See me in Seattle?!: Talking Tickets 13 Jan 2023
170: Friday the 13th. Should I be afraid of a black cat or something?
Yo!
Thanks for being here today.
I’ll be in Seattle for INTIX: January 23-26.
You can find me with Joe, Hayley, and the Cover Genius/Booking Protect team on Wednesday and Thursday. I’ll also be hosting a panel discussion with the Cover Genius team and some of their partners on Thursday morning at 10:45 on the Inspiration Stage.
I’m also going to attempt to do some live podcast recording from the Cover Genius booth.
I’ll have final details next week.
To the Tickets!
Totally makes sense since I often see businesses that haven’t updated their market research in years.
The Big Idea: Share your thoughts on pricing at the link.
Some of the numbers right now are pretty interesting:
31% of people tell me that pricing has little or no impact on the success of their business. (My work and research says they are wrong.)
Price resistance is the biggest challenge about 15% of respondents share.
54% of people wish they had greater access to more potential pricing strategies.
Dave’s Take: Pricing is marketing’s MVP moment. Full stop.
Pricing tells me a lot about your business and your abilities as a marketer:
Price is a symbol: Are you premium? A commodity? Accessible?
Price is a short cut for marketing competence: Do you get the price you set? Are you discounting? Does your price match your position?
Price is a metaphor: Are you setting and adjusting your prices like a drunken sailor? Are your prices stable and rock steady?
Your price also tells me a lot about your attention to your brand, price sensitivity, and how much brand equity you have.
Final Take: I’m tripling down on market research, insights from my work, and growing the newsletter.
So share this thing with someone that will benefit.
Fill out the pricing survey.
Know your numbers and your market.
II. Media rights tell you about the strength of a league:
The graphic is a little misleading if you aren’t careful because the NFL has so many media rights deals that you might get confused and think that the NFL isn’t as strong as it is.
The Big Thing: We all know the reported attendance numbers can be manipulated to be better than they are. We all know that it is easy to offer up a great PR story.
But the TV money doesn’t lie.
The NFL is far away the biggest, baddest thing on the American block.
The NBA is second, but if it was listed: the Premier League would be right there with the NBA, and if you included all the leagues and tournaments, ahead of the NBA.
MLS only has the Apple TV+ deal and we’ve looked at the brand awareness issues there in a previous edition of the newsletter.
The Opportunity: How do you build a big brand? Start with a big brand.
That’s where the NFL is right now.
If you are in another league, you need to look at elevating your overall brand awareness by doing everything possible to achieve maximum reach.
TV still delivers a huge audience. 80% of the American population still watches TV every day and the average American watches 3 hours of TV a day.
III. The Emporor’s Package teaches us a lesson in packaging:
$5M for the trip of a lifetime for an F1 Fan!
Context: In the before times, I was part of a group bringing a festival to Miami Beach.
An idea that I threw out was the $1M ticket.
This captures that same feeling.
What Do You Need to Know?
These kinds of packages might be thrown together with no intention of actually selling them.
In the case of the $1M ticket, we actually guessed that no one would buy the thing but that we would be able to use the ticket as a tool to generate buzz and PR.
But this package also offers a lot of value to elevate the perception of value within the package:
A butler
Adele tickets
A private meal with Nobu
There are things in here from an experiential POV that a high-net-worth (HNW) individual would go for as a way to show off.
Use this: Remember, you are not the customer.
Look at your offerings from multiple angles:
Does it offer unique value?
Can you use the unique value to create a story?
Is it essential that you create something that you know will sell? Or, creating something that you think is outrageous the point?
IV. 34% of UK fans say they haven’t wanted to go to a show in a few years:
66% of people still want to go.
Be careful with numbers.
The Big Picture: This article highlights research around dynamic pricing.
Dynamic Pricing is a tool. I’ve covered it on the podcast with Sean Kelly a few times.
It isn’t good or bad. But there are positives and negatives to using it.
On the pro side:
React quickly to changes in demand patterns
Maximize yield
You can use it to tailor your offering to certain markets.
On the downside:
Your customers can feel betrayed by the practice.
Without human intervention, the prices can runaway up and down.
In some cases, it can be less profitable.
The Big Point: Dynamic Pricing isn’t a magic wand. Know your strategy. Know your customers.
Then, make the decision that is best for your product.
V. Links:
Heritage sites in the UK are struggling:
I saw a pair of alarming analyses of the costs of Brexit to the UK economy. One report said that the UK economy had lost about 10% of its size and the other one said 5.5%.
The first number caught my eye because it put the amount of economic activity lost in the UK next to the Great Depression and showed that the fallout was about 2/3 of what the Great Depression was.
I highlight this because of the need to look at the context of your decisions right now.
It matters.
Friend of the newsletter and podcast, Scott Goodacre, shares some ideas about paid media:
The idea of “organic reach” is overrated.
Advertising requires investment.
What’s that about no free lunch?
I’ve been a little obsessed with The Suburbs lately:
I saw Arcade Fire at MGM in Boston in November and the show was great. But I only knew part of the new album…but I’ve been really drawn into The Suburbs the last month or so.
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:
Simon Severino
Zoe Scaman
Harold Hughes
Don’t forget, we are going to try and do it live in SEATTLE!