Talking Tickets 16 July 2021: Final Edition From Vacation! Discounts Everywhere, Ugh!? My New Website! Ticketmaster Resale! And, More!
Number 93
Hey There!
A final one from the road! Let’s keep this one short and sweet again.
I’m going to try to get a little more pool time in before I head back to DC this afternoon!
Check out our Slack Channel.
To the tickets!
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Big Ideas:
Pricing is marketing’s MVP moment.
Get your tickets to Ticket Summit!
Do your research your strategy and your price deserve it.
Have you got your tickets to Ticket Summit yet?
Why?
Because we will be discussing pricing!
Good times.
This week saw my inbox fill with a record number of discounts. I haven’t even been able to get to everything yet.
Discounts around the home run derby, discounts around the place in the home run derby, discounts around draft pick position, on and on.
These things are a bad idea.
First, the fastest way to destroy your brand’s value is to do price-based promotions.
Second, when you open the discount door psychologically, you are a discount brand for around 7 years. This is established along with some other interesting psychological things in the book, Buyology.
Third, pricing is marketing’s MVP moment and deserves research like every other aspect of marketing.
Over the three weeks of my vacation, I’ve continued to have conversations with folks from around the world.
One frustrating thing…actually, nothing is frustrating me at this point, I’m totally Zen, but one annoying thing is that despite a constant refrain and advice to do your research, people aren’t doing their research.
I’ve had on average two conversations a week where people have come to me with hypotheses, insights, or conclusions that aren’t based on anything but guesses.
When I ask where the research is, the reply is typically something along the lines of “that’s too basic” or “that’s 101 stuff”.
Seriously, those are the replies.
Yet, if it isn’t done…what does that say about your strategy?
So do your research. Don’t set prices by sticking your finger in the air. And, recognize that price is a reflection of the value you create.
2. Ticketmaster Resale returns to World Ticket Conference:
Big Ideas:
Look for anti-competitive behavior. But having Ticketmaster Resale back as a major competitor for brokers’ business is good because competition will mean opportunity.
Incentives will determine where a lot of broker business goes.
Having two parts of a business act without coordination isn’t completely unusual.
After a year or so without very many events, it isn’t surprising to see Ticketmaster Resale get back into the game of marketing to the secondary market.
They are a marketplace that derives a significant amount of revenue from resale.
When I worked on the 2012 Presidential Election, we had a “wall” between different parts of the businesses I was working in so that the campaign staff didn’t coordinate with the PAC staff and the advocacy staff.
I’ll tell you that in this case, it worked.
I’m not sharing that story to say that this is definitely the case, but if the businesses are run like independent components, they are going to have their own goals and objectives.
So getting back into the conference game should be no surprise.
Ticketmaster’s role in the secondary market is something we can consider another day, but for today let’s think about three quick ideas.
First, the article points out the challenges of anti-competitive behavior.
That’s been the thing I’ve been pointing out that y’all should be paying attention to for a while now.
Always pay attention to the power in any strategy, does it give you more or less power?
Second, watching the incentives that are at play here will be important.
As I mentioned above, price matters and the incentives that StubHub, Ticketmaster Resale, Vivid and others give to get more action from the brokers will be interesting.
Third, hopefully, Ticketmaster Resale will be at Ticket Summit.
They throw a great party!
In general, I’m advising you to not look to anyone data point as conclusive evidence of anything right now.
There’s a lot to be optimistic about but it is still too early to know too much about how things will look in a month or two.
3. Ireland moves to criminalize for-profit ticket resale:
Big Ideas:
Ireland’s government going after for-profit resale is interesting considering how they typically promote themselves as exceedingly “pro-business”.
Without enforcement, this likely doesn’t mean much.
If Ireland makes a law, how does this stop a business from operating offshore?
Last week I shared a story about Viagogo’s troubles in Australia and this week we have Ireland going after for-profit ticket resale.
I do find it a bit ironic that this is where Ireland decides to be pro-consumer since they are considered the “pro-business” country in Europe, but we can talk about the BS that is brand purpose another day.
I highlight this story because I want to show y’all that you can have a strategy that’s global in nature but you also need to be focused on a country-by-country basis.
