Canadian Music Trade - February / March 2020 | Page 23

rep with Amazon or Google, they can be engaged that way, or you
can use their automated customer service processes. Otherwise, you
can develop your own voice skills for Alexa or Google Assistant, but
that’s a significant investment and the return you’re likely to see in
any case is limited.
As such, Joel’s takeaways are to first be aware of where your
searches are coming from via your analytics tools. You can also speak
to partners like Reverb.com or eBay about what they’re doing in this
regard and how it could be of mutual benefit.
Finally, he recommends just buying and playing with this tech-
nology to get a grasp on what it can do now and what it might be
able to do in the near future.
“Imagine how this could infiltrate the MI marketplace,” he en-
thuses, listing off things like speakers with built-in tuners, speakers
that record lessons automatically and send the audio to students
immediately after, that give notifications on when the class is done,
that can work as a metronome… “There’s a lot of automation here
compared to mumbling into your phone.”
He adds that building a voice skill for your business could
be incredibly powerful and beneficial to the in-store experience.
“Imagine talking with a customer and just asking your watch or
your phone if a certain product is in inventory,” Joel offers. “It’d be
a game-changer in terms of not having to walk to the back room
and killing the momentum of the interaction; there are just so many
applications on the side of just running the business that make this
very exciting.”
So while you may not be able to dominate the game in terms of
voice search at this point, knowing where we are and where we’re head-
ed will be a big boon as these doors start to open. And they will…
5 Community Events for Every Music
Retailer
Tim Pratt, President of Dietze Music
TIM PRATT
In contrast to the many tech-focused sessions at The 2020 NAMM
Show, Tim Pratt, the president of Dietze Music’s four locations in
Nebraska, presented on the many opportunities and rewards associ-
ated with direct engagement within your local community.
“You can’t just hang your shingle and expect people to come to
you,” Pratt stresses. “You need to be out there in your community
showing them why they should. As a brick-and-mortar store, that’s
the only way you can compete.”
Among the five examples he shared in his NAMM U session
were the company’s participation in the Lincoln Children’s Zoo’s
annual Boo at the Zoo trick-or-treating event and its permanent
exhibit at the Lincoln Children’s Museum.
“One of the things we’re really focusing on is engaging that
youngest generation – the three- and four-year-olds that might
not come from a musical family or haven’t had much experience
with instruments,” says Pratt. “These are the kids that are going
to be coming into school and taking up an instrument, so getting
them hands-on with music before they do has become a big part
of our focus.”
Boo at the Zoo is a fun Halloween-themed event that brings
out anywhere from 10,000 to 14,000 trick-or-treaters and
their families each year. Dietze Music’s onsite set-up includes
kid-friendly graphics mixed with the store’s branding, a photo
booth with characters from Paw Patrol and The Incredibles, and
a cool sound-activated lighting exhibit. In addition to the candy
they hand out – which Pratt acknowledges is the biggest single
expense of participating – they also give out coupons for a free
kazoo that can be redeemed in-store. Of the 10,000 cards they
print, about 600 are redeemed.
“There’s really not a huge cost associated with this,” he rein-
forces. “Where else can you go, spend this kind of money, and
get 600 people into your store as a direct result? A lot of them
may not even know what a music store is, so sometimes it’s like,
‘Whoa, this is cool! I didn’t know this existed.’”
The museum exhibit is a more permanent, year-round ini-
tiative and subsequently involves a more sizeable investment of
resources. “That commitment isn’t for the faint of heart,” Pratt
asserts. “It’s not particularly cheap, and there are about 180,000-
some kids that go through every year, so it’s a wonderful exhibit
and great opportunity to get our name out locally with that
crowd, but we need a staff member there for several hours every
week or two, and then this may not come as a surprise, but kids
break stuff [laughs].”
Overall, though, he believes it’s been a worthwhile and
rewarding endeavour. The store is frequently tagged on social
media in relation to the exhibit and the visibility and goodwill it
generates is palpable.
“Music is such a great connector,” he says about community
engagement in general. “When we’re out in the community, we
can easily strike up conversations with new people about their
favourite bands or if they have a favourite instrument, and then
hopefully turn them towards what we’re doing at the store.
And it’s not just about the outside community; these activities
are great for team-building for our staff and we can get a lot of
different people involved, so we’ve been really pleased with what
we’ve seen thus far and don’t plan on slowing down.”
For more on these or other presentations from past NAMM
events, visit www.namm.org/nammu.
Andrew King is the Editor-in-Chief of Canadian Music Trade.
CANADIAN MUSIC TRADE
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