🎁🎅❄️☃️ Happy Holidays! Spektrix's Gift To Us!
167: Happy Holidays, y'all!
Hi!
Happy Holidays from who knows where today…
I just returned from Key Biscayne where I did nothing and found my favorite Miami beer on draft at the hotel bar…so #Winning!
Let me know about your INTIX plans. My old stomping grounds of Seattle…here we come.
To the Tickets!
I. Spektrix’s Dashboard Shows Trends:
A global look at where ticket sales are from 2019 to 2022.
To Know: This is a nifty tool to give you context around how your orgnanization is doing.
It is for the arts sector: so #sportsbiz is out on this one.
How to Use This: You can check your sales monthly against the broader industry. Or, you can even look to someplace like Ireland and figure out what they are doing that is allowing them to bounce back so quickly.
Museums that offer free tickets:
Aren’t seen as more welcoming.
Don’t come across as more satisfying.
Do not get higher recommendations.
Why This?: I bring this up because we hear a lot of the idea of “free” or “intro” as being the way to win people over to coming to games, shows, or events.
I’ll shine my platform at the $6 ticket problem and the argument that “if I just get them in the door they’ll see the value.”
I’ve made over 1 million individual pricing decisions in my career in professional services, bars and nightclubs, tickets, and more. I’ve never seen this work.
What works?
Focusing on value. Elevating the perceived value of being inside your venue.
Cheap undermines the perception of value.
I shared the SNL bit last week. It ain’t just me. It is everyone.
III. My Top 5 Top Podcast Episodes of the 2022:
I’ll add some more things I’ve learned, trends, etc. next week, but here are my 5 top podcast conversations from the year:
Lyndsey Jackson: We talked all things Fringe, managing in a crisis, and being a great leader.
Ruth Hartt: I’ve come back to this conversation over and over…what a great example of market orientation.
Brett Goldberg: Timely at the time, but one I’ve come back to many times to use TickPick’s ads to show as an example of using comedy in advertising.
Bill Guertin: $125,000 for each bad hire?! Wow! Get on this one if you are in sales.
Paul Williamson: Great conversation about ticketing the Olympics, setting up tickets like a startup, and a lot more.
The London Ticket Bank is a “scheme” to UK residents have access to the arts during the cost of living crisis in the UK.
The Big Idea: Arts leaders in London are stepping up to give people a sense of community, exposure to the arts, and some hope during a really tough period in the United Kingdom.
Why This Matters: Arts funding has been cut in a lot of places even though we saw the importance of the arts during the lockdowns for COVID. The arts teach us things that we might not learn or know about from other sources.
As an example, my son has been watching the Colin Kaepernick show on Netflix about Colin’s youth and how he came to social activism. There have been some interesting lessons about the slave trade, racism, and college recruitment.
A lot of people learned new things about American history from Hamilton.
I remember in the 90s seeing the books spread out in the liner notes of Rage Against the Machine’s Evil Empire album and reading some of them, learning things I never knew about all kinds of topics…I even bought a copy of The Anarchist Cookbook.
For You: Think about your mission in a larger context. Sometimes the best business decision is to do the right thing.
V. Links:
More competition in Australia and New Zealand.
Sell tickets? Maybe consider the POV of your LinkedIn profile:
Have you seen some of the posts that go up under #sportsbiz sales folks?
Focus on the customer and how you help them, not on how many likes and clicks you can get from other folks in sportsbiz.
Linktree: Find everything I’m up to.
Join the ‘Talking Tickets’ Slack Group. Almost 300 people from around the world.
The folks from Booking Protect will be at INTIX in Seattle in January. You’ll be able to meet the Booking Protect team in person.
Offering your customers refund protection:
Gives customers certainty in their purchase.
Gives you a new revenue stream.
Improves your customer service.
Great podcast conversations: Take your business to new heights by learning from the best in the business.
Recent Conversations:
Aren Murray
Bill Guertin
Scott Goodacre