Also, you’ll have to watch this because as we’ve seen in a number of circumstances when one country makes a law around ticket resale, it has been easy for a business to just operate out of a different country.
Finally, these kinds of laws are easy to pass and promote, but what kind of enforcement are they really going to put behind them?
The real power in any law or legislation you see is in the enforcement of the law.
4. More Covid in Australia including confirmed cases at a Wallabies’ game:
Big Ideas:
Get vaccinated as soon as you can. Encourage folks that are hesitant to get the vaccine.
Vaccines can keep businesses open and businesses moving.
Don’t think this is just Australia or places not in the United States because Red Sox and Yankees have been postponed due to numerous Covid-19 cases in the Yankees organization.
Here in Florida, I’m on a Hot Vax Summer.
I bring this up because vaccines are miracle workers.
But I’ve also met a not-insignificant amount of folks during my travels that aren’t vaccinated and aren’t sure if they are going to get vaccinated.
If you are on the fence, get the vaccine.
If you know folks that are on the fence and you are vaccinated, tell them about your experience.
99% of current hospitalizations from Covid are people that haven’t been vaccinated. That’s the number in the United States and I’m sure that the number varies depending on how quickly you are getting vaccinated.
For folks in tickets, getting people vaccinated is a huge key in getting events going and getting things back to full capacity and eliminating disruptions.
Let this act as a PSA from Disney where folks are hacking up a storm and I’m thinking about putting a mask back on when I go inside because these coughs don’t sound like fun.
5. My website has been remodeled and it was driven by research:
Big Ideas:
My web designer is great! She’s put together a new web home for me that I can really be proud of.
Over the next weeks, we are going to get into growth and opportunity creation because we can already see that there are a lot of folks that don’t have strategies.
I’ve repositioned myself based on research and knowing the market. Are you doing the same?
Consider last week a tease and this week the soft opening, but I relaunched the Dave Wakeman website with some fancy new features.
I’ll get into some of the decisions and ideas driving a lot of this forward over the next few weeks, but since I started the week with some talk about the basics, I’ll end the week with some talk about the basics.
Also, it allows me to finish this up and get back to the pool.
First, I did some research at the end of 2020 that I’ve talked about because I wanted to know what the business environment was going to look like into 2021 and beyond.
Here is what my research showed. Forgive me if you’ve heard this before, but:
80% of CEOs and executives don’t really trust their marketing teams because they aren’t versed in the language of business outcomes and mostly speak in buzzwords and tactics, not strategy.
In 2021, 73% of businesses were hoping to return to growth after the pandemic disruption.
But 55% of these businesses weren’t really sure where to begin.
To top this off, only 40% of businesses said they didn’t really have a strategy that helped drive that inability to find opportunities. But when I dug in on those 60% of businesses that said they do have strategies, I found that most strategies weren’t really strategies at all. They were wishlists and hopes, but nothing definitive.
I bring that up because as we start opening up or start seeing businesses move forward, we are seeing my research play out in a lot of ways:
My conversations about research being the basics, but folks not knowing what they are really bringing to the market is a good example.
All of these discounts.
The quick rise and fall of NFTs and Top Shot as the manna from heaven one month only to have faded another.
Now that my vacation is coming to an end, I’ll be tackling this stuff head-on. That’s why the new website was important because it will give me more ways to add value.
As I go back to frozen drinks and the zero-entry pool for the final time, let me leave you with three questions right now to think through:
Do you know where your focus is or should be? Why or why not?
Where will your new opportunities come from? Because disruptions, volatility, and change are all drivers of opportunities.
How will you stand out in your market? Are you for or against your competition? Why should someone pick you over everyone else?
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Check me out everywhere using my Linktree!
Hook up with my friends at Booking Protect. Folks are taking up refund protection at a rate double the pre-pandemic rate. This shows that folks value this peace of mind.
I’ve put together a really great worksheet with Eventellect to tell you how to survey your customers and measure your NPS score. Reply to this and I will send you a copy.
Check out with Activity Stream has done with their Activate email marketing system! It is a great tool to help you grow your business, get back in touch with your customers, and turn your data into magical moments.