complete shock for both of us to think that we had won the competition over all the other companies that had taken part. After coming back down to earth, the realisation of what we had achieved started to sink in. It was a great feeling to think that even the little man has a chance.
Working with Twitter and O2 has been incredibly rewarding. O2 has been a great help giving us an insight into how we can better engage with people and drive more traffic to our website. O2′s got some great pages on its website for small businesses and tutorials focusing on ways to develop your business online. Also, Twitter's webinars have been a great way to make sure we're utilising what's on offer and to learn more as social media constantly evolves.
On social media
At Waxed Music, social media is very important to us. It helps grow our presence both locally and nationally. We have ambitious plans for the next few years and having a great base of followers and people who are engaging with us on a social level will help us achieve our goals.
Each platform brings with it its own audience and of course there are crossovers but we have a lot more followers on Twitter thanks to the advertising budget, and see greater rewards from Twitter Ads over Facebook advertising. We use our Facebook fan page to promote our events and website content.
I was once told by a friend who used to work for Twitter (so of course there's no bias!) that news breaks much faster around the world nowadays due to Twitter. It's a great way to reach your audience immediately.
We also use social ticketing platform Fatsoma to help pre-sell our events and they use network marketing to help brands like ourselves sell more tickets.
On marketing for events
It's very challenging as a young business to get out there without a massive budget but there are cost effective ways. Myself and Sam believe that if you want something done properly, do it yourself – so we often do a lot of the marketing and promotion.
We've found when hosting events that it's good practice to use everything at our disposal to get the word out that we're putting something exciting together. Word of mouth is ultimately the best way - friend-to-friend marketing is a great way of making sure that people know what's happening in each of the cities we work in.
We have a great set of friends that all bring individual qualities to the Waxed brand. From Alex Fowkes, who does a lot of the graphic design on our site and on our posters, to Tom and Nick from Original Sin Events in London, who have given us great insight into how to develop event ideas and turn them into fully-formed experiences.
In each city, there are different ways to market your event but we find the best way is to produce posters and utilise our local databases. We use email marketing to help get the word out to our loyal followers and our new target audiences. Pack London have been a great help in the capital.
On business philosophy
I think that if you're passionate about something, don't let anyone tell you that you can't do it. We wouldn't be where we are today or who we are without the support of our family and friends.
Trial and error is key in starting out. You have to try everything first to see what works and what doesn't and then tailor your approach. These first few years are always a learning curve and we've learnt so much. I really don't think there's anything we would change - it's all shaped our business and us, and we're proud of what we've achieved so far.
I've always lived by the rule "if you don't try, you will never know". It's not healthy living life thinking '"what if we did this or maybe we should have done that". If you have the chance to do something you should grab it by the horns.
The support of a partner has definitely benefited me as a business person. Every step of the way, through every decision, we can talk things through with each other. Whenever we make a decision, we sit down and discuss the positive and negative outcomes and come to a mutual decision about what's best for our business.
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