Of late there seem to be more and more sites popping up offering to do the hard work for you. You pop in your requirements and these sites go and get you quotes from DJs who subscribe to them. Add to, Pop top, Bark and Warble are just a few of these which can be added to the list of companies like Need A Disco who have been around for some time.
The benefits are immediately obvious, they take the hard work out of looking but its it as simple as that and will you get the best DJ for the money, well let's explore that.
From a supplier side there is a double cost to using these sites to get work. Firstly for us we have to buy your leads either with an annual or monthly subscription or on a pay per lead basis. This can be anything up to £7.63 plus vat which as you can imagine when bidding on anything upto 10 leads a day can get very expensive. This means many companies filter out the budget leads or those that have low quality information.
These companies are taking this money and bidding very high on keywords via Google Adwords, which again makes DJs who use this service have to pay more to be seen. This means your more likely to be directed to the comparison site than an actual DJs site, this means your losing out on seeing all the work they put in to showing you what they can do versus a quick profile page at best. This could also mean your losing out on bolt on services and package deals or even just getting their direct quote price.
Many companies put the cost of buying the lead straight back on the price you pay meaning, your paying for taking the easy route. Many other companies simply refuse to be part of this so your never going to get a full sample of quotes from these sites, we use a couple but mainly the cheaper ones or the ones where we get a lot of quality leads. Chances are however your missing out on at least half of the potential market place.
There are a couple of ways you can use these site to you advantage however. Many have pages that list the companies that are listed and you can then go direct to the ones you like. This means you can see all the services on offer and perhaps get yourself a deal. Better still get an actual commision free price and speak to the DJ directly.
What I am essentially saying here is that when you try to compare the market, your not actually seeing the full market or getting the best prices. The best way is to sit down with a coffee, search for Wedding DJs and use the actual organic leads to have a good look around, drop the ones you like some messages and help us to combat these sites that exist only to take a chunk out of our pockets with a fake promise of an easy life. After all you still end up having to chat with the DJ and go through their booking process.
Andy P