Nike's Marketing Mistakes Teach Us a Ticket Selling Lesson...
Hi!
I’ve been emailing you lately to find out what you want to learn more about or are thinking about right now.
Which led me to this:
I’ve put together a virtual workshop series with 5 of your biggest challenges to close out the year:
August: Rebuilding and Keeping Sales Momentum
September: Better Product Creation
October: Launch Your Ticket Sales Packages Like a Blockbuster
November: Set the Right Price
December: Getting on the Right Path
Each session is $100.
All 5: $450.
The Ultimate Package: $950 includes all 5 sessions and 5 30 minute Zoom coaching sessions with me.
I’ll record each session and you will receive a copy of the recording.
The UX in the shopping cart is wonky. So email me for multi-session deals.
Back to tickets:
A few people sent me this breakdown of Nike’s marketing.
I’d frame this as a reflection of the argument about doing the basics well vs. doing what is the new hot thing.
In this case, Nike stopped investing in their brand to turn the business into a D2C company and sales dropped.
When the numbers started coming in, Nike had to “pivot”.
Meaning, they needed to reverse their decisions.
Why?
Because sales “popped” in the short-term when people were buying everything online during COVID and Nike’s brand building efforts were still strong in customer’s minds.
Once the COVID pop ended and Nike’s brand wasn’t supporting sales as much, sales dropped.
It is happening in tickets right now.
Teams have turned over too much of their brand-building to their TV parents, the league, or just neglected it…period.
Sales focuses on:
Sales activation using paid social media.
Sales boiler rooms/Sales academies that focus on cold calling are still very dominant.
Innovation in sales techniques lags.
There is no shortcut to getting out of this funk:
It will take you several years to turn your brand and sales around. With the job turnover being over 100% in many American teams, patience isn’t a typical attribute, but it is the only thing that will fix this.
Recognize the power of the “Long & Short”. Long is branding spend. Short is sales activation. Depending on your business, the formula will vary a little. But 60/40 is a good starting point.
Get your basic marketing strategy right: STP. Segmentation/Targeting/Positioning.
Discounts are for dummies. You reset your brand clock when you discount. You can change your prices, but price promotions will kill you.
Measure the right things. Another email I received was about the Sales VP who rewards the sales rep who makes 150 calls a day. The rep rarely or never gets an answer and never sets an appointment but shows tons of “productivity”. You have to measure the right things not just the easy-to-measure things.
This is just the starting point.
You’ll also have to think about the way you distribute your tickets.
You’ll want to consider your arrangements with the secondary market. I had an executive share the difference in results when they went from consignment to fee with their consolidator…and how all outcomes were worse once they switched from consignment because their incentives weren’t aligned.
This isn’t an uncommon story.
The big thing: understand that you are in the trap of “short-termism”.
You may recognize a few signs of this trap:
You are obsessed with being able to measure everything.
Marketing spend is dominated by direct sales channels like X, Facebook, or Instagram.
The focus is often on maximizing spend per transaction or a similar number.
From there, you can begin to take steps to build a sustainable sales effort built around the push and pull of proper marketing.
A new podcast coming this week with the heads of Secutix’s businesses in North America and Europe: Michael McDermott and David Hornby!
Until then, check out previous episodes.
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