Subscriptions are Down!? Are there Alternatives?!
Research! Vegas! And, more...
Hi!
The Big Thing:
You aren’t the customer.
Your opinion of what the ticket buyers want doesn’t matter…it is irrelevant.
It is probably dangerous to your organization.
You have to listen to your customers.
Ticket buyers.
Non-customers because they are the largest part of your market anyway.
Arts loyalty in the States returns…?!
A new piece of research on arts organizations’ customers’ buying habits is out.
I like it.
There’s a definite hypothesis to the research:
Not, woe is me…subscriptions are down, but what alternatives might be worth looking at?
It brought to mind three things that I want to offer you:
The decline in subscriptions and attendance since the 1990s in the arts has been severe.
What we haven’t seen was a significant innovation in ideas to challenge this decline.
The general idea: More of the same, but with emphasis.
“Loyalty” is overstated.
I used to love loyalty programs.
Then, I found out that light buyers matter more to most businesses, in and out of tickets, and that most reward programs and loyalty programs are expensive, poorly run, and don’t return the investment that the organization made.
Research is great, but be careful about how you are conducting it:
Calling for arts organizations to do conjoint research is great because conjoint research is amazing.
It is also expensive and cost prohibitive for almost every arts organization in the world, if you want to do it well. I tell people to do it for pricing when they are launching a huge campaign…but it is f$%^&*( expensive.
You need to get comfortable with secondary market research. Because it is often free or cheap.
Currently, if you aren’t looking at things where you talk to an audience outside of your current buyers, you have to be careful because you are missing tons of opportunities. And, the data is questionable because you likely aren’t getting enough people to respond to give you much useful information.
The big thing…don’t let the illusion of perfect stand in the way of doing some research.
My takeaways:
Look bigger. Your non-customers are the biggest part of your market. What are they doing?
Find ideas outside of your sector.
Why has ‘Talking Tickets’ been about tickets and revenue, because you can learn from everywhere.
Don’t fall for the Einstellung Effect!
Other interesting stuff:
This conversation with Mayor Carolyn Goodman of Las Vegas is interesting. She doesn’t expect that the A’s will really move to Las Vegas.
Nate Black offers up an experiment for selling tickets to sports. What’s your take?
Me…remember you aren’t the customer. You have to look through the eyes of the buyer. Everything else is irrelevant or dangerous.
Keep your updates from INTIX coming. Let me know what you liked, didn’t like, learned, and whatever else.
Drop it in the Slack Channel or send me a note!
Let me know what you are up to by replying to this email.
I’m also itching to do an AMA podcast or newsletter, so send me your questions and I will use a few of them in an upcoming newsletter and/or podcast.
See you soon!
Dave
Do me a favor and share this note with one person that you know that will benefit from the ideas on research or the Einstellung Effect! (Come on! You never knew that term until now!)