The Worst Thing to See in Magic Trick Reviews and Adverts

Before I discuss one of the worst things to see when magicians review or advertise magic tricks, I want to warn you about this post. The advice is geared towards magicians who want to perform for the general public. If you prefer to learn magic tricks for fun, perhaps to your family and friends, then this advice may not be for you. I just though I would save you some time reading the rest of the post.

Still with me?  Good, lets get stuck in…

There’s a common sentence found in a LOT of magic trick reviews and adverts for props:

‘A real magician fooler‘

Let’s look at why this sentence has very little benefit in helping you decide if the magic trick is going to be worth learning. Why would this line be helpful in any magic trick reviews?

I recommend that you spend time putting yourself into the shoes of their spectators. You need to understand exactly whom your magic is targeted towards. Are you performing for magicians or for a lay audience? They both have different expectations, knowledge, and appreciation of magic.

Performing magic isn’t just about you or me, or the things we enjoy. You create the magic FOR your spectators. The fun you get from it isn’t the most significant thing. If it were, there would be no reason to perform it in public, we could just sit at home and practice all day in front of a mirror.

Understanding how your audience feels,  acts, and communicates is so critical. Identifying the type of person that your magic targets, allows you to choose exactly the right kinds of tricks, and the most effective presentations for them.

A ‘magicians customer persona’ is a brief outline of a typical spectator. It goes into detail about the spectator and their interests and behavior. By defining these typical spectators, you can create magic that is geared towards them.

Take a moment to write down your typical spectators. Answer these questions:

• Who is your typical spectator?
• Where do they watch your magic?
• What are their other interests?
• What is their typical education level?
• Which other forms of entertainment do their enjoy?
• What cultural references will most resonate with them?
• How do they dress?
• What other events do they like to attend?

Why do we need to build a customer Persona?

There may not be much point developing a deep and meaningful mentalist act if your audience tends to be the nightclub and party scene. Mastering dark spiritual magic might not give you the best ‘reach’ if your plan is to perform at corporate cocktail parties.

That’s not to say you should be limited only by the audience you have access to. Magic is all about exploring and developing your skills. But, if you want to put in the effort to create a full commercial act, it’s wise to define exactly whom your audience is most likely to be, and create a ‘product’ to cater to them.

There’s no reason why you can’t create individual acts, each one designed for a different type of customer persona:

• The city center bar crowd.
• The local pub.
• The family restaurant.
• The society wedding.
• The central London crowd.
• Fellow magicians.

Each act should be designed for one customer persona. You can market yourself individually for each persona that you want to serve. This may be a unique section of your website, or even distinctly different websites for each customer persona.

In just the same way, we see magicians making the mistake of using the wrong customer personas when marketing their performing websites. This happens most often when they write blogs or film themselves on Youtube. Many magicians write about performing magic, create magic trick reviews, discuss how to learn magic, and developing as a magician. They teach some magic tricks, or talk about the latest magic tricks they like. This content is targeting the wrong customer persona. It’s aimed at other magicians!

For example, The Merchant of Magic blog has a set of customer personas that dictate the type of subjects we write about. There aren’t any posts aimed at people wanting to hire a magician, or tips for clients on using a magician, these are not the kind of adverts we push out. We selected our customer persona’s to be different types of magicians wanting to improve their magic. Because of this, we write magic trick reviews, tips and performing advice to help our target audience: magicians.

If you want to get more work as a magician, make sure that you identify which customers you should try to attract, and direct the content of your marketing towards those people, rather than producing content directed to only interest your competitors.

Take a moment to watch this video recorded for me by professional magician Luca Volpe:

Wise words as usual from Luca. Unless you only perform for other magicians as a hobby, or you are constructing an act for the ‘magic club’ lecture circuit, it’s not much use building your magic to entertain other magicians. Adverts and reviews that promote magic, just for entertaining other magicians, it promoting you to target the wrong customer persona.

Seeing this ‘line’  in magic trick reviews and adverts means nothing. Magicians have a working  knowledge of the technical aspects of magic. They look at magic tricks from a more analytical point of view. They are impressed by how unusual or unique a technique may be, the tricks value for THEM, and the creativity that took place in the development of the effect. These are of little concern to a typical lay audience.

Understand who you want to perform magic to, and forget about any magic that is designed for any other group. By doing this, you will be way ahead of most casual performers, and much more likely to find the audiences that you have designed your magic to delight.